Thursday, November 20, 2008

Mobile Broadband over Bluetooth on Ubuntu

I am using Blueman GTK Bluetooth Manager on Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) for connecting to the internet using my mobile phone Nokia N95 and netbook Asus EEE PC 901.

As far as I know, the built-in Bluetooth functions in Ubuntu can not provide Dial-Up Networking, so we have to install Blueman first. These are the repositories if you want to add manually:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/blueman/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/blueman/ubuntu intrepid main


or you can add them using this command [thanks IntuitiveNipple]:

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/blueman/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main' >/etc/apt/sources.list.d/blueman.list"

Now you can install Blueman using the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install blueman


After the installation is complete, run Blueman:


Click Menu -> Accesories -> Blueman Bluetooth Manager

That should bring a window similar to this but without the devices of course:

Complete the pair, bond and trusting steps between your Mobile Phone and Computer. Your view should resemble the screen capture, with the lock and the key icons. Also you should authorize / trust the computer in your mobile phone which would make connections seamless in the future.

After the bonding is complete, we should create a Bluetooth Modem connection, click the following on the Blueman interface.

Menu → Edit → Services

Which should open a window like this:


Click the Red Button next to Serial. It should turn Green like above.
Click Configure next to Autostart box (rightmost icon)

That should open a window like this. Do the following to add a Bluetooth modem connection:

Click Add New Serial Port to bring up Host and Service areas.
Select the Phone you have bonded as Host
Select Dial-Up Networking as Service

Click Add Port

You should have something like /dev/rfcomm0 yourphonename 00:00::0F:0E:0D Dial-Up Networking in the text area as shown in the screen shot, now:

Select This is a GSM/GPRS/EDGE/3G dialup connection.

Your phone is recognized by the system as a Bluetooth modem. Next step is for defining your Mobile Connection in Ubuntu. In Intrepid you can do the following:

Click Menu → System → Preferences → Network Configurations
Click Mobile Broadband Tab
Click Add


Follow the wizard and add your service provider. After this step is complete, you can:

Click Network Connections icon

Where you should see:

Wired Networks (eth0 your ethernet adapter)
...
Mobile Broadband (your configured connection I.e. T-Mobile, O2, Orange etc.)
...
Wireless Networks (if your wireless is enabled any connections in the vicinity)
...
...

Just click the connection you have created under Mobile Broadband and you should be able to connect to your phone and internet.