iPhone internet sharing with Ubuntu

Internet sharing using a mobile phone as network accesspoint, also known as tethering is a good thing. I’ve got it easily up and running on my HTC Desire (over wifi), my Nokia E71 (over adhoc-wifi) and now I’ve got it working on my gf’s iPhone. This post is about that.

Thank’s to this url I could easily get it up and running in a few steps summarized as follows:
– Be sure that your other network connections (ex Wifi) are disabled
– pair the devices (I used the ubuntu standard bluetooth icon in the panel). Setup new devices or whatever…
– follow the guide (paste the apt commands to add repository and install blueman)
– run command blueman-manager
– find the iPhone in the list, choose Network – connect, or setup and then choos network connection.
– You should get a success message or get some indication of that you are connected to the device and using “network…”.
– in a terminal run ifconfig
– you should se an interface named bnep0 probably
– get an ip from the iPhone by running the command: dhclient -i bnep0
You are now connected. At least I was =)
If not proceed with normal network troubleshooting using bnep0 as your external network interface.

I used Ubuntu 10.04.

The howto on the link above also describes how to tether Ubuntu and an iPhone over USB instead of bluetooth. That I haven’t tried… yet.

Good Luck!