blag/post/bluetooth-tethering-via-pan-with-windows-mobile-and-ubuntu.mdwn

   1 [[!meta title="Bluetooth tethering via PAN with Windows Mobile and Ubuntu"]]
   2 [[!meta date="2010-11-08"]]
   3 [[!meta author="rohieb"]]
   4 [[!meta license="CC-BY-SA 3.0"]]
   5 [[!img defaults size=x200]]
   6
   7 I was on the train today, needed some of the [Boost][0] manuals, and had
   8 no internet connection. So I wanted to use my phone (an old HTC Prophet
   9 with Windows Mobile 6.1) as a network access point to browse over
  10 GPRS/EDGE. As I found out, it is fairly simple with [Blueman][1] and it
  11 even provides [NetworkManager][2] integration, so all
  12 NetworkManager-capable applications can be notified about the
  13 connectivity.  Windows Mobile 6.1 allows tethering over a Bluetooth PAN
  14 ([Personal Area Network][3]); but there is another method called DUN
  15 ([Dial Up Networking][4]), which I will not describe here. So here is a
  16 step-by-step tutorial what I did for my PAN approach, with a few
  17 (german) screenshots, tested on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid:
  18
  19 * Since my laptop was running on Ubuntu Lucid, there was already a
  20   recent Blueman version in the Ubuntu repos available. On older
  21   systems, you may want to add the [Blueman Launchpad PPA][5].
  22
  23       $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:blueman/ppa  # only necessary on pre-lucid systems
  24       $ sudo aptitude update
  25       $ sudo aptitude install blueman
  26
  27 * Note that this also removes possibly installed `gnome-bluetooth`
  28   packages since Blueman is an adequate replacement for the GNOME
  29   Bluetooth UI.
  30
  31 * After the installation has finished, I had to enable the NMPANSupport
  32   plugin for NetworkManager 0.8 by right-clicking on the Blueman icon in
  33   the GNOME notification area and selecting “Plugins”. For older
  34   NetworkManager versions, there is also a plugin for NetworkManager
  35   0.7, called NMIntegration.
  36
  37   <div class="gallery">
  38   [[!img blueman-menu.png alt="Blueman context menu"]]
  39   [[!img blueman-plugins.png alt="Blueman plugin page"]]
  40   </div>
  41
  42 * Then I activated tethering on my phone (“Programs” → “Internet
  43   Sharing” on my Windows Mobile 6.1, but YMMV). Apparently this was
  44   neccesary with my model, because without tethering enabled I could not
  45   get a Bluetooth PAN connection in the next step.
  46
  47   <div class="gallery">
  48   [[!img winmo-program-menu.png alt="Windows Mobile Program screen"]]
  49   [[!img winmo-connection-sharing.png alt="Windows Mobile Internet
  50          Sharing application"]]
  51   </div >
  52
  53 * I paired the phone and my laptop via Bluetooth, and created a PAN
  54   (Personal Area Network) by connecting to the “Network Access Point”
  55   service on the phone. In Blueman, all you have to do after pairing is
  56   right-click on the device and select “Connect To: Network Access
  57   Point”. This creates a new network device `bnep0` which is
  58   automagically configured through NetworkManager (using [stateless
  59   address autoconfiguration][6]).
  60
  61   <div class="gallery">
  62   [[!img blueman-pan.png size=x100 alt="Blueman: Context menu for device
  63       “Leia”, menu entry “Network Access Point” is selected"]]
  64   </div>
  65
  66   (Yes, my phone is called [Leia][7]… I also have a yet another HTC
  67   Prophet for testing purposes, which is called [Luke][8] :-))
  68
  69 * However, in my setup, though I was able to ping certain IP adresses on
  70   the internet, DNS lookups timed out for some reason. It got better
  71   when I explicitly set an IP address for the Bluetooth PAN driver on my
  72   phone, and did the tethering process all over again.
  73
  74   <div class="gallery">
  75   [[!img winmo-connections.png alt="Windows Mobile System Settings
  76       Screen, with item “Wi-Fi” selected"]]
  77   [[!img winmo-networkdrivers.png alt="Windows Mobile Network Driver
  78       settings screen, with menu item “Bluetooth PAN Driver” selected"]]
  79   [[!img winmo-bluetooth-ip.png alt="Windows Mobile Bluetooth PAN Driver
  80       settings screen"]]
  81   </div>
  82
  83 * And off I went with mobile internet access. Woo-hoo! \o/
  84
  85 I may also add that the NetUsage plugin in Blueman is very reasonable to
  86 use ;-) After activated, the network usage can be viewed by
  87 right-clicking on the Blueman icon and selecting “Network Usage”.
  88
  89 [0]: http://www.boost.org/
  90 [1]: https://launchpad.net/blueman
  91 [2]: http://projects.gnome.org/NetworkManager/
  92 [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_area_network
  93 [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_profile#Dial-up_Networking_Profile_.28DUN.29
  94 [5]: https://launchpad.net/~blueman/+archive/ppa
  95 [6]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-local%20address
  96 [7]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leia_Skywalker
  97 [8]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_Skywalker
  98
  99 [[!tag Blueman bluetooth mobile_internet_access network NetworkManager
 100        Ubuntu Ubuntu_Lucid Windows_Mobile]]