13.6.09

Bluetooth Tethering your Ubuntu Jaunty netbook to iPhone running 3.0

Having access to an iPhone running the latest firmware, I was anxious
to get my netbook running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope).

It's easy once you install blueman from Synaptic package manager. For
whatever reason, the default Gnome bluetooth manager won't get the job
done.

Open up Bluetooth Manager from "System Preferences". Set your iPhone's
bluetooth to be discoverable.
The iPhone will show up in the list (if not, hit the 'Search' button).
Once it does, click on 'Bond'. 'Bond' will cause your iPhone to tell
you your netbook is trying to pair with it (It actually says 'Netbook
would like to pair with your iPhone', charmingly anthropomorphic).
You want that, so click 'Pair'.
Your iPhone will tell you to confirm that the same passkey is being
displayed in Blueman on your netbook. Confirm this on your netbook
too.
Once this is done, right click on the iPhone in Blueman. Under
'Network access', select 'Network access point'.
That's it, you're tethered. Your connection will show up in Network
Manager as 'bnep0'.


10 comments:

Bryn said...

I got my phone (running iPhone OS 3.0 GM) to pair with my Ubuntu machine (9.04, fully updated, blueman installed) but when I try to activate the "Network Access Point" it tries to connect and then fails...anyone got any ideas?

Anonymous said...

I successfully Pair Iphone with laptop but I can't bring up the network interface.

JasonOng said...

I tried using blueman for tethering but couldn't set my iPhone as a Network Access Point although it's been added as a bluetooth device successfully. Running blueman-manager in terminal seems to spill the following.


fail (/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/blueman/gui/manager/ManagerDeviceMenu.py:130)
fail (DBusException(dbus.String(u'Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.'),),)


Any idea what's wrong?

Erikw said...

'That's it, you're tethered.'

Apparently not. It fails on the last step, always :-( Any ideas?

ErikS said...

Thank you VERY much !!
I've been serching for a solution for Bluetooth Tethering on Ubuntu for days without any luck.
I was getting pretty annoyed, since it worked pretty smoothly on both windows and os-x, but not in Ubuntu for some reason.
With blueman just worked out-of-the-box - what a releaf :)

mexlinux said...

You have to click on "your-laptop-device" button in the iphone (on bluetoothe preferences)

Unknown said...

I had the same problem as JasonOng. I updated the Bluetooth applications to the most recent version (as found through the update manager) and also ran bluetooth-manager as root from the terminal. It worked perfectly on the first try after those two things (I'm not sure which one solved it, but it's working now).

Loke said...

I faced the same problems. Follow the following steps in order to connect, and you should have success:

1. Go to Iphone's bluetooth section and turn it off.
2. Turn it back on and click your computer name in the list (which means, you would have bonded/paired them before)
3. They will get paired again.
4. Now try to create the network connection. You should have success.

5. For the network to work, you might have to enable "Network Access Point", and NAT in Network in Local Services, which you see after right clicking the Blueman icon in the notification area.

HTH

JasonOng said...

I've gotten bluetooth tethering to work some time back but haven't posted the solution here.

1. Pair up iPhone with Ubuntu

2. Edit /etc/default/bluetooth, /etc/bluetooth/pan/dev-up & /etc/bluetooth/pan/dev-down according to http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=598890

2. Install pand & create PAN connection

sudo apt-get install pand
sudo pand -c YOUR IPHONE BLUETOOTH ADDRESS

3. Assign IP address to iPhone

sudo dhclient3 bnep

You can even use the same method to bluetooth tether to multiple machines at the same time.

Kris The Grumpy said...

Its good that it does seem to eventually work, with some fiddling :) I'll have to set it up all over again though after a gparted accident :(