FWIW, a related bug about GPRS networking is Bug 296851.

Another related report is Bug 362201 about IrDA connection parameters.

I'll add also that Bug 263881 was about setting correct device in
/etc/sysconfig/irda. If NM is to support IrDA it would be cool to also have an
option to probe/detect/select correct IrDA device.

For completeness I'll document below what I need for a GPRS connection over IrDA
with my Nokia mobile phone. Probably well-known facts but anyway:

0) IrDA device configuration needs to be complete before doing anything else.
Device specific and not directly related to NM. For my hardware these two lines
in /etc/modprobe.conf are needed:

alias irda0 nsc-ircc
install nsc-ircc /bin/setserial /dev/ttyS1 uart none; /sbin/modprobe
--ignore-install nsc-ircc

1) /etc/sysconfig/irda needs to have:

IRDA=yes
DEVICE=irda0
DISCOVERY=yes

Those are passed to irattach when starting the irda service.

2) After starting the irda service the IrDA connection parameters must be
adjusted for numerous phone models (including mine, obviously):

# Adjust IrDA settings for GPRS
echo 115200 > /proc/sys/net/irda/max_baud_rate
echo 2000 > /proc/sys/net/irda/max_tx_data_size
echo 1000 > /proc/sys/net/irda/min_tx_turn_time
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/irda/max_tx_window

3) I'm using wvdial with following config as /etc/wvdial.conf:

[Dialer Defaults]
Baud = 115200
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init3 = ATM0
SetVolume = 0
Dial Command = ATDT

[Dialer gprs]
Modem = /dev/ircomm0
#Init4 = AT+CGDCONT=,,”airtelgprs.com”
ISDN = 0
Modem Type = Analog Modem
Phone = *99#
Username = A
Password = B
Stupid Mode = 1

Username and password can be anything. In some cases (probably operator
specific) one needs the Init4 parameter to get DNS servers but for me this works
ok without it.

4) Then just "wvdial gprs" and I'm connected.

So the point here is that I hope some day at least part of this could be done
with NetworkManager.

Thanks.

The wvdial.conf above is not optimal. This one is much better:

[Dialer Defaults]
Baud = 115200
Init1 = ATZ E0
Dial Command = ATDT

[Dialer gprs]
Modem = /dev/ircomm0
Phone = *99#
Username = A
Password = B

Changing version to '9' as part of upcoming Fedora 9 GA.
More information and reason for this action is here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping

This bug has been triaged

This report was about NM IrDA support.. I wonder is it worth the effort nowadays anymore as more and more phone are lacking IrDA and come with Bluetooth instead or shall we keep this still open?

Thanks.

GsmArena lists 363 phones that have IR ports but do not have Bluetooth.  However, only 17 of those phones have at least EDGE.  However, some devices that have IR but no BT were released as recently as 2007 (http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_k220-1841.php).  In the end, NM IR support probably won't get done unless somebody shows up with patches.

ModemManager should support the device fine when it shows up and is connected, but if the IR stack doesn't support hotplug or sysfs correctly then we might have a problem.  We'd probably need to do the same thing with IR as we do with Bluetooth since you can't really scan for the device.  Which means that once a connection was created for the device (do IR devices have some sort of MAC or other unique ID at all?) it would always be shown in the menu no matter whether the device was on or off.  When you choose the phone from the menu, NM would try to connect, and if the device was off the connection would simply fail.

I'll take patches, but note that patches would probably need to be based on what will become NM 0.8.1 which has a bunch of fixes that enable Bluetooth DUN, which would also be quite useful to IrDA.

If anyone still has an IrDA capable phone, does ModemManager find the device if it's running when you start the IrDA connection?

I have a Nokia 6021 to test with. When I start IrDA with:

# irattach irda0

I can then run gnokii --identify successfully with this /etc/gnokiirc:

[global]
port = /dev/ircomm0
model = AT
connection = serial

However, I don't see any messages from ModemManager in the syslog and test/mm-test.py reports "No modems found".

Please let me know if there were anything else I could test? Thanks.

*** Bug 362201 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

THis is quite unlikely to happen unless community patches come in, and hardware that supports IrDA is pretty much no longer available...