Updated 22-03-2008: fixed broken link.
After the tragic death of my T630 phone I have bought a new Sony Ericsson K550i to replace it. The old phone worked quite ok with linux but I was very pleased by how quick I was able to make this new one work with my Ubuntu Gutsy.
Synchronization
I managed to establish a bluetooth connection with no trouble using the same method described here using multisync.
However the first task was to restore as much as I could from the old backup of my phone contacts. Since the old phone was completely destroyed I had to resort to an old multisync backup and to some sim-copied contacts:
- I wrote a python script which removed duplicated entries
#!/usr/bin/python
import os, sys, vobject
cards = {}
def parse(dirName, fileName):
vCard = open(dirName + '/' + fileName,'r').read()
data = vobject.readOne(vCard)
key = data.fn.value
if cards.has_key(key):
if data.tel.value == cards[key].tel.value:
print 'rm',fileName
else:
cards[key] = data
def clean(dirName):
dirList = os.listdir(dirName)
for fileName in dirList:
if fileName.startswith('multisync'):
parse(dirName, fileName)
if __name__=='__main__': clean(sys.argv[1])
- then I recreated the multisync backup_entries file:
for i in $(ls -1 multi*); do echo 2 1 $i >> backup_entries ; done
- and run multisync again after cleaning the phone contacts. It “restored” the clean list of contacts to the phone.
File transfer
Since the phone has camera I wanted to find a simple way to get the photos from the phone to my laptop. I was familiar with obex and tried to work with the command line.
- the first step was to install some obex related packages
apt-get install gnome-vfs-obexftp obexpushd obexftp
- then to find the address of the phone
len@black:~$ hcitool scanScanning ... 00:1E:F5:36:05:CE K550i
- try a list of the files
obexftp -b 00:1E:F5:36:05:CE --list "/" -v
- and try to receive a file
obexpushd -B -n -d
the obexpushd sigsegved when receiving a file so this approach did not seemed to work. You might have seen however the gnome-vfs-obexftp
package in the list above so I tried to open the location in nautilus using the obex://mac syntax and it worked!!
Quite nice I would say and very user friendly.
Conclusions
I am very impressed about how quick everything worked with this phone in linux and the vfs integration. I think even a non-technical guy could easy make the connection and transfer files in this way.
Comments:
Len -
You are absolutely right, something working instantly should be something absolutely expected. Well, I guess I work too much with software to expect that :)
etravel -
The last part of the text was clearly funny, even if this was not the intention of the writer. A device working ok with a certain OS (linux here) is not a feature in itself. The good part is that you have EDGE on your S-E device. The worst part is that vodafone doesn’t provide EDGE connectivity :P.
Mahmoud -
hi im really impressed with wht u did with ur phone i hve the same phone can u plz tell me how can i make it run in linux plz answer me thx
len -
I did nothing else than what it’s described here :)
Alex -
When I run obexftp -b 00:0F:DE:DB:BC:71 –list “/” -v I get the following error: Browsing 00:0F:DE:DB:BC:71 … Connecting…failed: connect Tried to connect for 54ms The user may have rejected the transfer: Connection refused Also tried Wammu, but it can’t connect to the phone either. Can’t solve the problem is syncing my t630 over bluetooth.