These are the details of what I have:
Device: Blackberry 8830 (World Edition)
Carrier: Sprint
Laptop: eee pc 900
OS: Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron)
My laptop does not have built-in Bluetooth so I picked up one of those USB dongles.
The following is a one time setup before you can use your device as a tethered modem.
Before you get started, first make sure you have bluez-utils and ppp installed on your machine.
$sudo apt-get install bluez-utils ppp
Next, make sure your phone is discoverable and run the following:
$hcitool scan
This will give you something like:
Scanning ...
xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx your_device_name
where xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx is your device's mac address.
If you haven't paired your device with your laptop yet, do so using the following command,
$sudo hcitool cc xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
On my machine this opened up the Bluetooth Preferences window where I was able to enter the shared passkey and pair the two devices.
Next, check your device to see on what channel Dial-Up Networking runs.
$sdptool search DUN xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
This will return something like:
Inquiring ...
Searching for DUN on xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx ...
Service Name: Dialup Networking
Service RecHandle: 0x10002
Service Class ID List:
"Dialup Networking" (0x1103)
"Generic Networking" (0x1201)
Protocol Descriptor List:
"L2CAP" (0x0100)
"RFCOMM" (0x0003)
Channel: 3
Profile Descriptor List:
"Dialup Networking" (0x1103)
Version: 0x0100
As we can see from above the RFCOMM channel for this device is 3. This is what we use to modify our rfcomm.conf file as follows:
$sudo pico /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf
and paste the following into the file.
rfcomm0 {
bind yes;
device xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx;
channel your-phone-rfcomm-channel;
comment "Bluetooth PPP Connection";
}
Save and close this file.
Running the following will create the rfcomm0 device:
$sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart
Running rfcomm on your machine should show that it is connected to your Blackberry.
$rfcomm
rfcomm0: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx channel 3 closed
Next, we will configure PPP.
$sudo pico /etc/ppp/peers/BluetoothDialup
and paste in the following:
debug
noauth
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/chatscripts/BluetoothDialup"
usepeerdns
/dev/rfcomm0 115200
defaultroute
crtscts
lcp-echo-failure 0
Save and close this file.
Next, edit the chatscript file. I found that the Verizon file in the Ubuntu documentation worked just fine for Sprint too.
$ sudo pico /etc/chatscripts/BluetoothDialup
and paste in the following
# abortstring
ABORT 'NO CARRIER' ABORT 'ERROR' ABORT 'NO DIALTONE' ABORT 'BUSY' ABORT 'NO ANSWER'
# modeminit
'' ATZ
# ispnumber
OK-AT-OKL3 ATDT#777
# ispconnect
CONNECT \d\c
Save and close the above file.
pon and poff are two commands to start and stop ppp connections. You'll use these to enable and disable Dial-Up Networking on your Blackberry everytime.
$pon BluetoothDialup
You should see "Modem Mode Enabled" now on your Blackberry. Try pinging any public website and see if it responds.
To turn off Dial-Up Networking simply type
$poff
That's it. Enjoy your tethered Blackberry modem!
btw, if you need to use your Blackberry 8830 as a modem over Windows XP, the software can be downloaded from here.
