Howto do nice things with your Nokia 6125 and Linux

On this page you will a find a short guide on how to get most from your Nokia 6125 mobile phone in connection with Linux.
The aim of this page is to provide up-to-date information in one place for this phone since there is hardly any information at all on the 'net.

All comments, suggestions etc. are welcome. Please contact me at wf-hp@gmx.net.

After several years I had to buy a new cell phone since the replacement keypad of my S55 disintegrated. So I decided to get a Nokia 6125, in particular because of all the nice possibilities to connect it to other hardware.

Setting up the Bluetooth Connection

Start bluetooth on the mobile phone (in the default menu order: 4-8-1)
Set Bluetooth to 'On' and Visibility to 'Shown to all' / 'Permanent visibility'
Don't forget to switch back to 'Hidden' after finishing the setup.

For the basics (kernel, packages etc) please refer to the bluetooth page.

Pairing phone and computer

The first thing that is new (and finally works again) is the process of pairing the phone with the computer running Linux.

Do the following as user root:

# cd /usr/share/doc/bluez-utils/examples/
# gunzip passkey-agent.c.gz

Install the following library if it is not installed yet (with apt-get, if using debian/ubuntu):
# apt-get install libdbus-1-dev

Compile the passkey-agent:
# make

Run the passkey-agent with the PIN 1234 (not needed every time when connecting in the future):
# ./passkey-agent --default 1234

Then connect the computer with the phone via bluetooth. Either use rfcomm or obexfs:
rfcomm connect rfcomm0 00:16:BC:00:00:00
or
obexfs -b 00:16:BC:00:00:00 -B 10 /mnt/
(replace the hardware address with the one of your phone you found out with hcitool scan and choose another mountpoint instead of /mnt/ as appropriate)

After confirming the last question you don't have to run the passkey-agent application any more and neither enter the passcode in the future (of course only for this one phone).

Applications

Here I want to describe shortly the most useful applications for this phone. If you have recommendations for other programs I haven't found yet don't hesitate to send me an e-mail.

rfcomm / minicom

After connecting to the phone with rfcomm as shown above you can use the device /dev/rfcomm0 lika a normal modem with ppp.
For testing purposes I recommend using minicom.

obexfs

ObexFS is a great program. It allows you to mount the memory of the phone into the normal Linux file-system so you can copy files to and fro in the shell, with midnight commander or with any file manager.

You only have to run
# obexfs -b 00:16:BC:00:00:00 -B 10 /mnt/
If the connection is lost, you have to unmount the device before being able to reconnect:
# umount /mnt; obexfs -b 00:16:BC:00:00:00 -B 10 /mnt/

gammu

With this program you use all the possibilites of the phone.
For details consult the man-page and the website.

Here are my settings in the file ~/.gammurc (works for me at the moment only via Infrared connection):

[gammu]

port = /dev/ircomm0
model = 6125
connection = irda
synchronizetime = yes
logfile =
logformat = nothing
use_locking =
gammuloc =


wammu

VERY nice program to read the different kinds of data (contacts, messages etc) from the phone, export it to file, import it, write it to the phone.
IMO much more useful than the recent version of the Nokia data suite, the only purpose of which is a full backup, for every other task you have to buy programs of third party companies.

Theme editing with midnight commander / mc

You might wonder why I list a simple file manager application here. It is because you can very comfortably edit the themes of the phone in midnight commander.
The .nth-files are zip-archive-files (which are recognized and opened in midnight commander by simply pressing <enter> on the file). In the .nth-file you can find a file named theme_descriptor.xml in which all data regarding the theme is listed. The file format is pretty self-explaining. You can edit all colors in the usual RGB scheme and image files. The files have to be copied into the zip-archive, of course.
I would suggest that you choose one of the existing theme files, make a backup copy and have a look at it and start playing around.

Have fun!

Some interesting links:

Gammu

Bluetooth Hardware Survey and links to other Howtos

Bluetooth at tuxmobil.org

Written 2007-08-19 - last update 2007-08-19