Yellow Cow Blog

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!

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.

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.