The main developer for the slmodem linux drivers no longer works for smartlink. I do not know the reason for this. slmodem-2.9.10 introduced a license change which makes it quite a bit more restrictive. I think we should stick to the older version (with BSD-like license) so that we can continue to provide it on livecds. I'm guessing that it is likely we won't see another slmodem release for a while now that Sasha is gone. The linmodems developers have picked up maintenance of the last "free" version (2.9.9) and have also produced some newer releases (-alsa releases, not sure what is new here but it looks interesting). I suggest we drop 2.9.10 from the tree, and the attached patch to 2.9.9 to (properly) enable 2.6.10 compatibility, and investigate the -alsa packages which linmodems have produced. Here is the new source of slmodem packages: http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/smartlink/
Created attachment 47982 [details, diff] 2.6.10 compatibility patch
Sasha also tells me that there are no differences between 2.9.9 and 2.9.10 other than the licensing. linmodems will be doing a 2.9.9a release shortly which will incorporate the patch attached here.
I have added the 2.9.9a ebuild into portage. It just needs to be marked stable before 2005.0 is made.
Bump..snapshot date is creeping up
There is at least one difference between version 2.9.9 and version 2.9.10, concerning ALSA modem device selection. See: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60676 I'll take a look at the linmodems ALSA version and let you know if they have corrected the problem there as well.
Created attachment 48937 [details, diff] patches slmodem-2.9.9a/modem/modem_cmdline.c linmodems did not fix the issue, so I'm attaching a new patch that applies to their slmodem-2.9.9a.
Where did you get this code from? we cannot take code from 2.9.10 as it has a very restrictive license
This is basically the patch I wrote for version 2.9.9, reapplied to the new linmodems version. I submitted this patch to SmartLink a few months ago. I didn't get any response from them, but the issue was fixed in 2.9.10. There shouldn't be any license issues with this patch. As you can see in BUG #60676, I created this patch independently before 2.9.10 was available.
2.9.9a-r1 is in portage with this fix. Could you please confirm that it works ASAP. I'd like to mark this stable before the 2005.0 snapshot which is a matter of hours away...
I'll have access to a phone line in a few hours. I'll try to get back to you ASAP.
I can confirm the patch does what it is supposed to do, slmodemd will no longer force to ALSA device hw:1.
Thanks for the quick test. This is now stable :)
