Getting Linux Online with Reliance
Sunil Beta November 10, 2004
Abstract This document intends to be a HowTo targeted at users of Linux on installing internet connectivity with their Reliance India phone. The major portion of this document is derived from an earlier, more comprehensive HowTo on the same topic. This document is being written to help a friend get started out on Linux and use his Reliance phone to get connected.

Prerequisites

Some prior experience in using computers, a minimal comfort level with using the terminal is necessary. Any *nix experience, programming experience is a plus.

The Phone

Models supported by Reliances rconnect-cmdline script Heres a list of phones that are supported by the script. (rconnect-cmdline-1.0.tar) GTRAN GCP 4020 KYOCERA 7135 LG LSP -340E LG LST 250 LG RD 2030 LG RD 2130 LG RD 2230 LG RD 7130 SAMSUNG SCH A563 SAMSUNG SCH A603 SAMSUNG SCH A663 SAMSUNG SCH N191 1
If you dont have one of these phones, you can still get it to connect, but probably not without some extra work. Cabling You either get a Serial cable (RS232C D connector) or a USB cable. The former is simpler to use, however if you use a laptop youll probably be looking for the USB connector. Some models are not supported with USB connectors in which case, you can buy the serial cable and buy a USB2serial connector yourself (most of which use a pl2303 chipset.) Activating Internet Services You will have to explicitly activate internet services to your phone by dialing *412. You should receive a conrming response in the next 15 seconds - 2 minutes. Setting up Baud Rate All models seem to support a maximum baud rate setting of 230400 bps, however a more realistic (and practical) setting is 115200 bps which has worked on most of the hardware I have tried it on. The rconnectcmdline script reminds you to do this during installation.

Desktop/PC

Any desktop or laptop running Linux is ne. You should be having a serial (RS232C) connector or a USB connector.

Software

Linux Distribution Youll need a Linux distribution installed on your Desktop/PC/Laptop. A Linux Kernel version higher than 2.2 (including 2.4 and 2.6) would suce for our purposes. This would mean - you could use Debian GNU/Linux 3 (woody) or higher, SuSE GNU/Linux 7.0 (or higher), Redhat Linux 6.x (or higher), Fedora Core (any version). Knoppix, Gnoppix, Ubuntu, any of the newer linux distributions are also good. In most cases, distribution has already taken care of which versions of the kernel and supporting applications to install. The following paragraphs help you nd out which versions have been installed and whether they need to be upgraded before trying to connect to the Internet with your Reliance phone. The Kernel It would be preferable if you have linux kernel v2.4 installed, v2.6 would work great. If youre using v2.4, please try using v2.4.20 or newer. If you are using v2.6, please use a newer release (later than v2.6.3). Finding out which version of the linux kernel you have is simple: username@hostname> uname -a Linux hostname 2.6.9 #7 Mon Oct 25 17:27:11 IST 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux I use SuSE GNU/Linux 9.0 as my distribution and things seem to work ne for me. Ive also tried doing this on a machine running Redhat GNU/Linux 9.0 and things work ne.
You need to make sure that your kernel has support for connecting your cable. If you have a RS232C (Serial) cable, you will require serial support in the kernel. If you have a USB cable, youll minimally need USB host support to be compiled in. You can nd out the devices currently supported by your kernel. username@hostname> cat /proc/devices Character devices: 1 mem 2 pty 3 ttyp 4 /dev/vc/tty 4 ttyS 5 /dev/tty 5 /dev/console 5 /dev/ptmx 7 vcs 9 st 10 misc 13 input 14 sound 21 sg 29 fb 116 alsa 128 ptm 136 pts 180 usb 188 ttyUSB 254 pcmcia Block devices: 1 ramdisk 3 ideloop 11 sr 22 ide1 This would probably be dierent on your machine, and also depend on the kernel you are running. But what you would be looking for is ttyS which is the serial device support and ttyUSB which is usb-serial support. If you need to use a USB cable, youll still have to get a few more things in place. Applications Here are the applications you will need to have installed, their minimal versions and reccommended versions. pppd 2.x or newer username@hostname> pppd --version pppd version 2.4.1 3
bash (any version should do ne) username@hostname> bash --version GNU bash, version 2.05b.0(1)-release (i586-suse-linux) Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. minicom (any version should do ne) needed only for debugging if things go wrong. minicom version 2.1 (compiled Sep 23 2003) Copyright (C) Miquel van Smoorenburg. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. Upgrading software If you do not have the reccommended versions of the kernel, or the software, you may need to upgrade them. With most linux distributions, a well established packaging and distribution mechanism is used for this purpose. For eg. in debian, you would use $ apt-get install pppd to get the latest possible version. With Redhat (or any rpm based distribution), you would have to locate the *.rpm le that provides ppp support, and use $ rpm -Uvh ppp-2.4.1.rpm If your kernel lacks the devices required as listed earlier(1.4), then you most likely need to build a custom kernel. Building your own custom kernel is beyond the scope of this document. It is reccommended that you read the Linux Kernel build howto. You can also take a look at one of my presentations on kernel building1 which also lists other relevant literature that you should read.

