Enable wvdial package in iot-gate-imx8 in base BalenaOS

Product support balenaOS
1

Hello,

We are using iot-gate-imx8 as internet gateway. Quite often modem goes into connect/disconnect loop and requires either modem reset or power cycle. We reached out to Compulab and they suggested to switch to wvdial/pppd. After switching to wvdial/pppd modem connection does appear to be lot stable. So this request is to check possibility of enabling wvdial into base balenaOS for iot-gate-imx8 to avoid building custom image via yocto. Wvdial setup needs systemd unit with writable /etc/wvdial.conf (or some other path) to automate the the modem bring-up.

[Unit]
Description=wvdial service
ConditionPathExists=/etc/wvdial.conf

[Service]
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s

ExecStart=/usr/bin/wvdial
RemainAfterExit=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Regards,
-Niranjan

2

Hi, we won’t change the NetworkManager/ModemManager combo for wvidial/pppd on balenaOS to accomodate specific modems.

The suggestion is to blacklist the interface in the NetworkManager configuration and install the wvdial/pppd combo in the user application to manage this modem. The downside however is that if the application is down the cellular connection will not be enabled, so I wouldn’t recommend using this for the primary network connection.

In the long run, I would choose a modem that is well supported in ModemManager.