When was connmanctl introduced?

[bryan....@owasp.org]

Can someone please point me to the history of connmanctl and when it was introduced for Debian on BBB?   All of the legacy documentation circa 2015 shows a simple entry in /etc/network/interfaces but clearly connmanctl is the way to go now.

Thanks!

[Robert Nelson]

On Thu, Apr 23, 2020 at 10:21 PM <bryan....@owasp.org> wrote:
>
> Can someone please point me to the history of connmanctl and when it was introduced for Debian on BBB? All of the legacy documentation circa 2015 shows a simple entry in /etc/network/interfaces but clearly connmanctl is the way to go now.
>
> Thanks!

The original BeagleBoard.org Debian Wheezy release around 2014 used
wicd for wifi configuration, shortly there after around 2015 we
started transitioning to connman.

I believe wicd-gtk was no longer maintained at that time and we needed
to find a new solution..

Regards,

--
Robert Nelson
https://rcn-ee.com/

[Bryan Miller]

Thank you Robert! That is very helpful. For my wired NIC connections interfaces is dead simple. I can see the advantage of connman for wifi.

-Bryan

[Robert Nelson]

> Thank you Robert! That is very helpful. For my wired NIC connections interfaces is dead simple. I can see the advantage of connman for wifi.

Yeah, today for a wired connection, not using "connman" works fine.

But there was a time about 2-3 years ago.. That Debian/Ubuntu had a
really crappy ifupdown network setting, that forced you into a 2
minute wait (timeout) on bootup before the login prompt would become
available... Unless your ethernet port was connected, then login
appeared instantly..

Swapping from "auto eth0" to "allow-hotplug eth0" made zero difference
at the time. I remember supporting 2 boards with one image back
then.. The original BeagleBoard (with no default ethernet) and the xM
with a usb-ethernet adapter.. It really sucked trying to support that
configuration, as we had to have "eth0" defined in
/etc/network/interfaces so the xM would have working ethernet. Yet at
the same time hack up teh ifup scripts to remove the 2 minute timeout
so the non ethernet BeagleBoard, would still bootup quiclly to a login
prompt.

Once we swapped to connman, connman took care of those two cases pretty easily..