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During my frequent trips to Vermont over the last four years, I’ve discovered that most airports do not offer free WiFi access (Burlington VT and JetBlue at JFK are notable exceptions). In preparation for an upcoming trip to Vermont and the need to do some telecommuting en route, I figured out how to use my Sprint Treo 700p as an EVDO modem on SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) SP2 on a ThinkPad R61. I was aided in this by a couple of blog postings: Treo 700p Tether with Linux and Dialup Networking via Treo 700p and Ubuntu. Rather than list only the things I did differently, here is a complete procedure.

Installation:

As an ordinary user on Linux:

• Create the directory usbmodem somewhere (e.g. in ~/tmp or ~/Desktop). Make it the current directory.
• Download the USB Modem zip file. If you purchased the official version, it’ll have a name like usbmodem_retail_1_60.zip .
• Unpack the zipfile using unzip usbmodem_retail_1_60.zip
• Install USBModem.prc on the Treo; you’ll find this file in the current directory. I did this by uploading the file to my web site, and then selecting it in the Treo’s web browser.

As the root user on Linux:

• From the usbmodem directory created earlier, run this command:
  cp drivers/linux/ppp-script-evdo-template /etc/ppp/peers/ppp-script-treo
• Edit /etc/ppp/peers/ppp-script-treo. Change the “connect” line to:
  connect '/usr/sbin/chat -s -v "" AT OK ATD#777 CONNECT'
  Change the “user” line to:
  user USERNAME
  where USERNAME is your Treo’s user name, as determined from the main phone app, Options / Phone Info, UserName.
• Edit /etc/ppp/pap-secrets, and add this line:
  USERNAME@sprintpcs.com *
  where USERNAME is the phone’s user name as determined in the previous step, and where there is a single tab between USERNAME@sprintpcs.com and the asterisk, not spaces.

Making a Connection:

• Turn on the Treo, and connect it to the Linux machine with the USB sync cable.
• Wait a few seconds and verify that the visor kernel module has been loaded with lsmod | egrep visor.
• On the Treo, start the USB Modem program and press the “Enable Modem Mode” button.
• Back on Linux, perform the following steps as root.
• Bring down all other networks using ifdown eth0 or ifdown eth1 as necessary.
• Verify that the USB modem driver and device are present using ls -l /dev/ttyACM0
• Connect to the EVDO network using:
  pppd /dev/ttyACM0 call ppp-script-treo
  You should see messages about the connection being established. If you see a message about default route not being overridden, you forgot to bring down all your existing net connections earlier.
• Verify the connection using route -n. You should see two entries for ppp0. To make really sure the connection is working, try ping -c3 www.google.com
• End the connection by pressing the “Disable Modem Mode” button in the USB Modem program on the Treo. This should automatically bring down the ppp0 connection on Linux.

It should be possible to use KPPP (the KDE dialup connection application) instead of the various command line tools described above, but I have not tried this.

The irony in all this is we can finally do something with our cell phones that we were doing with Ricochet 13 years ago.

Today I updated my ThinkPad R61, which came with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) SP1, to SP2. I did this entirely online, using this Novell document as a guide. In particular, section 9.2.3, “Updating to a Service Pack” and “Starting with YaST Online Update” described the process I used.

There were a few gotchas with the documentation. Some of the package names didn’t match what I saw on my system. But more seriously, I needed to run the Yast2 Novell Customer Center Configuration tool before anything would work. Registering one’s installation is apparently the only way to add the service pack repositories to Online Update. Otherwise, the process went smoothly, and the system appears to be running well after a reboot.

I noticed one small glitch after installing SP2: fonts in both KDE applications and Firefox looked very fuzzy. After some head-scratching, I fixed this by disabling subpixel hints in anti-aliased fonts. To do this, start the KDE Control Center (which SUSE calls “Personal Settings”), then select Appearance & Themes, then Fonts, then press the Configure button, then un-check “use subpixel hinting”.