Hi,

I have a computer running Ubuntu Lucid with no internet access, and I'd like to use my N900 to connect it to the internet.

I've worked through these pages:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Bluetooth_DUN
http://wiki.maemo.org/Debian-Tethering

...and I have it at the stage where I can cat < /dev/rfcomm0 and see a few random AT commands being sent for some reason.

Then I used pppconfig to try to set up a ppp link. The tool requires a username and password - what's that all about? I don't have a username and password to connect to the Internet on the N900. When I look in my 3G account I have an access point name of "three.co.uk", and blank username and password.

But in any case, I don't understand why this would be needed on the Ubuntu side. It should connect to the phone, and whatever internet access the phone has should be available to the computer. Right? If I switch from 3G to a wifi connection, it should just use that. All this "dial up networking" and AT command stuff seems rather... 80s.

Anyway, I've gone through the configuration and entered blank usernames and passwords. And when I ifup ppp0 it just does nothing. So what am I supposed to do? How do I debug this? Any suggestions? I'm really confused by this.

I recommend using the program "wvdial" instead of mucking with ppp scripts themselves. Here is my config for T-Mobile in the US:
Also, in order to have a stable connection, I have to disable the existing internet connection. This seems counter-intuitive, but the modem seems independent of the internet connection applet on the status bar. Also, turn your search interval off under connections and disable wi-fi too.

These instructions worked for me :
http://tomasz.sterna.tv/2009/12/gsm-...ubuntu-karmic/

What phone number should I use? What username? What password? Where am I supposed to get this information from? I don't need any of this stuff to connect to the Internet using the phone, it just connects.

Install blueman for this. When the N900 is connected select the device in blueman with the right mouse. There you have an option for starting the modem (in Dutch the item is called Inbeldienst, don't know the name in other languages). After that you you can connect with the network manager.

Ah, I get it now. Yes, the blueman stuff works great for me. The network manager apparently knows all about 3 in the UK and doesn't have to bother me with username and password and access point and all that crap.

I've had bad experiences with software, especially open source software, trying to know about all the commercial service providers in the world, for example email clients and DSL PPPoE. They can never keep up with all the variants out there. So it always makes me nervous when I have to select my service provider from a drop-down list. I'd far rather connect using standard methods and simple parameters. In this case, however, it seems to work and I only need it working for a week, so I won't complain.

Thanks for your help everyone! This was somewhat less work than I feared, it only took a few hours over three days! :-)

Thanks for this thread - I followed various links, and they are mostly deprecated now. The PC-side app is now in the Lucid repository, without having to add in an extra repository ( which doesn't exist for Lucid anyway) - and the n900 is in the Maemo application manager (didn't check the standard one).

This works pretty well, and gives a faster connection than via USB. One thing that was interesting was that this worked with my old 6300 as well. The 6300 seemed to give about the same speed as the n900. Different networks, so not an accurate comparison.

Mish.