Hello,everyone.

I am using Nokia 8210 as a GSM modem at home via gnokii.However,when I use Nokia 8210,the IrDA will shut down if there are no data communication within 2 minutes.As a result,I wrote a shell script to send some message like gnokii --getnetworkinfo to keep the phone's IrDA busy.It seems to work for a while.However,when I tested it last whole night,it generated some error message say like "interface failed..."

My question is,how can I keep my Nokia 8210 IrDA on forever except I stop it?Any ideas are appreciated.

I'd look more in to how to operate your phone, since what you're doing is pretty much all you can do on the GNU/Linux side. Unless you can reprogram your phone from your GNU/Linux distribution....

d0odman,thanks for your reply.

As far as I know,it's quite impossible for me to "reprogram" my mobile phone because it's very complicated.

I just can't figure out why my method is successful by half.It seemed fine at the beginning of 10 or so minutes.But it caused error after that.

Can you post your shell script please?

Something like that,I can't really remember.However,I don't think the problem lies on the script.It lies on either gnokii package or phone problem.

Thank you anyway.

I think you should look more in to how to operate your phone. If sending out that command every 15 seconds doesn't keep your IR active, there's something else going on.

How long does it take that command to finish? If it takes longer than 15 seconds, then you'd miss one loop of your while, and after you're able to see the third one and are able to send it again, your IR connection could have already shut down. Try increasing the sleep time to 30 or something.

d0odman,thanks for your reply.

I definitely think that the script will not take more than 15 seconds except there are errors.By the way,if you increase the sleep time,I think the connection will be lost easily.As you said,if the first script has problem or process longer than expected,say like a minute or 2.When you increase the sleep time,the connection will be lost.

d0odman,have you ever played around with gnokii?I don't know whether they have some method to connect the mobile phone consistently.Maybe a cable should work.However,I am not sure whether my phone can be connected with serial cable or something.Or most importantly,I can't easily buy it in Hong Kong because this phone is too old in this rapidly changing world.

Thanks for your great help.I can't really get any reply from the official supporting e-mail from gnokii. :-{

Development teams are usually very busy doing other things,and put out some shady documentation at best a lot of the time. I haven't used gnokii, but I can look in to it, now that I have an IR capable phone :P I'll check in to it later tonight, hopefully, for you.

Thanks a million!

d0odman,someone replied to my question in the mailing list.He doubted that my mobile phone terminated the IrDA connection and he suggested me to write a script which writes data to the phonebook and delete it back and forth.I'll try it by tonight.However,I am quite skeptic about this method because it's doing quite the same task as mine.It keeps sending data to the mobile phone and make it busy.Anyway,I'll try every method.

I finally looked in to the gnokii project, and it seems that my phone is not supported. I have a Motorola L7 (SLVR), the US model that has the iTunes firmware. I've been trying to figure out a way to access and upload music to it, but since it's a pretty new piece of hardware, there is not a lot of support for it yet. There's a way to use iTunes over wine, I believe, but that's just not gonna cut it for me.

Oh yeah, I also incorrectly assumed that the phone comes with an IR port, and I think there's no wrapper to use the built in bluetooth capabilities of the phone with gnokii.

d0odman,thanks for your reply.

Sadly,I've given up to fix this problem and waste my time.I use my Motorola V500 with USB cable and it works fine.

2 min. == 120 sec. Try sleep 100 -- I think you may be overwhelming the phone w/ your keep alive commands.

2nd possibility, any chance it's the modem link (phone to ISP) that is being shut down, not the IrDA link (computer to phone)? If so, a ping every 100 sec. might be the solution.

BTW, your script could be simplified:

archtoad6,thanks for your reply.

By the way,if I set the sleep time to 100,then my connection will be terminated when my previous script,gnokii --getnetworkinfo takes more than 20 secs to execute.So,frankly,I don't think it's the solution.Moreover,as far as I know,gnokii cannot process two request at a time,I think this is the real problem.Maybe some process hasn't finished but next process rushed in.Anyway,I don't really care about this right now because I've been wasted quite a lot of time on this.

If you have any friends who can get the IrDA keep connected under gnokii without problem,I would like to listen,though.

P.S:
1.I've heard that IrDA is notorious on Linux because it's not very common.Maybe bluetooth is better.
2.Thanks for your coding recommendation.I should be economical on writing my code.:-)

I think you're right about Bluetooth ("BT") vs. IrDA. I just got a Sony Ericsson W600i, which has both; & my experiments & readings so far lead me to believe that BT is much more likely to be the way to sync the phone w/ a KDE & Kontact. Or anything else, except direct phone-to-phone transfers, which seem to be smooth w/ IrDA.

I don't have a modern, working IrDA dongle nor am I likely to buy one given the promise of BT. Still I will keep my ears open. As they say "don't hold your breath" -- my friends:

• have broadband, not dial-up
• have phones w/ BT, not IrDA, nor both
• have PDA's & don't care about sync'ing phones

The 2 problems I would like to solve are:

1. sync my phone w/ a KDE & Kontact
2. use the W600i as a (BT) modem for a buddy's Nokia 770 "web tablet" when we are at a restaurant w/ no hotspot