Fri Oct 23 21:43:44 EEST 2009

Nokia Communicator 9300i connection via Bluetooth on Debian GNU/Linux Unstable

I wanted to connect my Nokia Communicator 9300i device via bluetooth on Linux on
my Thinkpad running Debian GNU/Linux unstable. By default my bluetooth is disabled
because I usually do not use the bluetooth.
To make the bluetooth back running I had to issue the command:

# echo "enable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth


Next the bluetooth-wizard came to play:

# /usr/bin/bluetooth-wizard

and then I had to follow the intuitive dialogs, a 4 digit code was generated by my Linux system the whole system was required to be provided
on the Nokia Communicator.
The only left thing is to use gnome's bluetooth-applet "Blowse Files" feature.
Here is a screenshot showing up the bluetooth-applet in case if you wonder how the app looks like
Bluetooth Applet
In case if bluetooth-applet is not appearing as an applet in your gnome panel. You might need to:

# /usr/bin/gnome-control-center


- Search for the Bluetooth menu:
Make sure the "Show Bluetooth icon"'s tick is presented
Last thing to note is that I tried using the bluez-gnome debian package
as a mean to communicate with the Phone unsuccesfully. As far as I could understand
from a couple of posts I've red online the Nokia communicator requires the obex
protocol to communicate data. This is not supported by bluez-gnome.
I've also red a couple of interesting posts which explained how to use p3nfs to mount your telephone via the unix nfs protocol
There is an old article explaining how to do the mount via p3nfs in Ubuntu which
can be red here
Even though the transfer works in general there are some unpleasent things
There are some odd slowness while browsing the micro sd sometimes.
There are also issues when creating new directories via gnome's nautilus browsing manager.
By default directories while created with a name "untitled folder" cannot be renamed later on
If a rename attempt is made the file browser hangs. Another annoying problem I'm facing is when
I do try to copy or move files from the sd memory card of the phone to the card itself,
if I try this procedure after that the gnome file manager fails to list correctly the data
included in the micro sd card and then I have to remount the device in order to make it ready
for file transfers from my PC.