/etc/gnokiirc configuration for getting it to work (took me some time to figure):


[global]
port = /dev/ttyACM0
model = 6510
initlength = default
connection = dku2libusb
use_locking = yes
serial_baudrate = 19200
smsc_timeout = 10
[xgnokii]
allow_breakage = 0
[gnokiid]
bindir = /usr/sbin/
[connect_script]
TELEPHONE = 09876543210
[disconnect_script]
[logging]
debug = off
rlpdebug = off
xdebug = off


A sample run

anacoluthon:~# gnokii --identify
GNOKII Version 0.6.26
IMEI : 012345678901234
Manufacturer : Nokia
Model : RM-495
Product name : RM-495
Revision : V 05.80


Send sms

anacoluthon:~# /usr/games/fortune | gnokii --sendsms +919936748748
GNOKII Version 0.6.26
Send succeeded!


Some gotchas:
Works as root only at the moment. Can’t get or set ringtones . SMS reader doesn’t work with xgnokii. The connecting USB cable is too short

Next on the agenda, testing opensync with gnokii.

When a company pays for a vendor lock-in, they buy not only into the upgrades/support, they also “buy in” a assured End-Of-Life date for the product. Though it’s natural that any product reaches it’s EOL sooner or later, open source based products usually follow a evolutionary approach to progression and growth.

I’ve seen Sendmail installations that have withstood the march of time and  have been maintained and upgraded regularly without the need for any redeployment, massive reconfiguration or any increase in IT budgets. I’ve seen software systems deployed at a time when the term open source was not at all coined running the show without any complaints.

Open Source based solutions really work wonders on a SME’s infrastructure breadth, stability, budget. The only weak link in such deployments are the availability of skilled people to maintain and enhance the services.

This is where we come in. We do take out a lot of headache for SMEs (and a couple of Large corporates too).

BTW, we have an interesting internship programme for students, freshers who wish to learn more about Linux deployments. If you’re interested do drop me a mail

I needed to figure out how to use zenity, the man pages didn’t tell much. So I went on a hunt for other scripts in the system that might use zenity; I was on Debian Etch system running the usual Gnome Desktop and quite a few applications from the Gnome bunch.


shashi@anacoluthon:~$ for p in `echo $PATH|sed 's/:/ /g'`; do find $p -type f|xargs grep -il zenity; done
/usr/bin/zenity
/usr/bin/gdialog

Eh! Only two programs and that too zenity itself and a wrapper over zenity for backward compliance. It’s not much popular is it ? If it isn’t why don’t I remove it from my system ?

$ su -c 'apt-get remove zenity'
Password:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
gnome-desktop-environment zenity

uh! oh!! gnome-desktop-environment!!!??? WTF ? So, what dependencies does this package have ?

shashi@anacoluthon:~$ apt-cache rdepends zenity
zenity
Reverse Depends:
|ssft
gnuvd-gnome
|peercast-handlers
|eclipse-platform
eclipse-platform
eclipse
gnomemeeting
powersaved
gdm
gnome-desktop-environment

heh! heh!! So much for a core dependency. Should it be such a core dependency in the first place ?? Anyway it has it’s own place in the software trove.

An interesting tidbit about zenity. This was the first program I translated to Kannada way back in 2002-2003. But it never made it to the repository.

BTW, another interesting program: PySchoolClock