Ubuntu, iPhone OS 3 and vodafone NL tethering
In iPhone OS 3 Apple decided to make it possible to use the iPhone as a modem for your computer. But they also decided to make that only possible for certain networks. However they apparently didn’t want to make it too complicated for you to ‘hack’ this.
To get it working with my Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope I had to do the following:
- Install an iPhone config file tethervodafonenlzakelijk
- Install Blueman
iPhone configuration
In this article (in Dutch) it is described how to configure the iPhone to use the Vodafone network for tethering. I have a Vodafone business account, so I used the link that’s at the end of the article: http://helvensteijn.com/files/vodafone-tether/tether.html. That is the same file as referenced above, but I downloaded it so I wouldn’t loose track of it.
What do you need to do? Download the iPhone configuration file on your iPhone. It will ask you if you trust the supplier (that’s up to you….) and, if so, install it. That’s it. You can now enable tethering by going to: Settings > General > Network > Internet Tethering.
Blueman
To install the blueman bluetooth application you need to added the blueman PPA to your Software Sources:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/blueman/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/blueman/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
Add the blueman gpg file to the authentication tab. And install blueman:
sudo apt-get install blueman
After the install I had to run an software update to update to the latest bluetooth software:
sudo apt-get update
After that I removed the Bluetooth Manager from the Startup Applications and made sure that the Blueman Applet was in there. Since I’m lazy I restarted to remove the Bluetooth Manager and activate the Blueman Applet, but I’m sure there are more efficient ways of doing that.
When you have Blueman up and runnning, just click on the bluetooth icon in the notification area, pair the iPhone and right click on the phone to connect the network.
Hi,
I tried using your tutorial but like always, it fails in the last step;)
When i try to connect the iphone as a network acces point it get the meesage: failed.
Any ideas?
@Gerben
Hi, I have the same problem than Gerben. Blueman is able to pair the iphone, but it fails to connect the network. I am in Spain (using telefonica), and using ubuntu 8.10.
Thanks
David
It works. One has to be patient… and establish the connection on the iphone (it’s not enough to pair them, on the iPhone’s bluetooth settings you have to touch the PC name to establish the connection). You will be then prompted with a message in your computer asking for permission to establish the connection with the iphone. After saying yes, you can connect to the internet thru the iphone’s 3G by clicking on the blueman application to select the network access point.
David
Indeed, setting up the bluetooth connection between the iPhone and Ubuntu doesn’t appear to be very stable. When I initiate the connection from the iPhone it seems to work 90% of the time, from Ubuntu it hardly ever works.
Now the connection is a succes, Blueman says. But how do I get my networkmanager to use the Bluetooth-iphone connection to connect to the Internet?
I was getting one step further… try to update the bluet package to 4.49 (if i remember correct). if you know connect iphone to pc, and on pc side connect make a network connection, you can see a blue bar on iphone which tells you that it is in teethering mode. before that bluez update, it didn’t not worked for me.
anyway, even with this bar, i cannot open any webpage, nor ping google or anything.
the networkmanager doesn’t seem to know that it can use the connection …
i have heared that in ubuntu keramic alpha/beta blueman project will be standard bluetooth manager, and that teethering works straight and easy…but i dont want to wait, or upgrade to a beta (no virtualbox then). so if anyone can get it working, please tell me!
greetings, payk
I could get a stable connection between the iPhone and my laptop by switching off bluetooth on the iPhone, switching it on again and then connecting from the iPhone to the laptop.
If I connect with blueman to the iPhone then it always works