Update 2009-02-07: I am thanking Jason Fowler for pointing out that assemba does not offer free private svn hosting anymore. I tried logging in at my assembla account (yay, it’s been ages since) and my private spaces were marked readonly. For alternatives, check out Straw Dogs’ List

On one of my free days, I was on a lookout for a free subversion hosting, for a private project. There are several free SVN hosting for opensource projects (Sourceforge.net, Google, berlios.de among others) but I needed one for a private (read: closed) project. A quick google and forum reads led me to Assembla.com.

Assembla tags itself as “inspired by open-source”. Behind assembla seems to be a lean-mean global consulting firm. Assembla offers project hosting packed with features such us project management (via Trac), source code management (via Subversion), wikis, dicussion boards, releases. Registering to the services entitles you the privilege to manage and join projects, open-source or private. These features come free and standard.

I’m surprised to see that they’re offering all these “standard” features for free, considering the hosting support for private projects.
Well, the firm behind Assembla are focusing on what they call full service consulting and this is primarily where their revenue is. For me, I thankful for them to have opened such service. I couldn’t ask more; it’s free, private and for me, I just heavily use their SVN service. I have yet to take full advantage of the service. I will be soon inviting others to join my projects, with the intention to practice collaborative development; go agile!

It’s been 5 days since my shiny pre-owned notebook arrived. Considering it’s size, specs and above all, price, this sure is a bargain find from TipidPC. I am truly blessed to have found such an item. Hopefully for me this will bring more productivity and portability nirvana. The thing weighs less than 2 kgs, very light and it’s barely noticeable in my bag.

Here are the specifications:

• Celeron 500MHz Coppermine
• 128MB SDRAM
• 10GB HDD
• 12″ LCD
• ATI Rage Mobility Graphics Card
• ESS Sound Card
• 3com Ethernet LAN Card
• External CD-ROM

Shopping around for a suitable “lightweight” linux distribution to install, the choice for me is clear: Xubuntu.

Why?
(personally based on internet reviews and my conclusion on my peers’ experience)

• Ubuntu family of linux distros are relatively clean looking; fairly well intergrated desktop; secure out of the box;
• Debian/Ubuntu’s huge repository – chance for me to learn more Debian as I’m coming from a Redhat background.
• Xubuntu is officially part of Ubuntu family, Dapper 6.06 LTS is Long Term Support (updates for 6 years)

Installation Notes:

Trouble with Xubuntu LiveCD:
Xubuntu 6.10 (Edgy) LiveCD is boots fine using the external CDROM drive, loads up and detects everything, more or less. Except 128MB is really not enough to run the installation to HDD application. The system was repeatedly trashing, and there’s my cycle of reboot + run-install program. I gave up trying the LiveCD and looked for alternative way of installation.

Base Install
What I basically did was:

1. Install Ubuntu Server Edition (6.06 LTS)
2. sudo apt-get xubuntu-desktop gdm

Thats it! I was surprised how everything was configured by default. After the reboot, GRUB, runlevel 5, default sensible apps (as in the liveCD), everything was configured. I have sound, working Xorg config, etc. The only thing I have to check yet is the built-in ESS winmodem and pcmcia cardbus. After that I had several desktop tweaks, kernel change to generic 686, package upgrades, codecs, non-free apps installation, etc. Everything was and has been relatively easy.

Internals:
Processor:

dexter@dexter:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 8
model name : Celeron (Coppermine)
stepping : 3
cpu MHz : 497.922
cache size : 128 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse
bogomips : 996.87

Other Devices:

dexter@dexter:~$ lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX AGP bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:07.0 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
0000:00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
0000:00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
0000:00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 03)
0000:00:09.0 Multimedia audio controller: ESS Technology ES1988 Allegro-1 (rev 12)
0000:00:09.1 Communication controller: ESS Technology ESS Modem (rev 12)
0000:00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:0d.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 78)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage Mobility P/M AGP 2x (rev 64)


Conclusion

What Needs Improvement:
LiveCD eats up a lot of memory, my recommendation is that this should be attempted only on machines with >=256MB. Haven’t really tried to get Suspend working (more attempts/reconfig needed on my part). Battery applet information disappears time to time.

My Positive Experience:
For low-end machines, especially low memory systems, Xubuntu earns my recommendation. An empty freshly booted Xubuntu desktop eats up barely 80MB of memory. Drivers detected, Sensible defaults, and Hibernate works out of the box. Setup is a simple base-cd install, then apt-get, apt-get, apt-get, hehe

Setup was a breeze. No wonder the Ubuntu distro family are among the top ranking in Distrowatch. I am using this generic no-name dongle I found at a bargain price in CDR-King Philippines. More on my Xubuntu laptop installation later while I discuss setup bits of the little bluetooth wonder. Note that this mini-howto is (U|Ku|Xu|Edu)buntu specific. Basically this is a duplicate of my previous effort in making this work with my Gentoo desktop box.

Setup

• Mobile Phone = Nokia 3230
• OS = Ubuntu Server + xubuntu-desktop 6.06 LTS Dapper Drake
• Kernel = linux-image-686
• GSM Network = SMART Philippines Prepaid

The Kernel specifically have compiled in support for ppp and bluetooth, so no worries here.

My Bluetooth Dongle Device

$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1131:1001 Integrated System Solution Corp. KY-BT100 Bluetooth Adapter
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Apparently this is a supported chipset. The commands below are to executed as root.

