Using a Siemens S65 with a Dell Latitude C610 under Linux

There are arguably just three different things one would like to do with a powerful mobile phone like the Siemens S65:

1. Transfer data between the mobile and the computer you're using where the data is stored on the mobile.
2. Use the mobile to send short messages (SMS) over the phone from the computer.
3. Transfer data between different computers, using the mobile as some kind of modem or networking device.

This document briefly describes the steps I had to take to perform the various steps from my Dell Latitude C610 Laptop. However, there is not that much that is specific to the Dell, most of the stuff described herein should apply to any computer just fine, as long as you're using the appropriate software (I'll come to that in a moment).

License / Distribution

This document is copyrighted 2005 by Holger Schauer, Freiburg, Germany.

This document can be published (in the sense of copying and redistribution) freely (i.e. free of charge), regardless on whatever media. Notice of such publication should be sent to the author, however.

Publication/distribution of a derivate work of this document (in the sense of the GNU Public Licence) or of a modified version of this document is allowed as long as

• the derivative work or modified version is published or distributed under the same license as this document or under the GNU Public License and
• the derivative work or modified version explicitly mentions that it is based on this document and all prior authors are given explicit credit for their contributions.

Note: The license for this document roughly follows the guidelines of the so-called boiler-plate license of the Linux Documentation Project.

Presupppositions

Well, the firstmost precondition to access your S65 is some kind of connectivity between your mobile and your computer. As I have no data cable, I can't describe the steps you need to take if you're going down that route, but for the other two possibilities, I will describe what to do. Whatever you end up doing, what you need is some kind of pseudo-serial line/link between your mobile and your computer.

Infrared connection

To get a working IR connection, you'll need the right kernel modules and a set of IRDA utils. For the former, I recommend that you compile whatever seems plausible to you in the kernel configuration that might be available on your system with regard to IR. lspci might come in handy to check what kind of built-in IR device you have, as well as /proc/bus/usb in case you have a IR-USB-dongle. Besides the kernel modules, you'll need the irda-tools. On Debian systems, just apt-get install irda-tools irda-common, otherwise have a look at http://irda.sourceforge.net/.

On the Dell, getting infrared to work was a game of trial and error. I tried loading wrong modules and got all kind of strange results. It's essential that you load the right module for the IR module. For the Dell, irattach was the right solution:

[root@gimli->root]irattach /dev/ttyS1 -s
    

That was the command I needed to issue. For that to work, you need a linux kernel with the IR stack, irattach just binds it to the tty-Device given. I use Debian (Woody/Sarge), so modifying /etc/irda.conf did the trick for me.

To check whether you have a working IR setup, place your mobile close to your IR thingie on your computer. Then issue the following:

[root@gimli->root]echo 1 >> /proc/sys/net/irda/discovery
    

You should be able to see the phone now (note the different path!):

[root@gimli->root]cat /proc/net/irda/discovery 
IrLMP: Discovery log:

nickname: SIEMENS S65, hint: 0xb124, saddr: 0x4b3694b8, daddr: 0x09296150

[root@gimli->root]irdadump 
15:39:45.779722 xid:cmd 4b3694b8 > ffffffff S=6 s=0 (14) 
15:39:45.869716 xid:cmd 4b3694b8 > ffffffff S=6 s=1 (14) 
15:39:45.959718 xid:cmd 4b3694b8 > ffffffff S=6 s=2 (14) 
15:39:46.049714 xid:cmd 4b3694b8 > ffffffff S=6 s=3 (14) 
15:39:46.049705 xid:rsp 4b3694b8 < 09296150 S=6 s=2 SIEMENS S65 hint=b124 [ PnP Modem Fax IrCOMM IrOBEX ] (28) 
15:39:46.139714 xid:cmd 4b3694b8 > ffffffff S=6 s=4 (14) 
15:39:46.229715 xid:cmd 4b3694b8 > ffffffff S=6 s=5 (14) 
15:39:46.319715 xid:cmd 4b3694b8 > ffffffff S=6 s=* gimli hint=0400 [ Computer ] (21) 
[etc.]
    

We're almost there now. The only thing missing is the IR comm device. You'll get it by loading the ircomm-tty module:

[root@gimli->root]modprobe ircomm-tty
[root@gimli->root]lsmod | grep ir
ircomm-tty             19040   0  (autoclean) (unused)
ircomm                  7132   0  (autoclean) [ircomm-tty]
irtty                   5632   2  (autoclean)
irda                   78060   1  (autoclean) [ircomm-tty ircomm irtty]
[root@gimli->root]ls -l /dev/ircomm0 
crw-rw----    1 root     root     161,   0 Jan  1  1970 /dev/ircomm0
    

Bluetooth

I got a D-Link DBT120 Bluetooth USB dongle, mainly because I felt the IR link was just to slow. Also, Bluetooth provides a limited security barrier so that not just everybody can surf away with your mobile when sitting next to you in the train.

