openSuSE Linux Bluetooth - Laptop via Nokia N95 G3 / GPRS Internet configuration using openSuSE 11.2 on Acer TravelMate 7520G laptop howto

First the essential steps for a successful final configuration, In a near future article I will emphasize on some of the typical error messages and problems and how to solve them. In short - all works perfectly if you do it right and the good news is: It actually is much easier than it looked weeks ago before I had it all running !

My setup is:

An Acer Travelmate 7520G laptop running on openSuSE 11.2 and a Nokia N95 smart phone The same configuration was also working with openSuSE 11.0.

While I use the Nokia N95 - I safely assume that the same procedure MAY work with many or most of the modern Nokia smart phones of the S60 models. If in doubt - try and be surprised.

As a dialer I used years ago during the dial-up era wvdial - hence again I use wvdial to dial to the bluetooth modem in my Nokia N95. the configuration file is below. My mobile provider requires neither user name nor password. For whatever reason however wvdial dislikes empty or missing user / password fields. Hence the exact syntax (empty ) is accepted and successful. The "Phone = *99***1#" may need to be adapted - the 1 in my profile is to select the N95 configuration profile to access the Internet. The logic why my N95 wants the 1 is unknown to me, because:

I have 4 configuration profiles in my N95:

1. The regular GSM - phone configuration
2. GPRS
3. Internet
4. MMS

GPRS and Internet are and do the same - only different names for whatever reason. Hence from my own logic the "Phone = *99***2#" or "Phone = *99***3#" might be more logical. Nevertheless the 1 is the only one profile accepted and working.

If you have your bluetooth in your Linux laptop running and your Nokia N95 bluetooth also is active, here a few points to remember:

To pair devices you need to confirm on your Nokia smartphone as well to accept connection from your laptop and you may also be asked to accept connection from your laptop automatically. This of course makes future reconnections much easier. Whether you work with or without PIN is up to you, but I found that attempting to connect without PIN appears more difficult than with. Hence in the most simple case you may use "0000" as PIN but still you need to specify.the PIN. I assume you have a passkey-agent installed for your other bluetooth devices. Else you may get errors and I will publish a solution to the various errors in a soon to follow future article ASAP.

[Dialer gprs]
Modem = /dev/rfcomm0
Baud = 921600
Dial Command = ATDT
Init1 = ATE1
Init2 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet","",0,0
FlowControl = CRTSCTS
Init3 = ATM0
Phone = *99***1#
Username = (empty)
Password = (empty)
Stupid Mode = 1

Much of the time I spent to get my BT connection online was due to wrong dial up script configuration. Hence unless you KNOW exactly what you do, I recommend you first use exactly above wvdial.conf and adapt only your user and password if you need them.

You may wonder why I have Baud = 921600 - the reason is obvious. The ancient 55,6 k or other smaller numbers all were for the slow oldfashioned cable modem ISP connections. Modern G3 is much faster and thus I want to make sure my configuration is never slowing down my Internet connection. In a poor quality G3 connection the max speed / bandwidth I encountered was 48kB. A good quality 3G connection of course may be much faster.

Common error result from:

• using wrong channel to connect
• missing passkey-agent
• having your kbluetooth installed and your kbluetooth gives you a SMALL POP-UNDER that you may miss to see if other windows are open. The kbluetooth password window is small and more than once I missed to see it resultign in annoying connection errors. Now I have kbluetooth shut down and use only passkey-agent. That solution appears more stable to me !!
• using wrong dialer configuration - specially wrong init commands !!
• having already a BT device running or connected
• having changed your configuration without restarting your BT network rcbluetooth restart

When testing your BT connection - remember to shut down your OTHER www connections, else your default route may NOT work. If you made many back and forth changes and tests and all things go wrong again and again:

• reboot your laptop !
• reboot your Nokia !

Here you have a clean text file of my scans and bluetooth configuration files used,

Next article is errors and error solutions commonly encountered in bluetooth GPRS connections. I had ALL of them and apparently I have solved ALL of them as well.

Love and bliss

hans