New life with BLUETOOTH (usb) and Linux

[Mitchybums]

Freakin awesome.
After some bitching about bluetooth, I got p*ssed off. Wanted to get wifi instead, blah blah.
After keep getting infected with virusses on my windows machine, I put linux on my server again. Spend some time to get bluetooth working, but here is what I did.
Installed Red Hat 9 (free version) on server. (Tried Gentoo yesterday, but couldnt get ipforwarding to work properly)

Then I went to the http://bluez.sourceforge.net website, and downloaded

bluez-libs-2.4.tar.gz
bluez-utils-2.3.tar.gz
bluez-sdp-1.5.tar.gz
bluez-pan-1.1.tar.gz

Installed these in that order, and added in my /etc/rc.local the folowing.

modprobe l2cap
modprobe rfcomm
modprobe bnep
hcid
sdpd
dund --listen --msdun call dun &
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward &

then I created the nodes for the connections

mknod /dev/rfcomm0 c 216 0
mknod /dev/rfcomm1 c 216 1
mknod /dev/rfcomm2 c 216 2

... all the way to 15

After that I created a file in /etc/ppp/peers/ named dun

#/etc/ppp/peers/dun

noauth
local
noipdefault
proxyarp
nodefaultroute
noipx
idle 0
10.0.0.1:10.0.0.2 (not equal to my internal lan first is server adress second is connection adress)

ms-dns 216.51.236.2 (my dns server from isp)
netmask 255.255.255.0

then I downloaded linuxconf for rh7.2 from www.rpmfind.net
disabled some unneeded services, enabled the firewall, made ppp0 and eth0 trusted (have a linksys router as gateway anyway) went into the modules section in linuxconf, enabled firewall module

exited out of linuxconf, went back in, went into firewalling-firewalling defaults and enabled only AutoForwarding

rebooted and all is working fine now.

If you want to change some settings like password for encryption and the name that shows up on your ppc, go into /etc/bluetooth and change the following:

the pin file has the password in it
the hcid.conf file has a line that has name "BlueZ (%d)";
change this to whatever you want. I removed the %d since I'm the only one connecting anyway.

300kb/s instead of the realy realy slow connection


-*- Speed was still not good enough, and when server was on heavy cpuload, the bluetooth tends to disapear on the server, requiering a reboot, or manual load of modules. Since this was not feasable for me (server is in my shed), I got me a Blitzz WiFi router and an Ambicom WiFi SD card, and this keeps working without any problems.
-*-

[surur]

Thats really interesting (if gibberish to me as Ive never tried out any of the unices before). Ive always understood the slow speed of bluetooth lan between a desktop and a pocketpc to be due to a hardware limitation on the pocketpc. If it is actually only a config issue, I see no reason why some-one cant make this work on a desktop with Win XP.


Anyone understand this issue sufficiently enough to explain why we cant, or if we can, how to do it. I'm willing to do some major surgery, if thats what it takes (short of installing Red Hat of course :) )

Surur

[Mitchybums]

Little note.

I dont know how other USB dongles work.
The ambicom can only handle Lan Access over PPP on windows. The drivers do not have PAN or whatever.
On linux, it somehow got setup as a LAN ACCESS POINT.
On my IPAQ 2215, it still dials out using BT Network, but the speeds and stability is unbelievable.
Normaly on a windows setup (2000 and also XP) the connection drops as soon as I have a site with a big picture. Like it times out or something.
Now I have been surfing the web for over 2 hrs on it, and it never lost connection.

I'm pretty sure it's a driver issue on the Windows site.
I dont know programming, but I have seen generic programs for tv cards using a perticulair bt8x8 chip and prob more generic driver programs.
On linux it's more common, since the manufacturers usualy dont do linux.
Maybe we should submit a BLUETOOTH USERS FROM POCKETPCTHOUGHTS letter with all our sigs on it to the BlueZ Developers to make a windows version.

[freitasm]

Little note.

I dont know how other USB dongles work.
The ambicom can only handle Lan Access over PPP on windows. The drivers do not have PAN or whatever.
On linux, it somehow got setup as a LAN ACCESS POINT.
On my IPAQ 2215, it still dials out using BT Network, but the speeds and stability is unbelievable.


That's because Ambicom is not supplying the latest drivers. From 1.3.17 and up you'll have Network Access and Network Sharing, and you select it in the Advanced Configuration.

[DimensionZero]

ooOOH SWEET!

Good to know. Now I don't have to poke around trying to figure out how to get BT working on my server. :mrgreen:

[JvanEkris]

Using it daily, loving it every second.........

Jaap