Setting up Bluetooth should be easy enough, when you use a recent kernel that includes the BlueZ patches (I use 2.4.31 and 2.6.12, vanilla kernels from kernel.org). I compiled the required drivers as modules. The required modules are hci_usb, l2cap, sco, rfcomm. Your mileage may vary if you're using a different Bluetooth dongle. The hotplug mechanism is likely to handle this, if you're using a USB dongle like I do (if not, hci_usb might not be your required hci*-module, check the Bluetooth section of the kernel configuration).

I then installed the necessary packages to actually use bluetooth. These are bluez-hcidump, bluez-pan, bluez-sdp, bluez-utils and their dependant libraries. For Debian woody, add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://bluez.sourceforge.net/download/debian/woody/ ./

If you're not using Debian, but some other distribution, it is highly likely that your distribution provides similar packages. Otherwise, have a look at http://www.bluez.org/ for the required packages.

If you have the utils installed, you should start hcid, which is the Bluetooth host controller interface daemon (this should happen automagically with most distributions, you'll need root access). In case, you have the right modules loaded, and hcid started, you'll be able to see your device(s):

[root@gimli->root]hcitool dev
Devices:
        hci0    00:11:95:7D:E3:EE
[root@gimli->root]hcitool scan
Scanning ...
        00:01:E3:44:09:21       S65holger
        00:10:C6:3A:2A:6B       DPHQ21J

If this doesn't work, you might need to fiddle with the settings in /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf. Running hcid -n to prevent the daemon detaching from the console might be useful during debugging.

hciconfig might also come in handy, while sdptool can be used to find devices that might be used for dial-up networking and l2ping does for Bluetooth devices what ping does for IP. For actually accessing your Bluetooth device (in either direction), you'll need a PIN, some number typically (I have no idea whether the S65 would also accept non-numerical PINs). The program, which is used by hcid when it tries to establish a connection to some other Bluetooth device, is specified by the pin_helper configuration in /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf.

If you want to use your S65 as a modem device, rfcomm is the bluetooth equivalent to ircomm -- it provides some sort of serial tty on top of which the usual PPP tool chain may operate. In case you are using Debian, like I do, installing bluez-utils will take care of establishing the required device nodes (in /dev/ unless you're using devfs), otherwise you'll need to set them up with mknod.

rfcomm differs from ircomm in that you need to do more than just load some kernel module. You'll need to bind some interface and some BT-MAC address (the bluetooth equivalent to a network MAC address that we were seeing with hcitool above) to some communication channel, like so:

[root@gimli->root]rfcomm bind 0 00:01:E3:44:09:21 1
[root@bauhaus->root]rfcomm show
rfcomm0: 00:01:E3:44:09:21 channel 1 clean 
    

On my Debian system, rfcomm will be started during boot and look for a configuration file in /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf. The information to put in there is essentially the same you would provide when issuing the command on the shell, e.g.:

rfcomm0 {
  bind yes;
  # Bluetooth address of the device
  device 00:01:E3:44:09:21;
 # RFCOMM channel for the connection
  channel       1;
 # Description of the connection
 comment "Holgers S65 mobile phone";
 }
    

How does it all interact? Well, somehow, you have to trigger the connection between your laptop and your S65. You may start looking for bluetooth devices by going to the settings ("Einstellungen" in German) section on your S65. You'll need to go to the data connections ("Datenverbindungen") section, choose Bluetooth and then go to Search ("Suche"). If you have the bluez-tools running (especially hcid), your S65 will find your laptop and will trigger the PIN exchange. This is, you'll have to give the PIN code you provided above.

Accessing data on the phone

I'm aware of two popular ways to access data on the Siemens S65: scmxx by Hendrick Sattler and MultiSync, which allow to retrieve/put data that is stored in the memory of the S65. For accessing the media pool, obex and SieFS are the two tools to look for.

scmxx

As of version 0.64, scmxx just doesn't cut it for the S65. While you can retrieve/send SMS with scmxx (see below), most accesses to the interesting data don't work. You'll only be able to retrieve names and numbers of contacts stored on your simcard, which leaves the most interesting data from the S65 internal phonebook unreveiled. Similar but worse for the calendar data: scmxx as of 0.64 is not able to retrieve any data from the calendar. The newer versions (0.7.5, shipped with Debian Sarge) are a little better, as they at least now know the S65, but I found fiddling with scmxx equally frustrating as with the older version.