Install Essential Packages

$ sudo apt-get install bluez-utils ppp
$ sudo /etc/init.d/bluez-utils restart


Test Bluetooth

root@dexter:~# hcitool scan
Scanning ...
00:13:70:1F:B6:CD Decky


root@dexter:~# l2ping 00:13:70:1F:B6:CD
Ping: 00:13:70:1F:B6:CD from 11:11:11:11:11:11 (data size 44) ...
0 bytes from 00:13:70:1F:B6:CD id 0 time 17.39ms
0 bytes from 00:13:70:1F:B6:CD id 1 time 11.37ms
0 bytes from 00:13:70:1F:B6:CD id 2 time 11.13ms
0 bytes from 00:13:70:1F:B6:CD id 3 time 12.76ms
4 sent, 4 received, 0% loss


root@dexter:~# sdptool browse 00:13:70:1F:B6:CD
Browsing 00:13:70:1F:B6:CD ...
Service Name: Hands-Free Audio Gateway
Service RecHandle: 0x10000
Service Class ID List:
"Handfree Audio Gateway" (0x111f)
"Generic Audio" (0x1203)
Protocol Descriptor List:
"L2CAP" (0x0100)
"RFCOMM" (0x0003)
Channel: 1
Language Base Attr List:
code_ISO639: 0x454e
encoding: 0x6a
base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
"Handfree Audio Gateway" (0x111f)
Version: 0x0101
.
Service Name: OBEX File Transfer
Service RecHandle: 0x10001
Service Class ID List:
"OBEX File Transfer" (0x1106)
Protocol Descriptor List:
"L2CAP" (0x0100)
"RFCOMM" (0x0003)
Channel: 10
"OBEX" (0x0008)
Language Base Attr List:
code_ISO639: 0x454e
encoding: 0x6a
base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
"OBEX File Transfer" (0x1106)
Version: 0x0100
.
Service Name: SyncMLClient
Service RecHandle: 0x10002
Service Class ID List:
"Error: This is UUID-128" (0x00000002-0000-1000-8000-0002ee000002)
Protocol Descriptor List:
"L2CAP" (0x0100)
"RFCOMM" (0x0003)
Channel: 11
"OBEX" (0x0008)
Language Base Attr List:
code_ISO639: 0x454e
encoding: 0x6a
base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
"Error: This is UUID-128" (0x00000002-0000-1000-8000-0002ee000002)
Version: 0x0100
.
Service Name: Nokia OBEX PC Suite Services
Service RecHandle: 0x10003
Service Class ID List:
"Error: This is UUID-128" (0x00005005-0000-1000-8000-0002ee000001)
Protocol Descriptor List:
"L2CAP" (0x0100)
"RFCOMM" (0x0003)
Channel: 12
"OBEX" (0x0008)
Language Base Attr List:
code_ISO639: 0x454e
encoding: 0x6a
base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
"Error: This is UUID-128" (0x00005005-0000-1000-8000-0002ee000001)
Version: 0x0100
.
Service Name: OBEX Object Push
Service RecHandle: 0x10004
Service Class ID List:
"OBEX Object Push" (0x1105)
Protocol Descriptor List:
"L2CAP" (0x0100)
"RFCOMM" (0x0003)
Channel: 9
"OBEX" (0x0008)
Language Base Attr List:
code_ISO639: 0x454e
encoding: 0x6a
base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
"OBEX Object Push" (0x1105)
Version: 0x0100
.
Service Name: Dial-Up Networking
Service RecHandle: 0x10005
Service Class ID List:
"Dialup Networking" (0x1103)
Protocol Descriptor List:
"L2CAP" (0x0100)
"RFCOMM" (0x0003)
Channel: 2
Language Base Attr List:
code_ISO639: 0x454e
encoding: 0x6a
base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
"Dialup Networking" (0x1103)
Version: 0x0100

Here, it is indicated by our service discovery tool that dial-up networking support is on Channel 2.

Setup PIN
echo "1234" > /etc/bluetooth/pin

Setup PIN-Helper
File: /etc/bluetooth/pin-helper

#!/bin/sh
echo -n "PIN:" `cat /etc/bluetooth/pin`

Be sure to make it executable. Mode 755.

Configurations
Using the infomation from sdptool and hciscan, you need to properly edit the contents of the following:

File: /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf

rfcomm0 {
bind yes;
device 00:13:70:1F:B6:CD;
channel 2;
comment "Nokia";
}


File: /etc/ppp/chat-mygprs

'' ATZ OK
AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet"
OK "ATD*99***1#"
CONNECT ''

Note that internet is the apn. In my Nokia 3230, I think this is overridden by the GPRS Config of the phone.

File: /etc/ppp/peers/mygprs

/dev/rfcomm0 115200
connect '/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/ppp/chat-mygprs'
crtscts
modem -detach
noccp
defaultroute
usepeerdns
noauth
ipcp-accept-remote
ipcp-accept-local
noipdefault


Dial and Connect

$ pppd call mygprs
Serial connection established.
Using interface ppp0
Connect: ppp0 /dev/rfcomm0
PAP authentication succeeded
Cannot determine ethernet address for proxy ARP
local IP address 10.157.107.227
remote IP address 10.6.6.6
primary DNS address 203.172.11.25
secondary DNS address 202.57.67.45
Modem hangup
Connect time 47.8 minutes.
Sent 1301495 bytes, received 6024667 bytes.

Pair the devices by entering the PIN if it’s requested by the phone.
Should be a painless process.

YMMV but hopefully you’ll be able to connect and surf then.

If you encounter difficulties, remember to look at the logs (/var/log/ppp.log) and dmesg.

Additional Tips
SMART Network’s dynamically assigned DNS servers are notoriously unreliable. Try to find some public DNS to use. Try opendns.com as well.

Hope this helps. Happy bluetooth gprs internet!

Finally! I am blogging my way back, thanks to wordpress.com. It has been a while since my old blog site died out of idleness. This is a fresh start and hopefully I can find the strength and wisdom to share more of me here. Thanks wordpress.com.