Return-Path: Message-ID: <4AB107DE.5070700@binarywings.net> Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:44:30 +0200 From: Florian Philipp MIME-Version: 1.0 To: linux-bluetooth@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: PIN Helper References: <6887eb5d0909142301r52343cd3sbe64c106da2d7434@mail.gmail.com> <20090915061104.GA20323@jh-x301> <4AAFBFA6.70007@binarywings.net> <20090915165854.GA6550@jh-x301> In-Reply-To: <20090915165854.GA6550@jh-x301> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Sender: linux-bluetooth-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Johan Hedberg schrieb: > Hi, > > On Tue, Sep 15, 2009, Florian Philipp wrote: >> Just out of curiosity: Why does Bluez no longer provide any kind of >> deamon as a pin helper any more? > > Isn't that exactly what the two command line based agents are if you run > them in the background and modify them to always accept pairing requests? > Or am I misunderstanding your question? I suppose these two programs would suit my needs just fine - if I modify them as you suggested. I just don't understand the reasons why an arbitrary number of users (including me) should be bothered to write/modify/fork their own pin helper. If it is something so simple that every user can do it himself, sure enough the official bluez devs can do it too. The latter option would have some advantages: - programming it one time instead of programming it n times - me as a user can (to some degree) be confident that the app will still work with the next release whereas a 'test program' might just be dropped without any warning - linux distributions could provide packages for it. Therefore me as a user wouldn't have to maintain it, compile it against the newest bluez libs after every automatic update, test it, etc. Of course I can't force you to do the programming but removing functionality which worked - more or less - out of the box with an older release and not providing any working alternative except of a do-it-yourself solution ... well ... just sounds wrong. > Note that we can't anymore have > interfaces which just deal with a simple PIN. Bluetooth 2.1 SSP brings > along it's own set of callbacks that need handling and any interface that > we define (be it a config file, D-Bus or something else) needs to take > that into account. > Okay, so without some significant work, you could only support legacy pairing for those old deamons and I suppose that's all those test apps can, right? >> I mean, it's not like Bluetooth itself is limited to interactive systems >> which rightly demand graphical interfaces nowadays. Stuff like NAP is a >> classic client-server situation in which you don't want to use Gnome or >> KDE apps on the server side and maybe not even on the client side. > > The current agent interface design doesn't restrict you in any way to > interactive systems. It merely exports the pairing callbacks from > bluetoothd to an external process. bluetoothd doesn't care if that process > does some interactive stuff or not. > I already understood that. It's just that the only programs which are currently available (precompiled and ready to go) for me as a user are interactive apps with dependencies on Gnome or KDE. Do you understand what's my problem here? Bluetooth itself suits my current needs just fine: Wireless network with less range, less bandwidth and less power consumption than WLAN. That's why I adopted bluetooth for this project of mine. Now with bluez-3.x or 4.x, Bluetooth still suits my needs, it's just that the only available implementation doesn't suit them any longer. Now I have three options: a) Create and maintain the missing parts myself. b) Switch to WLAN which is far inferior for my use case but which will work out-of-the-box with deamons like wpa_supplicant. c) Stick with bluez-2.x until the situation becomes unbearable, then think again. Currently I'm with c)