Anyway, here's what you can do, using scmxx from the command line shell (there's also a Gnome application called gscmxx which I didn't try) to retrieve general info about the phone:

[gimli->schauer]scmxx -i | head         
Accessing device /dev/ircomm0
OK, a modem device is present.
Phone related information:
Vendor:         SIEMENS
Model:          S65
Revision:       16,"OFFICIAL","20040823T104131+0200","17:30:24","06.09.04","kzdb4#main_1.0_V119.8 ","M_c65plat_MP_main_1.0","klf_zidb4"
IMEI:           .....
Battery:        50%
Charset:        GSM
Time:           Sun Jun 19 20:09:27 2005

SIM card related information:
[...]
    

Reading phonebook information from the mobile:

[gimli->schauer]scmxx --out phonebook.csv --get --pbook=SM
Accessing device /dev/ircomm0
OK, a modem device is present.
Detected SIEMENS S65
WARNING: this phone was not confirmed to be working with this software.
fd created.
Receiving: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (8) (9) 10 11 (12) 13 (14) 15 [...]
    

MultiSync

MultiSync is a Gnome application that claims to be able to transfer (sync) personal information managment (PIM) data between various mobile devices and computers. I.e., it's not only intended for the S65 but for Palm devices etc. as well. MultiSync can exchange data with e.g. Evolution as well as with several other applications.

For the use with the S65, you'll need the IrMC and possibly the Bluetooth-Plugin to the IrMC-module. If you have a working IR or bluetooth connection, running MultiSync is as simple as setting up a new synchronisation pair and choosing the right plugins. Hit the "Sync" button and that's it (see the images).

Obex

Obex is a set of tools that allow file transfer in a way similar to ftp. When I tried to use it via Bluetooth, it simply worked as expected, i.e., it basically works, but it's not very comfortable. See the following example session:

[bauhaus->pics]obexftp  -b 5 -l
Scanning ...
        00:01:E3:44:09:21       Holgers S65
Browsing 00:01:E3:44:09:21 ...
Channel: 5
No custom transport
Connecting...bt: 1
done
Receiving (null)... <?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE folder-listing SYSTEM "obex-folder-listing.dtd">
<folder-listing version="1.0">
   <folder name="Data" modified="20040101T000000" user-perm="RWD" group-perm="W" />
   <folder name="MMCard" modified="20040115T000000" user-perm="RWD" group-perm="W" />
</folder-listing>
done
Disconnecting...done
    

You can then use the get and put commandos to transfer files from your S65. Actually, I don't really use it, I tend to transfer files via the SD card and my card reader.

SieFS

I haven't tried SieFS until now, so I'm of no help here.

Sending SMS with the S65 from Linux

You can do this with scmxx again:

[gimli->schauer]scmxx --out sms.txt --get --sms=all
[gimli->schauer]scmxx --out phone --get --sms=all
Accessing device /dev/ircomm0
OK, a modem device is present.
Detected SIEMENS S65
WARNING: this phone was not confirmed to be working with this software.
phone created.
Looking for SMS of specified type...
Receiving outgoing, sent SMS from slot 2.
Receiving outgoing, sent SMS from slot 4.
Receiving outgoing, sent SMS from slot 5.
Receiving outgoing, sent SMS from slot 6.
Receiving outgoing, sent SMS from slot 11.
[...]

Using the S65 as a modem / networking device

Mobile phones have a modem device built-in. So, to actually use your S65 to access the Internet from your laptop, you just have to set up a working PPP connection over the S65 modem device, which you access via one of the tty-devices you set up before, i.e. either /dev/ircomm0 or /dev/rfcomm0, typically.

So, one way to the data highway is the classical way of writing chatscripts etc. All you need to know is the access data of your provider. You do know which provider you need to use, don't you? I didn't, until I realized that it's the provider you have for all your mobile connections, in my case that's Vodafone D2 in Germany (at the time of this writing, that is). Google should help you find the required information for your provider.

GPRS connection

GPRS is the only fast connection method offered by the S65, HCSD is not available. Setting up GPRS is as simple as would be setting up a CSD connection, you'll just need a special AT sequence to put the phone into GPRS mode. And of course, the access data to your provider might be different for GPRS than for CSD, although for Vodafone this seems not to be the case (I haven't checked though).

If somebody likes to jump in and provides a handwritten chatscript/pppd or pon solution, I will be happy to include it. For the time being, see the next section.

GPRS Easyconnect

I choose not to go the classical way of handwriting chatscripts, as I already had chatscripts for use with the built-in softmodem of the Dell and as these were last touched two years earlier, I didn't rely wanted to dig up that old knowledge again (yes, I know, pppconfig). While googling for informations on how to use the modem of the S65 under Linux, I found GPRS Easyconnect, which allows the configuration and establishment of the connection via GUI (gprsec is written in PerlTk). Simply choose your S65 from the list of known devices, select your provider from the list of providers, klick on the "Connect" button, and you are connected.