Sunday, May 9, 2010

Globe Tattoo on Ubuntu Karmic

I retried globe tatoo on Ubuntu today.  One of the things that I was unable to do before was use the SMS to check my balance.  Poisonjin's instructions worked for me, you can read it here http://poisonjin.livejournal.com/37314.html.

The instructions which I modified is as follows:

  1. Install the linux-backports-modules-generic package and gnome-phone-manager (for sending and receiving SMS).
  2. Plug in your Tattoo Huawai USB modem.
  3. Right click NetworkManage, select Edit Connections.
  4. At the "Mobile Broadband" tab, select Add. The wizard to set up a mobile broadband connection appears.
An alternative to 3 and 4 is left click on the network icon and select new gsm broadband etc (assuming you have no previous globe telecom internet listed ).  A wizard will appear allowing you to select Philippines then Globe.  You will still need to follow 3 and 4 to change the following things two things: change the APN from "internet.globe.com.ph" to "http.globe.com.ph". And I would have to add to poisonjin's instructions is to check the box that says make the available to all users or something.  I was not able to connect to the Internet when that was disabled, eventhough I was connected to globe.

The Phone Manager can be found in Applications-->System Tools.  Don't expect a dialog box to appear.  Instead an icon in the menu bar should appear.  It would probably have a red zero with slash, which means it is unable to connect to the phone. Right click on the icon and select Preferences. A dialogue box will appear, Click on the "Connection" tab. Select "Other port" and cycle through any one of the following that will work:

/dev/ttyUSB0
/dev/ttyUSB1
/dev/ttyUSB2


If everything is set up correctly you should see a phone icon near the globe network connection icon in your menu bar.


To send SMS click on the phone icon, ex. type 222 in Recipient and BAL in the Message text box to query your balance.


A problem with Phone Manager is that it does not seem to have any access to the phone address.


A more serious problem that I have noticed is that when you have an existing  mobile broadband setting (e.g. Globe Telecome Internet) and the usb modem is unplugged, xserver seems to become unstable.  There are random artifacts of black rectangles appearing on my screen (usually on top of the menu bar) and I am randomly logged out of the xserver.  I'm using Ubuntu amd64, gnome, and an nvidia graphics card. Deleting the mobile broadband connection setting restabilize the system.  I'm still studying this but I have not reported a bug yet, if you've experienced the same please confirm and report it.
 
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