Re: mgmt-api.txt

[Johan Hedberg <johan.hedberg@gmail.com>]

Hi,

On Mon, Feb 18, 2013, Johan Hedberg wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 18, 2013, Randy Yates wrote:
> > Almost all text files in doc/ are consistently-documented dbus APIs,
> > specifying service, interface, and object path.
> > 
> > However, doc/mgmt-api.txt is in a completely different format. It states
> > something about "Packet Structures" but I have no idea which packets the
> > document is referring to.
> > 
> > Can someone explain how to use this API? We have a requirement to set
> > some of these properties, such as discoverability and link level
> > security.
> 
> This is just a special socket type that kernel versions from 3.4 onwards
> provide. See e.g. the mgmt_new_default() function in src/shared/mgmt.c
> for an example of creating a mgmt socket that you can use to communicate
> using the protocol described in mgmt-api.txt. There are also several
> tools in the source tree that use mgmt sockets, e.g. tools/btmgmt
> client/bluetoothctl and monitor/btmon. Looking at the source code for
> those tools may also be helpful.

Minor mistake there: bluetoothctl doesn't use mgmt sockets (it uses just
the D-Bus interface). I also went ahead and pushed a description of how
to create mgmt sockets to mgmt-api.txt since this was a quite obvious
omission in the file. Another file you'll probably find useful is
lib/mgmt.h which has structs and numerical definitions for the mgmt
protocol.

Johan