On the bug fixes front, beside the kernel crash fixes, a lot of ERTM behavior bugs have been found and fixed. Some of them made ERTM flow crazy, but we have been able to discover and fix them all. Obviously there might be other bugs in the code, but I haven’t found them yet. ;)

New code added: All missing events and actions from the ERTM spec were implemented, they should be working properly now. Among them we have the Local Busy handling, Invalid Frame detection, etc.

The PTS software helped a lot with the ERTM development, I’m sure that we are much more compatible with others stacks now after fixing L2CAP to pass all tests for Enhanced Retransmission Mode, Streaming Mode and FCS.

Now I’m aiming at make the code base even more stable looking on the mainlining of this new part of the L2CAP code inside the Linux stack.  All the code should be available and enabled by default on the 2.6.36 release. If you wanna help testing use the for-next branch of my git tree:

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/padovan/bluetooth-testing.git

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/padovan/bluetooth-testing.git

You can also browse on the gitweb view here. =)

The implementation will make changes in BlueZ, ConnMan and oFono. Most of the changes will be inside oFono. There, we need to use the AT command parser and the  PPP stack (recently added to the oFono repo). The work consist on integrate everything and implement the missing parts of the AT command parser and the PPP stack, and the DUN agent.

On the BlueZ part the work will be the service export for DUN Data Terminal role and and the DUN Agent server to register agents and pass the RFCOMM file descriptor. For testing purposes we can use the Serial API in the beginning. That work is very similar to what we did for the HFP this year.

The ConnMan integration: ConnMan will setup the NAT and the  Internet connection. The DUN integration on ConnMan is similar to the PAN integration(still a work in progress) , so we can reuse part of that implementation.

That’s it.  I’ll post updates here during the development of the project. Now let me code. ;-)

Also, congratulation to the others Unicamp (University of Campinas) students that were accepted on GSoC too. :-)

Gustavo Barbieri did a post about the module. There are some more info there.

On the BlueZ side a new API was designed using the fd-passing feature of DBus 1.3.  This new API uses the concept of Agents where oFono plays the Agent role.  In the HFP case the Agent role is to handle the AT engine stuff while BlueZ will only take care of the RFCOMM and SCO connections.

The RFCOMM socket is passed to the Agent in oFono via DBus, then oFono uses it to send and receive the AT commands to establish a Service Level Connection, i. e., make the handshake procedure. If it succeeds oFono will be ready to make and answers calls. Your HFP enabled phone will show up as a  modem in oFono, like any other oFono modem.

The work was initially based on patches from Zhenhua Zhang(from Intel) and the audio interaction to handle the SCO data inside Pulseaudio was done by João Paulo Rechi Vita(from ProFUSION too). He also did the demo video below.

After pairing the devices using some BlueZ agent like kbluetooth or gnome-bluetooth, you’ll be able to see the modem in oFono and you can enable it ( i. e., make the handshake procedure to establish an HFP Service Level Connection) using the enable-modem script from the test directory on oFono source.

In order to test this you need the Audio Gateway interface enabled in BlueZ. For that, edit your /etc/bluetooth/audio.conf  and add “Enable=Gateway” to it.

HFP code is already merged upstream on the BlueZ and oFono trees. The API is described in doc/hfp-api.txt in BlueZ source.

[1] http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2009/09/tasty-new-google-summer-of-code-stats.html

First I did the support to send and receive I-frames (the data frames) and created the support to RR S-frames to acknowledge the received I-frames. It first worked with a txWindow=1 (which means only one packet can be send without receive acknowledge from the receiver side). The next step was support a txWindow up to 63 (the maximum value specified). To bring this support I have been using sk_buff lists from the net core implementation.

Support for Segmentation and Reassembly(SAR) of L2CAP SDUs: this feature allows upper applications to use a buffer greater than the L2CAP size packet. The buffer is break down in many packet on the transmitter side and then reassembled on the receiver side and pushed to the upper layer.

REJ frame exception: When a packet is lost we need to start the recoveries procedures. BlueZ won’t support raise of REJ exception (we support only raise of SREJ exception by now, spec says that we can choose one of them). But we need to support the receipt of a REJ-exception (i.e. receive a REJ frame). On the receipt of a REJ frame the L2CAP entity needs to stop the transmission and starts to retransmit the requested packets.  A REJ frame tells the ReqSeq(packet id sequence) and all packets up to ReqSeq – 1 shall be considered acknowledged, the others shall be retransmitted.

SREJ frame exception: BlueZ starts a SREJ exception when it detects lost packets. It sets its state to SREJ_SENT(It means that L2CAP entity is under recovery proccess) and sends a SREJ S-frame for each lost packets. The transmitter side shall resend the packets requested in the SREJ frames without stops transmission of new frames. SREJ exception saves retransmission of unneeded frames.

Retransmission And Monitor Timers: The Retransmission Timer shall be (re)started each time we send a I-frame. If it expires we send a RR-frame and start the Monitor Timer. The other side should response the RR frame immediately, if the the other side do not response and the Monitor Timer expires we resend the RR frame. A maximum value for the of Monitor Timer’s timeouts can be defined. If a L2CAP entity exceeds this value the channel shall be disconnected.

Busy condition on the remote side: If the remote side enters in a busy condition it will send a RNR frame. So, when the local side receives this frame it should mark the remote busy flag as true and stop the transmission of packets. It restarts the sending of packets only when the remote sides send a REJ, SREJ or RR frame. This says the remote busy condition was cleared.

Streaming mode: This mode of operation is useful to the Bluetooth Streaming Profiles such as A2DP and VDP(not yet implemented). It can take advantages of the Segmentation and Reassembly features.

FCS Option: It is a crc16 check for L2CAP packets. It is the default if both sides support it. If a L2CAP entity receives a packet with a broken crc16 it will drop. The receive procedure will miss it and start the recovery procedure.

Roadmap updated:

1. Implement ERTM with txWindow=1 and retransmission disabled.
   1. send I-frames
   2. receive I-frames
   3. support RR S-frames to acknowledge I-frames received
   4. acknowledge I-frames
2. Support txWindow up to 63
3. Support segmentation and reassembly of L2CAP SDUs
4. Enable retransmission
   1. support receipt REJ S-Frame
   2. support receipt SREJ S-Frame
   3. support raise of SREJ exception
5. Support busy conditions exceptions
6. Enable Retransmission Timer
7. Enable Monitor Timer
8. Implement Streaming Mode
9. Implement FCS Option
10. Support duplex channel
11. Use SOCK_STREAM as default for Enhanced Retransmission and Streaming Modes.
12. Test BlueZ against others stacks

What’s next?

Now I’m working the busy condition exception and the support for the ERTM duplex channel. Today, just one side can send data packets. Then I’ll put ERTM as default when SOCK_STREAM is selected. I expect finish these issues on the coming weeks. After, I’ll spend my time fixing the bugs I find trough the code.

ps: Sorry for my too not bad English ;-)

[1] http://padovan.org/blog/2009/07/bluez-first-patch-was-merged/