Plugging In The Phone.

This paragraph is written to explain how to connect the Kyocera 2135 phone to a laptop using a serial data cable kit.
One end of the cable is smaller and has an arrow printed on one side. Slide this connector into the bottom of the phone so both the arrow and the buttons on the phone are facing the same direction. The other end should fit into a standard serial port on your laptop. Slide in the serial connection and tighten the thumbscrews.

Setting Up The Connection..

Now, if the scripts are in place, run the command /etc/init.d/dialer start. To check to make sure the command was successful, run ifconfig. You should see a section labeled ppp0. If the scripts are not in place, then refer to Setting Up the System at the bottom of this page.

What If I Lose My Connection?

Try running /etc/init.d/dialer stop. This stops the pppd daemon. Now, try to establish the call again by /etc/init.d/dialer start. Or try the even shorter /etc/init.d/dialer restart.

Setting Up The System

This is the tricky part. What if the scripts aren't already in the system? Well, we can build them. The quickest way is to download the scripts and place them as follows. You may have to change the owner and group for each file to root by
cd scripts
chown root *
chgrp root *

dialer should be moved to /etc/init.d/
bibedialup should be moved to /etc/ppp/peers/
prairienet should be moved to /etc/chatscripts/
This can be done by mv file destination, for example: mv dialer /etc/init.d/
First, find the line in prairienet that starts with ATDT. Now, change the phonenumber that follows it to the number you use to call into your ISP. Now make some modifications if you use PAP, CHAP, or neither.

If you use PAP, add the following fields separated by tabs to a new line in the file /etc/ppp/pap-secrets: your login name, server name, password, and a blank field. You can use * in the server name field if you aren't sure the name of the server.

If you use CHAP, add the following fields separated by tabs to a new line in the file /etc/ppp/chap-secrets:your login name, server name, password, and a blank field. You cannot use an * in the server name field, you must use the name of the server you are dialing into.

If you don't have either, then you need to remove the hide-password line from the top of the bibedialup script. Then you'll have to make the following modifications to the prairienet script by adding the following lines to the bottom.
ogin: [here put in the user name used to login into the ISP]
assword: [your password for logging in to the ISP]

Now try the steps at the beginning of this document. Below is a more detailed set of instructions for those wanting more information on how the scripts work.

More Detailed Explanation

Dialer is a simple script that should be placed in /etc/init.d/. The location might vary depending on your system, but placing it where the start up scripts are run is a good idea. The heart of this script is the line "pppd call bibedialup" in the start function. This line is starting the pppd server using the script bibedialup.

So what is this bibedialup script? It tells some information the pppd daemon will need to know to make the connection. bibedialup should be placed into /etc/ppp/peers/. If peers doesn't exist, go ahead and "mkdir /etc/ppp/peers". Some explanation of the information in this script is as follows. The hide-password means that it will look for the password in another file called PAP. More on that later. The connect tells the connection script to use to actually dial the number and interact with the cell phone. The /dev/ttyS0 is telling it to use the first serial port (would be COM1 under Microsoft). If you are using a different serial port, then change it to the correct serial port here. The cell phone is restricted to a baud rate of 19200. This means the cell phone can only communicate at a certain rate with the computer and the server. Think of this as specifying a size of pipe for the information to stream through. Don't change this.

Now what is the connect command from bibedialup doing? It is using the chat program to dial the number using the prairienet script. Prairienet should be placed into /etc/chatscripts/. The top line gives the phone some info on when it should cancel. These are such situations as it doesn't get a dial tone when dialing. The only part you have to check is to make sure that the number following the ATDT is the phone number that the phone should be dialing into. If it is not, then change it.

I told you I would explain the PAP file a little more. All right, this file is required by some Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The PAP file is named /etc/ppp/pap-secrets. This file consists of the fields client, server, secret, ip. Either spaces or tabs may be used to separate the four fields. The client is the name you use to login, the server is the server you log into, the secret is your password, and you don't have to worry about IP with most connection. An example would be
fooclient barserver thepassword

Now, if you do not need a PAP file, you may need a CHAP file. A chap is similar to the above, but where it is possible in a PAP file to use an * in the server to indicate any server that the system might connect to, CHAT requires a specific name. That is stored in /etc/ppp/chap-secrets.

If the ISP doesn't require or want you using PAP or CHAP, you can modify the prairienet script by adding the lines
ogin: [here put in the user name used to login into the ISP]
assword: [your password for logging in to the ISP]
You will also have to remove the hide-password line from bibedialup.

If you are continuing to have trouble, call your ISP or contact someone on the TeleNature team.

But it is still not working.

But what if the phone is still not dialing out? Well, there are a couple of things that might be wrong. The device named used by the bibedialup script might be wrong. A slightly complicated, but efficient solution is this. Replace the line in bibedialup that says /dev/ttyS0 with /dev/cellphone. Now check to see if /dev/cellphone exists already. Running "ls -l /dev/ | grep cellphone" should not return a result. If it already exists either choose to overwrite it or just chose a different name such as cellmodem. Now create a symbolic link, also called a soft link, to the /dev/ttyS device you are using. The link is created by "ln -s /dev/devicename", where device name is one of ttyS0,ttyS1,ttyS3,ttyS4. If you have a serial connection, it should be one of these. If you don't know, try creating the link using S0. Then try using the dial and incrementing by one every time until you find one that works. You might want to give it a minute to try the connection between each one. Looking at the /var/logs/messages can be useful in spotting if the connection went through or not.

If you are using a USB connection between your phone and the laptop, that is a little tricker. I am currently researching a little bit to try to develop a good system for that but I do not have USB connection to experiment with. A good place to start is linux-usb.org's guide.. Also look around their website at http://www.linux-usb.org. You will probably have to do something similar to the following.

mknod dev/usb/ttyACM0 c 166 0

Hopefully either your kernel is configured for usb modems or you can use the loadable module acm.o. Now have /dev/cellphone point to /dev/usb/ttyACM0.

Some Further Reading.

the ppp-HOWTO at the Linux Documentation Project. http://www.tldp.org/
Welsh, M., Dalheimer M.K., Dawson, T., & Kaufamn, L. (2002) Running Linux. 4th ed. (pp. 530-536) Sebastopol: O'Reilly.