Connecting linux laptop to the Internet using Nokia e61

Finally I replaced my old Sony Ericsson t68i phone with new shiny Nokia e61 . It is really great smartphone (should I say multimedia computer? :) with every imaginable feature built-in. Just to name a few: 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetoth, USB cable, Irda, MiniSD card reader, 320×240 screen, QWERTY keyboard.

While it is possible to browse internet using phone itself laptop provides much better user experience for doing it.

Connecting my linux laptop to the internet using Nokia e61 phone was surprisingly easy. I’ve managed to setup network connection using both USB cable and bluetooth in less than half an hour. Under Windows cable connection was working out of the box with Nokia software, but bluetooth doesn’t work at all (but I haven’t tried too hard to make it work).

If you want to use internet from your laptop using Nokia e61 (and most probably other Nokia phones as well) as modem you need:

• recent kernel with bluetooth and ACM (for using phone as USB modem, CONFIG_USB_ACM kernel configuration option) support
• bluez-utils
• wvdial – of course it is possible to use ppp only, but I found wvdial much simpler to configure

My further instructions are gentoo specific, though they shouldn’t differ too much for other distributions.

USB modem

On my system (kernel-2.6.18, udev-103) when I plug USB cable and selected PC Suite mode on my Nokia phone proper drivers are loaded and proper devices are created automatically. This is really how it should work! After phone is connected /dev/ttyACM0 device should be created.

If you have problems with it try to load drivers manually:

modprobe cdc_acm
modprobe usbserial vendor=0x0421 product=0x044d

wvdial configuration is also very simple (T-Mobile specific):

[Dialer usb-tmobile]
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
Phone = *99#
Username = t-mobile
Password = t-mobile

Bluetooth

Follow these steps:

• make sure that /etc/init.d/bluetooth is started
• add your laptop to paired deviced of the phone from Menu / Connectivity / Bluetooth (Paired devices -> Options -> New Paired Device)
• Use sdptool browse command to find channel number that is used for dial up networking:

  ...
  Service Name: Dial-Up Networking
  Service RecHandle: 0x10052
  Service Class ID List:
  "Dialup Networking" (0x1103)
  Protocol Descriptor List:
    "L2CAP" (0x0100)
    "RFCOMM" (0x0003)
    Channel: 2
  ...

• find bluetooth address of your phone using hcitool scan command.
• edit /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf to configure RFCOMM port:

  ...
  rfcomm2 {
        # Automatically bind the device at startup
        bind yes;
        # Bluetooth address of the device found using hcitool
        device 00:11:22:33:44:55;
        # RFCOMM channel for the connection found using sdptool
        channel 2;
        # Description of the connection
        comment "Modem (Nokia e61)";
  }
  ...

• make sure that RFCOMM_ENABLE = true in /etc/conf.d/bluetooth
• configure wvdial:

  [Dialer bluetooth-tmobile]
  Modem = /dev/rfcomm2
  Phone = *99#
  Username = t-mobile
  Password = t-mobile

Devices permissions

By default modem devices belongs to root group, so only root user can use them. In order to allow regluar users that belong to group tty to use modem create file in /etc/udev/rules.d with following content:

KERNEL=="rfcomm[0-9]*", GROUP="tty"
KERNEL=="ttyACM[0-9]*", GROUP="tty"

That’s all. Now type wvdial bluetooth-tmobile and go online :)

Posted by ksh on December 14, 2006 | 9 comments | e61, linux