Downloads

rconnect users If you intend to use Reliances rconnect which is distributed under their exclusive propreitary license, you will need to obtain the current release of the script from their website.2 At the time of writing this document, the current version of the script is 1.0, distributed as rconnectcmdline-1.0.tar on Reliances page. using your own setup Even if you decide not to use the rconnect script, you should be able to connect with ease. You can either have your own script to connect or use a program like kppp, rh-internet to connect. I will present information on writing your own script (borrowed from an earlier howto by Ramakrishnan 3.) and kppp. Other net connectivity programs should be quite similar to customize.

1 http://www.codito.com/

beta/kernelbuild/ dc linux.html
2 http://www.relianceinfo.com/Infocomm/Rim/rconnect 3 http://www.hackgnu.org/ril-howto.html
For those of you who have no means of alternately connecting to the net with the same computer, youll have to request someone to download the rconnectcmdline-1.0.tar le and transfer it to your desktop/laptop/workstation with a CD, a local network link or (in the worst case) a oppy drive.
Connecting using rconnect-cmdline
Obtaining and Verifying rconnect-cmdline script
For most users, using the rconnect script will be the quickest way to go about it. You can download it from the location listed above2. After downloading, you can ensure that the le has not been corrupted in anyway (this is specic to rconnect-cmdline-1.0.tar). username@localhost> ls -l rconnect-cmdline-1.0.tar -rw-r--r-1 username users 153600 2004-11-09 23:18 rconnect-cmdline-1.0.tar username@localhost> md5sum rconnect-cmdline-1.0.tar e37ddf1ad9ce29ba5a6f2a0d63f930d8 rconnect-cmdline-1.0.tar If the MD5SUM of your download does not match "e37ddf1ad9ce29ba5a6f2a0d63f930d8", you may want to a) either try downloading again, or b) conrm that reliance has changed something in their script distribution without incrementing the version.
uncompressing and preparing the rconnect-cmdline script
You will now need to uncompress the tar ball you have downloaded. This is the easy part. username@localhost> tar xvf rconnect-cmdline-1.0.tar rconnect1.0/ rconnect1.0/usbwizard rconnect1.0/phones/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2130/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2130/LG_RD_2130_COM/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2130/LG_RD_2130_COM/LG_RD_2130_COM rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2130/LG_RD_2130_COM/LG_RD_2130_COM_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2230/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2230/LG_RD_2230_USB/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2230/LG_RD_2230_USB/LG_RD_2230_USB rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2230/LG_RD_2230_USB/LG_RD_2230_USB_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2230/LG_RD_2230_COM/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2230/LG_RD_2230_COM/LG_RD_2230_COM rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2230/LG_RD_2230_COM/LG_RD_2230_COM_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/phones/KYOCERA_7135/ rconnect1.0/phones/KYOCERA_7135/KYOCERA_7135_USB/ rconnect1.0/phones/KYOCERA_7135/KYOCERA_7135_USB/KYOCERA_7135_USB_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/phones/KYOCERA_7135/KYOCERA_7135_USB/KYOCERA_7135_USB rconnect1.0/phones/KYOCERA_7135/KYOCERA_7135_COM/ 5

