Vorta did not respect metered network exclusion

[jramnani]

Description

I was working through an internet outage at home. I connected my laptop to my phone as a mobile hotspot. Within 30-60 minutes I got a text from my wireless carrier that I had exhausted my network data plan for the month. After checking activity on my laptop, I found Vorta was in the middle of a backup.

• In the Schedule -> Network settings I have "Run backups over metered networks" unchecked.
• The Allowed Networks list automatically added my Wi-Fi hotspot and enabled it. I have since un-selected it.

It seems like the metered network setting did not work for me.

Digging around in Vorta's source code I learned how it detects metered networks on macOS here: https://github.com/borgbase/vorta/blob/master/src/vorta/network_status/darwin.py#L50-L51

def is_network_metered(bsd_device) -> bool:
    return b'ANDROID_METERED' in call_ipconfig_getpacket(bsd_device)

However, when I run the underlying command, ipconfig getpacket en0 I get the following output, which does not include the text, ANDROID_METERED.

$ ipconfig getpacket en0
op = BOOTREPLY
htype = 1
flags = 0
hlen = 6
hops = 0
xid = 0x64757b68
secs = 0
ciaddr = 0.0.0.0
yiaddr = REDACTED
siaddr = REDACTED
giaddr = 0.0.0.0
chaddr = REDACTED
sname = My-Hotspot
file =
options:
Options count is 7
dhcp_message_type (uint8): ACK 0x5
server_identifier (ip): REDACTED
lease_time (uint32): 0x15180
subnet_mask (ip): 255.255.255.240
router (ip_mult): {REDACTED}
domain_name_server (ip_mult): {REDACTED}
end (none):

While doing some investigating on my own, I did find a network setting that was correlated to "Low Data Mode" on my WiFi network when connected to my mobile hotspot. I was able to find it using scutil like this:

scutil
> show State:/Network/Interface/en0/Link
<dictionary> {
  Active : TRUE
  Expensive : TRUE
}

I'm interested to know if anyone else is experiencing this? And whether it would be acceptable to submit a patch that changes the technique used to detect whether macOS is using a metered connection?

Reproduction

• [X] I tried to reproduce the issue.
• [X] I was able to reproduce the issue.

OS

macOS Sonoma 14.1.2

Version of Vorta

0.8.11

What did you install Vorta with?

Homebrew

Version of Borg

1.2.4

Logs

No response

[m3nu]

Oh, that sucks. Sorry for the issue.

I was experimenting with this setting a few years ago, when it was first added on Linux. I believe ANDROID_METERED will only apply, when sharing from an Android phone.

Apple also keeps changing these things. E.g. they removed access to known Wifis a while back.

So any improvement, is surely welcome. Code is separate per-OS, so simpler to test.

There is also an app I use in such situations. It's also useful for catching background updates, etc: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bandwidth/id490461369?mt=12

[jramnani]

PR submitted. :)

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[m3nu]

Closing this, since the related PR was already merged. Thanks for bringing this up and also fixing it!