[Announce] Tethering
 

Had some spare time during xmas, so I created a tethering gui for Sailfish. The app allows sharing the mobile data connection over Wifi or Bluetooth. It uses NAT and creates a private network, which is shared over Wifi (infrastructure WPA2) or Bluetooth PAN.

The necessary network connections are handled automatically, so there should be no need to tweak the network settings. Previous state of the network connections is also restored, when a user disables tethering or closes the app.

At the moment only the SSID and PSK of the Wifi network can be modified. This is due to the limitations in the dbus interface of Connman. So currently it is not possible to (easily) modify for example the WLAN channel or private network address (which is randomized every time tethering is enabled).

The app has been tested by a limited number of persons for now, so some issues might arise. And there could also be situations, where the enabling process will fail for a good reason. If in doubt, just try to enable tethering again from the menu (if available) or by restarting the app.

Homepage:
- https://github.com/jlehtoranta/harbour-tethering-gui

Installation:
- Install from Jolla store
Or
- Download the latest rpm from: https://github.com/jlehtoranta/harbo...-1.armv7hl.rpm
- Install by opening the file from file manager or in terminal: "pkcon install-local harbour-tethering-gui-0.2.7-1.armv7hl.rpm"

Re: [Announce] Tethering
 

very cooool, thaaank you :)

a question: is it not possible to add this directly in system setting?

Re: [Announce] Tethering
 

With a quick and extensive 5 minutes long test :p everything seemed to work fine.

Feature request: Could the qui show us how many active connections there are currently?

BTW, how bad does the battery hit seem to be? Compared to N9 for example.

Nice job, thank you!

Re: [Announce] Tethering
 

At least WiFi tethering sucks your battery empty in no time. You should keep a charger in reach. But N9 wasn't much different IIRC. It's just the nature of adhoc WiFi.

Re: [Announce] Tethering
 

Works good for me. Didn't have time to test it with an Android device (my Nexus 7 never saw N9's hotspot because of lack of ad-hoc support on Android itself), or to see its battery consumption, but my Kubuntu pc can see the hotspot just fine.

Re: [Announce] Tethering
 

Thanks all. :)

Perhaps, but I haven't researched this possibility, since I suspect it wouldn't comply with the Jolla Harbour rules. And it could also create a higher chance of unintentionally forgetting tethering on.

Yes, I'm planning on adding this kind of information to the gui, but I can't give any timeline for now. It depends on the ways the information is accessible.

Re: [Announce] Tethering
 

thank you...great job...works perfect... would also like to see who is connected and maybe option to disconnect automatically after xx amount of time per client...

Best regards

Miki

Re: [Announce] Tethering
 

Is there particular code that makes this only run on Jolla devices? Neither wifi nor bluetooth tethering worked with Sailfish on my N9.

Re: [Announce] Tethering
 

@taixzo n950 adaptation kernel have no iptables and etc.

Re: [Announce] Tethering
 

New release (v0.2.7) with some bugfixes: https://github.com/jlehtoranta/harbo...-1.armv7hl.rpm.

Re: [Announce] Tethering
 

Has anyone tested does this affect your battery life after you have closed the application? The other Hotspot application apparently does that.

Re: [Announce] Tethering
 

This app:
- Monitors the real status of tethering via dbus
- Disables tethering automatically, when you close the app
- Restores previous state of the interfaces, when tethering is disabled

The other app (hotspot) at the moment:
- Is just a simple wrapper, which sends on/off commands
- Doesn't monitor anything at all
- Doesn't disable tethering automatically, when you close the app
- Doesn't restore previous state of the interfaces, when tethering is disabled


Edit: Basically if this app affects your battery consumption after you have closed it, please send a bug report to me.

Re: [Announce] Tethering
 

Even after a day of bluetooth-tethering with a few hundred MiB transfered the battery was only half empty. N9 and N95 before never managed that :)

However, it seems that after disabling the tethering, wifi has issues reconnecting. Wifi is quite buggy anyway in the current Sailfish release, so I guess it's not even therering-gui's fault. A reboot fixes it, but perhaps less drastic measures are enough. On the N9, restarting the ICD2 service often helped. Is there something alike on Jolla?

Re: [Announce] Tethering
 

Actually, it says in the first post that it has infrastructure mode.
Does it, Jare?
All kinds of devices have trouble dealing with ad-hoc connections, not just Android, and even if they're supposed to support it (ftr, I haven't tested the app yet).

Re: [Announce] Tethering
 

The tethering gui will handle wifi device state during bluetooth tethering too, so either it triggers a bug in Jolla's connection agent or it's a bug in the tethering gui. Anyway the tethering gui only switches wifi radio on/off and a change in wifi radio state is automatically signaled to all listeners by connman, so there shouldn't be too much to do wrong.

For me it seems that the issues with wifi and mobile data connections were actually worsened by the current Sailfish release. There are especially issues with wifi auto-connect, so at the moment I'm kind of waiting for a new Sailfish release.

What kind of state the wifi adapter ends up in your case? Does it show a star in the status icon and fail to auto-connect or does it fail completely and display a "problem with connection" error and/or an exclamation mark in the status icon?

Yes, it creates an infrastructure network instead of ad-hoc.

Re: [Announce] Tethering
 

nice app, works well, easy and simple. Got to love it :)

An idea to add: list of connected clients