rconnect1.0/phones/KYOCERA_7135/KYOCERA_7135_COM/KYOCERA_7135_COM rconnect1.0/phones/KYOCERA_7135/KYOCERA_7135_COM/KYOCERA_7135_COM_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/phones/LG_LSP_-340E/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_LSP_-340E/LG_LSP_-340E_COM/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_LSP_-340E/LG_LSP_-340E_COM/LG_LSP_-340E_COM rconnect1.0/phones/LG_LSP_-340E/LG_LSP_-340E_COM/LG_LSP_-340E_COM_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/phones/LG_LST_250/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_LST_250/LG_LST_250_COM/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_LST_250/LG_LST_250_COM/LG_LST_250_COM rconnect1.0/phones/LG_LST_250/LG_LST_250_COM/LG_LST_250_COM_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/phones/GTRAN_GCP_4020/ rconnect1.0/phones/GTRAN_GCP_4020/GTRAN_GCP_4020_USB/ rconnect1.0/phones/GTRAN_GCP_4020/GTRAN_GCP_4020_USB/GTRAN_GCP_4020_USB rconnect1.0/phones/GTRAN_GCP_4020/GTRAN_GCP_4020_USB/GTRAN_GCP_4020_USB_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_A563/ rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_A563/SAMSUNG_SCH_A563_USB/ rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_A563/SAMSUNG_SCH_A563_USB/SAMSUNG_SCH_A563_USB rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_A563/SAMSUNG_SCH_A563_USB/SAMSUNG_SCH_A563_USB_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_A603/ rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_A603/SAMSUNG_SCH_A603_USB/ rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_A603/SAMSUNG_SCH_A603_USB/SAMSUNG_SCH_A603_USB rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_A603/SAMSUNG_SCH_A603_USB/SAMSUNG_SCH_A603_USB_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_A663/ rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_A663/SAMSUNG_SCH_A663_USB/ rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_A663/SAMSUNG_SCH_A663_USB/SAMSUNG_SCH_A663_USB rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_A663/SAMSUNG_SCH_A663_USB/SAMSUNG_SCH_A663_USB_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_N191/ rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_N191/SAMSUNG_SCH_N191_USB/ rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_N191/SAMSUNG_SCH_N191_USB/SAMSUNG_SCH_N191_USB rconnect1.0/phones/SAMSUNG_SCH_N191/SAMSUNG_SCH_N191_USB/SAMSUNG_SCH_N191_USB_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2030/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2030/LG_RD_2030_USB/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2030/LG_RD_2030_USB/LG_RD_2030_USB rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2030/LG_RD_2030_USB/LG_RD_2030_USB_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2030/LG_RD_2030_COM/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2030/LG_RD_2030_COM/LG_RD_2030_COM rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_2030/LG_RD_2030_COM/LG_RD_2030_COM_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_7130/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_7130/LG_RD_7130_USB/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_7130/LG_RD_7130_USB/LG_RD_7130_USB rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_7130/LG_RD_7130_USB/LG_RD_7130_USB_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_7130/LG_RD_7130_COM/ rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_7130/LG_RD_7130_COM/LG_RD_7130_COM rconnect1.0/phones/LG_RD_7130/LG_RD_7130_COM/LG_RD_7130_COM_ACTIVATE.TXT rconnect1.0/common/ rconnect1.0/common/check rconnect1.0/common/sheller.sh rconnect1.0/common/rconnect rconnect1.0/common/options rconnect1.0/common/monitor 6

