About open source, education and random other Stuff
Felix Kaechele
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Posts by Felix Kaechele
Tethering in Fedora – Using your mobile phone with NetworkManager to surf the web
Jul 4th
Recently I tried to use my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone to access the web via it’s 3G modem that is available over Bluetooth. I wanted it to work together with NetworkManager nicely so that other programs (such as Pidgin) receive the online status and also to ease the connection/disconnection process. However NM and also gnome-bluetooth are not ready for the job yet (Blueman alledgedly is).
I found a blog entry by Harald Hoyer that offers a Python script to simplify the whole process of adding the phone as a modem. However that script isn’t up to date anymore. Unfortunately NM doesn’t trust HAL to determine the capabilities of the phone anymore (thus allowing this nice Python hack-script) but rather additionally asks udev for it’s opinion. This will result in the following error message in the debug log of NM:
NetworkManager: <info> (rfcomm0): found serial port (udev: hal:GSM)
NetworkManager: <info> (rfcomm0): ignoring due to lack of probed mobile broadband capabilties
I worked around this by setting all rfcomm* ports to be “probed” modems via an udev rule. I know that this probably is not the nicest way to do this but hey, it works. Furthermore I updated the script to the new Python 2.6 popen functions.
Here is what I came up with:
dialup-bluetooth.py
90-rfcomm-nm.rules
The udev rule belongs in /etc/udev/rules.d. The python script can be put anywhere you want but keep in mind that it must be run as root.
Have fun browsing the web on the go! 
OpenTTD now in Fedora
May 29th
OpenTTD will hit Fedora rawhide/testing repos soon. I’d be glad if you do some testing and add some karma to the package in Bodhi when it works for you.
Here are the links:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/openttd-0.7.1-0.3.rc2.fc11
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/openttd-0.7.1-0.3.rc2.fc10
Happy playing!
They are actually visiting me :)
Apr 16th
After my post about sending ICMP Echo requests to far away countries people from those countries are actually visiting my blog.
According to Google Analytics:
- 3 visits from “location falklands”
- 1 visit from “cable & wireless antigua”
- 1 visit from “cable & wireless falkland islands”
All in all since I started to use Fedora Planet people with funny ISP locations keep visiting my blog. Maybe I’ll post a list of my favorites someday.
FrOSCon: Call for Papers
Apr 16th
Yeah I know I’m probably a bit late but nevertheless: The FrOSCon Call for Papers startet March 24th. So for anyone from the Fedora community who’s interested: pleas feel free and submit your papers to show a bit Fedora presence on FrOSCon. That would be awesome
Check it out at: http://www.froscon.de/en/program/call-for-papers.html
If you have any further questions regarding FrOSCon don’t hesitate to ask me.
The wide, wide world
Mar 21st
In one of these endless Wikipedia-hyperlink-sessions I stumbled upon the so-called QSL-Cards that radio enthusiasts receive when they successfully received a station that might even be on another continent. In the 70s and 80s it really must have been thrilling to receive QSL Cards from far away. Nowadays, with ICMP Echo, this isn’t as thrilling anymore but still quite interesting
Ever wanted to receive an ICMP Echo from Saint Helena in the middle of nowhere? Just try ping 194.6.1.109
Funny thing is they route via the Falkland Islands which in turn are also one of these funny oversas territories. Seems as if Cable & Wireless specialized in providing these with internet services.
Music that makes me happy
Feb 17th
Mr. Moix you totally made my day by pointing me to ELO – Mr. Blue Sky. That song is somewhat in the category “heard it in the radio, liked it, but never further investigated”
It’s been a pretty tough day today. First there was the preliminary “Abitur” (kinda like A-level) computer science exam at school today which was pretty exhausting since it took me the full 4,25 hours to complete. Second I had sports lessons after that Third I had a performance at music school today. We have a annual performance which this year happened to be today (right after both “Vorabitur” exams) and I failed performing the song “Fever” by Michael Bublé since I only had like 4 days to learn it by heart (well not really since I had to study for the exams). So THAT was actually not music that made me happy.
However hearing ELO before writing the exam made me happy and lifted my mood.
So to actually answer your question: Here is the music which makes me happy:
- Alphabeat – Fascination (for those who think that Katrina & Waves is a bit outdated)
- Marillion – Heart of Lothian: I. Wide Boy – II. Curtain Call
- Jason Mraz – Dreamlife of Rand McNally
- Mono & Nikitaman – Seid ihr bereit (I’ve seen them live and it was really good )
- Leftfield – Melt (while this isn’t really uplifting I like to relax to this one)
- Mike Oldfield – On Horseback (I find that to be very consoling)
This are just some I randomly came up with. There are probably so much more but I’m really interested in what Planet comes up with.
New GPG key
Feb 17th
I’m currently thinking about having some business cards printed for my Ambassador activities. And as 1000 cards cost about as much as 500 I decided to have 1000 cards printed
However when it came to putting my GPG Key on the card I noticed that my GPG Key will expire in 2010. I assumed I wouldn’t be that fast in handing out 1000 business cards so I generated a new GPG Key:
GPG-Key-ID: 0xB30D8F7C
Fingerprint: 5BF1 4BEA D4A4 7987 C3DA DCA2 775F 7BD0 B30D 8F7C
That one will expire in 2014 which should be enough time My old key is revoked as of now.
New Blog and FOSDEM
Feb 9th
So I finally got around to create a blog as well. Until now I successfully resisted to have one since I usually hate writing stuff that no-one really reads. But I find that this blog can pretty well serve me as a nice place to keep notes to myself that might be considered useful for others.
The first thing to blog about is my visit to FOSDEM.
It was my first year at FOSDEM and I must say I really liked it. After meeting fellow Fedora Ambassadors at the FAD EMEA 2008 for the first time I now had the chance to meet even more of them. I really enjoyed meeting people of whom I only knew the name and what they did before. It’s always great to have a face with the name in your mind.
I arrived together with Christoph in Brussels-Midi on Friday and after we checked into the hotel we began making our way to the Beer Event. We started to “love” the city of Brussels for it’s layout and road design which at times can be really confusing. But we finally arrived at the beer event. I had some “Delirium Tremens” which were very good. The next morning I found out that mixing strong beer with absinthe is not a good thing to do. Unfortunately the headache lasted the whole day and so I wasn’t really fit on Saturday.
On Sunday I was feeling quite well again and stayed at the booth for quite some time talking to people and handing out swag. I also managed to attend Max’s talk and the FreeIPA Talk later on, which was quite interesting.
I’m pretty sure that I’ll be going to FOSDEM next year as well.
