Connecting to PinePhone (Mobian) over USB

[McLink]

I just got a PinePhone and installed Mobian on it. I now want to connect to sshd over USB, which the guide says should be easy... on Linux boxes that have NetworkManager, which my Gentoo box doesn't. I figured it shouldn't be too hard to set up manually, but I can't get it working.

On the PinePhone, after plugging in the USB while shhd is running:

[Ralphred]

From the phone >> inet 10.66.0.1/8
Also from the phone >> inet 10.178.88.161/30

Your /8 is stomping all over your /30, unpredictable results will ensue...

[NeddySeagoon]

McLink,

[McLink]

Thanks for your replies! I guess the default configuration in Mobian isn't quite sensible. The two default routes are Wi-Fi (wlan0) and 4G (wwan0). I can kill 4G to stop stuff from overlapping, but it doesn't fix the problem yet.

The phone has dnsmasq running:

[NeddySeagoon]

McLink,

The IPv6 things don't matter.

[McLink]

[NeddySeagoon]

McLink,

[McLink]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. AFAIK there's no FireWire on a PinePhone, and I'm not even sure my motherboard has FireWire.

Current .config here. (Uploaded to my own site cause I CBA making a pastebin account.)
_________________

[NeddySeagoon]

McLink,

wgetpaste is your friend for files or command output.

[McLink]

The USB cable I'm using is the USB-C cable that came with the phone. Unless this edition ships with inferior cable compared to the previous ones, it should work, since other users have had success with that before. IIRC Android usually offers tethering, MTP and plain charging by default, but those phones also charge in tethering and MTP modes. Since the PinePhone (or Mobian, rather) doesn't have an MTP mode AFAIK, nothing needs to be selected (although enabling tethering by default sounds like a big security hole, but that's another topic).

I'll have a look at those kernel options tomorrow (I don't feel like rebooting at this moment).
_________________

[McLink]

I disabled FireWire in the kernel config (since, in my entire life, I've owned a grand total of zero devices that need it) and set those gadget options. No change; I still get a 169.254.*.* address from DHCP. Also, removing the DHCP-assigned address and calling dhcpcd manually causes it to *instantly* assign a similar address. Also, while I can remove the DHCP-assigned address, I can't remove the corresponding route: while the ip route del command exits normally with status 0, the route is still there if I call ip route immediately afterwards.

Assigning an address via ifconfig leads to no route to 10.66.0.0/16 being created, unlike assigning the address via ip addr add. SSH correspondingly just waits forever. Manually adding the route with one of these

[Ralphred]

Can you not just disable dhcp on the gentoo machine completely, knowing what the network you are going to attach to is going to be and configure it statically?
That way you can assign a /8 or at least put yourself as 10.255.255.x/24 so the phone and PC are using the same broadcast address
Unless there is some mechanism in dnsmasq that prevents a network connection to unleased IP's




Mildly offtopic: I recently got bitten in the ass by assuming the knowledge of the person I was helping, so feel free to ignore this if you already know.
When we use 192.168.12.34/24 as an IP address this tells us 4 things
The IP address of the local machine is 192.168.12.34
The subnet mask is 255.255.255.0 (from the 24, 24 bits, add the last 8 bits as 0's (all IPV4 addresses are 32bit) and split into blocks of 8 "11111111.11111111.11111111.00000000" <== that's a binary representation of our subnet mask
From the IP and subnet mask we know the network address (lowest in the subnet) 192.168.12.0 <== we'll see this in the routing table telling the kernel how to reach other addresses in this subnet or "network"
From the IP and subnet mask we know the broadcast address (highest in the subnet) 192.168.12.255 <== sometimes used to ask questions of "strangers" or "everyone" in the network.

I'm going to quickly break down your wwan0 address to give real world context: 10.178.88.161/30
IP Address: 10.178.88.161
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.252
Network address: 10.178.88.160
Broadcast address: 10.178.88.163
Address of device it talks to at your mobile provider: 10.178.88.162 <== we know this because there are only 4 addresses in the subnet, and 3 are already in use, 1 each by "network" "broadcast" and "your phone".

[McLink]

[NeddySeagoon]

McLink,

That's a fun fact to file away for the future.
Thank you for sharing.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.