rconnect1.0/common/a.ppprc rconnect1.0/common/rdisconnect rconnect1.0/common/rupdate rconnect1.0/common/runinstall rconnect1.0/common/detectmodem rconnect1.0/install.sh rconnect1.0/LICENCE.TXT rconnect1.0/README rconnect1.0/comwizard rconnect1.0/.README.swp If your le had no corruption and things went well, this would work ne for you. Now you have all the requisites for installation and just need to go ahead with an installation.
Beginning the Installation
If you follow the instructions listed in Reliances website, youll probably get the following output. username@hostname> sh install.sh Welcome to RConnect Installation Wizard --------------------------------------[STEP : 1/5] Select your Reliance IndiaMobile Only root user can install Login as username-->root then try installation again RConnect Installation terminated Installing rconnect scripts Heres what youll have to be doing, to become user root and start the installation. (at least this is how I prefer doing it.) username@hostname> su password:<type your root password here> root@hostname> cd /home/username/path/to/rconnect1.0/ root@hostname> bash install.sh Now things start looking better. The script installation has started. Please remember that this script installation will work only so long as your phone hardware is supported. --------------------------------------Welcome to RConnect Installation Wizard --------------------------------------[STEP : 1/5] Select your Reliance IndiaMobile 1. GTRAN GCP 4020 7
2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
KYOCERA 7135 LG LSP -340E LG LST 250 LG RD 2030 LG RD 2130 LG RD 2230 LG RD 7130 SAMSUNG SCH A563 SAMSUNG SCH A603 SAMSUNG SCH A663 SAMSUNG SCH N191
To choose Your phone just type the corresponding serial number : I chose to use 3, which is the model I am currently connecting to. Youll be selecting your appropriate model. The model selection is important to select the correct modem initialization string, so ensure that you have selected the right model. Selected phone : LG LSP -340E Have you selected the correct phone (Y/N) : We can happily select Y here, or say N, reselect the right phone, come back here and press Y all over again. To get to the next step (assuming you selected the right phone), press Y. --------------------------------------Welcome to RConnect installation Wizard --------------------------------------[STEP : 2/5] Activating R Connect Follow the below instruction to activate R Connect 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Power on the phone. Press [MENU]. Press 2 [Additional]. Press 4 [SIO Baud Rate]. Select 115,200 bps option.
Have you activated R Connect (Y/N) : This is also probably the easier part, so you go ahead and say Y once youve done this. Trying higher Baud Rate settings is asking for trouble [at least, avoid doing that rst time] --------------------------------------Welcome to RConnect installation Wizard --------------------------------------[STEP : 3/5] Setup your Reliance IndiaMobile as Modem 8

Connecting your phone to your computer 1. Power on your phone 2. Connect the phone end of data cable to the phone 3. Connect the computer end of data cable to the computer COM ports on your computer : No com ports found on your computer Select the port to which your phone is attached : This is the most likely case if you are about to use USB to connect to the net. Theres a lot more we need to get ready or rely on the USB wizard. For this model at least you need an alternate USB-Serial converter (not provided by reliance). On the phone weve selected however, this is what you get: --------------------------------------Welcome to RConnect installation Wizard --------------------------------------[STEP : 3/5] Setup your Reliance IndiaMobile as Modem Connecting your phone to your computer 1. Power on your phone 2. Connect the phone end of data cable to the phone 3. Connect the computer end of data cable to the computer COM ports on your computer : 1. COM1 2. COM2 Select the port to which your phone is attached :
I chose 2, coz thats where my machine is connected to. Now the program tries an autodetect. If this is successful it prints out a MODEM DETECTED. In case it failed, it prints out a MODEM DETECTION FAILED. The problem with this autodetect is that if some other program had opened the modem earlier (for whatever reason), this would fail. This has worked for me the rst time I ran it, but not the second, and while Im writing this document against time, Im proposing a nasty hack. 2.3.1 Disabling the Modem Detection
hacking detectmodem Not reccommended if things have worked and your modem got detected. (or youre rerunning things after doing this.)
root@localhost> root@localhost> root@localhost> root@localhost> root@localhost> root@localhost> root@localhost>
cd /path/to/rconnect1.0/ cd common mv detectmodem detectmodem.old echo \#\!/bin/bash > detectmodem echo exit 0 >> detectmodem chmod a+x detectmodem cd.
Re run from the installation step (2.3). If things didnt work, you need to do this only once. You can obviously skip this part hoping youve selected the right model and port combination. The reason we are doing this is, detectmodem, instead of actually talking to the modem with the AT command sequence attempts to establish a ppp connection straight o. In short, this script needs to and will be rewritten. 2.3.2 Making the connection

