Bluetooth Interface

This is quite a challenging one, although it is getting easier with each successive Red Hat release - the Fedora Core 1 kernel now contains Bluez kernel support. First of all, you will need to find and download the following files:

The Toshiba Linux utilities, available at http://www.buzzard.org.uk/toshiba/ download.html
An extension to the Toshiba utilities allowing the Bluetooth interface to be activated/deactivated - (this version of dmabt modified by Holger Paschke)

Login as root and copy the tarballs to your /usr/local directory, then do the usual tar -xvzf stuff. You will need to

mkdir /usr/local/man/man8

to avoid installation errors. For toshutils, do "./configure , make depend , make install". For dmabt, simply "make , make install".

The Toshiba driver (which is included in the 2.4.x kernel) needs to be loaded as a module. To do this, add the following line to /etc/modules.conf :

   alias char-major-10-181 toshiba

Add the Bluetooth extensions to modules.conf also:

   alias net-pf-31 bluez  # 31 - that's number 3 number 1
   alias bt-proto-0 l2cap  # l2 - that's letter L (in lower case) number 2
   alias bt-proto-2 sco

Create the special devices /dev/toshiba : mknod -m 666 /dev/toshiba c 10 181 (ignore error message if you have already created this)
and /dev/rfcomm0 : mknod -m 666 /dev/rfcomm0 c 216 0
then do a depmod -a

Note: you may get the errors -
depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.4.22-1.2115.nptl/kernel/arch/i386/kernel/powernow-k7.o
depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.4.22-1.2115.nptl/kernel/fs/ufsd/ufsd.o
(safe to ignore... I think).

Testing Time...

Make sure your Bluetooth/Wireless interface is switched on (switch at left side of machine at front).

Each time you want to want to activate Bluetooth on your machine, the following commands should be typed in (or run as a shell script):

   # modprobe hci_usb
   # dmabt
   # modprobe rfcomm
   # hciconfig hci0 up

Assuming no errors were encountered, you can check the local interface by typing:

   # hciconfig -a

and you should get something like this:

hci0:   Type: USB
        BD Address: 00:03:7A:01:40:03 ACL MTU: 60:20  SCO MTU: 64:0
        UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN
        RX bytes:1215 acl:0 sco:0 events:54 errors:0
        TX bytes:272 acl:0 sco:0 commands:32 errors:0
        Features: 0xff 0x02 0x04 0x00
        Packet type: DM1 DM3 DM5 DH1 DH3 DH5 HV1
        Link policy:
        Link mode: SLAVE ACCEPT
        Name: ''
        Class: 0x000000
        Service Classes: Unspecified
        Device Class: Miscellaneous,
        HCI Ver: 1.1 (0x1) HCI Rev: 0x0 LMP Ver: 1.1 (0x1) LMP Subver: 0x514
        Manufacturer: Silicon Wave (11)

So far, so good. Get your remote Bluetooth device (I used a Sony-Ericsson T68i mobile phone) and set the Bluetooth "Discoverable" option on it. This will make it visible to communicating devices for 3 minutes. On the PC, type:

# hcitool scan

and you should get something like:

Scanning...
      00:80:37:55:D3:6B     T68i

where the 12 hex digits indicate the device address and the T68i is of course the device descriptor.

Try pinging the phone:

# l2ping 00:80:37:55:D3:6B  # Note - that's L(lower case)2ping

and you will be asked to enter a PIN number: PIN entry

Enter any number (in this example, 123456, and a prompt should appear on the 'phone display also asking you for a PIN to accept a connection from mycomputer.mydomain.com. Enter the same number, select "add to paired", and you should get a sequence of data packets returned (CTRL c to stop).

It's time to connect:

Now that the computer and 'phone are paired, you can set up a PPP session to your ISP. If you have followed everything so far, all that should be needed is:

# rfcomm bind 0 00:80:37:55:D3:6B 1 (Note the 0 preceding and 1 following the phone's address)
# chmod 664 /dev/rfcomm0
# chgrp uucp /dev/rfcomm0
# ln -sf /dev/rfcomm0 /dev/modem

and you will then be able to use your favourite dialer (eg. kppp) to set up a connection on /dev/modem, working via GSM @ 9600 bps. GPRS is faster, but requires a separate account and a different setup. I have not tried it yet.

By the way, don't forget to change your network configuration as described on my modem page, or your route to the network will not be open.

To learn more about Bluetooth, try this document or visit the Bluez website for the most up-to-date information.

You can also find some very useful information on Marcel Holtmann's site, to whom I am indebted for getting me started on this track!

Automating your Bluetooth connection:

You will not want to go through all the above rigmarole every time you want to connect a Bluetooth device, so I have written a little shell script to help. You can start it from an icon on your desktop (right click on desktop, create new link to application, execute command "sh bluez.sh" using options: run in terminal, run as different user (root))

If you intend to use a PCMCIA card modem in addition to the Bluetooth-connected modem, be aware that your symbolic link from /dev/modem to /dev/rfcomm0 will be overwritten each time you plug in the PC card. In that case, unplug the PC card modem and do ln -s -f /dev/rfcomm0 /dev/modem before re-opening the Bluetooth connection.

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