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Share internet and TCP/IP services over Bluetooth
Authored by: sparcleosx on Jun 25, '05 05:30:57AM

I've been searching for a solution for days, and trying all the options, scripts and programs I found.

the lost scripts from technoHappyMeal, which were no longer available, but found in a forum thread http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=30635;
the utility Bluetooth Serial Utility; considered Brickhouse; followed articles with
step by step ways.

But none of these seemed to work right. Error here, failure there.

So.. I tried it myself with the combination of all I read and tried before.. And I
have to admit... It was fairly easy afterall..

Assuming the Palm is already setup for a bluetooth serial connection to another
bluetooth device, you are a few steps away from a succesful connection..

My Mac Mini , with Tiger 10.4.1 is behind an OpenBSD firewall. So it has a
private range address (ie. 10.0.0.0/8, or 172.16.0.0/16), in this case it's in a
range of 172.16.140.8/29, which leaves me a few addresses.. This is not really
important for the moment. I just mention it, for the fact I'm not using 'natd' on my mac, to keep it simple.

First I stopped the Hotsync Manager (opened it, and selected 'Disable'), then in the Bluetooth preference pane I changed the Bluetooth-PDA-Sync serial setting from modem to RS-232.

In a terminal I entered :
sudo /usr/sbin/pppd /dev/tty.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync 115200 noauth local passive proxyarp asyncmap 0 silent persist :172.16.140.14

(here you see the 172.16.140.14 address, which makes it possible not to use natd, since it's in the same network as the Mac is. So the Firewall knows where to sent it to.. got no routing problems etc.. pick any free address in your private range .. if you are using , for example : firewall -> 192.168.1.1 mac -> 192.168.1.2 you can enter instead of 172... 192.168.1.3)

in the system.log on the mac (tail -f /var/log/system.log) you should see something like this :

Jun 25 10:33:57 hostname pppd[679]: pppd 2.4.2 (Apple version 229) started by username, uid 0
Jun 25 10:33:57 hostname pppd[679]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/tty.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync

the last thing you have to do, is make sure the mac shares the internet connection.. (forwards the packets..) this is done by :
sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1
which results in :
net.inet.ip.forwarding: 0 -> 1

and I had to type :
sudo ifconfig ppp0 up

now your mac should be able to receive packets from the Palm over the pppdaemon (ethernet interface ppp0) and forward them to the default router.
(which might be your firewall, or your uplink to your ISP)

Now your Palm (I'm using a Palm Tungsten T3, but that shouldn't really matter,
as long as your Palm has Bluetooth.. ) should be set up for using a Bluetooth network connection to your mac.

And you can surf the internet ...

So.. short :
- Disable Hotsync Manager
- Change Bluetooth-PDA-Sync (in BT-prefpane) type from modem to RS-232
- enter in a terminal :
sudo /usr/sbin/pppd /dev/tty.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync 115200 noauth local \
passive proxyarp asyncmap 0 silent persist :172.16.140.14
sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1
sudo ifconfig ppp0 up
( and setup your Palm for a BT connection to your mac)



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