step 4 The next step is trying out the connection. If you have done the detectmodem hack, things may not always turn out right. But so long as you selected the right serial port and the rest of them, it should work great. You only need your phone number as Username and Password. All STD codes are to be used with no 0 prexes. --------------------------------------Welcome to RConnect installation Wizard --------------------------------------[STEP : 4/5] Connecting to internet using R Connect Making a Connection <Username>-Enter your phone number with the STD code prefixed to it [Example: 2231790000] <Password>-Enter your phone number with the STD code prefixed to it [Example: 2231790000] Please enter username : 80123456 Please enter Password : step 5 Well, step 5 which never seemed to have happened here is actually asking permission to Connect. You would probably press Y now to nd out if the connection is established. Connecting to Device. Validating username password Successfully Connected Your Reliance web phones display should now show something about a PPP data connect and the data Receive and Transmit rates. You can try out your favorite browser (mine is Firefox) to connect and browse the net. With everything else being ne, this should work out of the box. In case you have doubts about your connectivity, just read the next section and the one on testing (2.5).
Connecting and Disconnecting
connecting This is probably what you would be doing more frequently once the installation is complete. You will need to be root and run /sbin/rconnect, every time you want to connect to the net. You can setup a shortcut on whatever desktop (KDE or GNOME and also set the suid bit to run the script as root from any user.) username@hostname> su password:<type your root password here> root@hostname> /sbin/rconnect Connecting to Device. Validating username password Successfully Connected
disconnecting You will have to manually disconnect, or the connection would get disconnected only when you explicitly shutdown your machine. You probably want to disconnect when you would no longer be requiring the connection. This you can do as follows. username@hostname> su password:<type your root password here> root@hostname> /sbin/rdisconnect avoiding root You can avoid doing everything as root by using setuid, though this is not reccommended if security is a major concern for your desktop. For simplicity, this is how youd setuid the connect and disconnect scripts. username@hostname> su password:<type your root root@hostname> chmod a+s root@hostname> chmod a+s root@hostname> chmod a+s password here> /sbin/rconnect /sbin/rdisconnect /usr/sbin/pppd

Testing the connection

Now, that you have everything congured, youll want to try out your connection. You can start with the following: username@hostname> ping www.google.com -c 4 PING www.google.akadns.net (64.233.171.104) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 64.233.171.104: icmp_seq=1 ttl=236 time=699 ms 64 bytes from 64.233.171.104: icmp_seq=2 ttl=236 time=689 ms 64 bytes from 64.233.171.104: icmp_seq=3 ttl=236 time=869 ms 64 bytes from 64.233.171.104: icmp_seq=4 ttl=236 time=779 ms --- www.google.akadns.net ping statistics --4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3619ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 689.724/759.547/869.734/72.604 ms
If things went well, youd see output like whats shown above. This means your machine can connect to google. You can immediately open your favorite browser and try connecting to a few sites. trouble with the connection If things didnt work out right, heres what youd most likely be seeing: username@hostname> ping www.google.com -c 4 ping: unknown host www.google.com At this point, Id want to you to run /sbin/rdisconnect once, rerun /sbin/rconnect make sure that your phone is showing up a PPP data transfer screen (with Receive, Transmit rates) and retry the ping. To verify whether the actual PPP connection is up, you can try to check as follows. username@hostname> /sbin/ifconfig lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:10 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:10 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:700 (700.0 b) TX bytes:700 (700.0 b) ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol inet addr:220.226.45.121 P-t-P:97.239.2.5 Mask:255.255.255.255 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:14 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:15 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:3 RX bytes:911 (911.0 b) TX bytes:372 (372.0 b)
If you arent seeing ppp0 here and /sbin/rconnect said successfully connected, then youll probably want to custom congure everything yourself and not use the script. Other simple commands you can run to verify if the ppp daemon is on is pgrep pppd which will show you the process number of pppd if it is running. If no number comes up, something fundamental is not working. Else this means theres more work to do.

Conclusion

inconclusive conclusion. This document is far from over. I havent dealt with all possible issues here, so this rst draft should still help you get connected to the net with little trouble. I also provide a version of the rconnect-cmdline1.0.tar with the detectmodem hacked because it seems to fail for me more than once and I cant wait for a proper rewrite. contacting me. http://www.geocities.com/sunilbetabaskar/contact.html should tell you how to get to me. 12