But there is a way to do this using multiple bluetooth serial ports. This guide will show you how.

The phones in question and the connections are:

• Motorola V3M using Verizon’s Broadband Connect Service via USB cable
• Motorola V3M using Verizon’s Broadband Connect Service via Bluetooth
• Nokia N95 using T-Mobile’s Total Internet service via Bluetooth

Using a USB cable is easiest to configure and at least allows the phone to not lose battery while being used (using Bluetooth drains the phone’s battery fast).   However it is a hassle at times when you just need a quick connection. It’s nice keeping it in the pocket for those purposes.

While this guide is specific to these model phones and services, the ideas presented should work for similar situations with some minor modifications. 

Motorola V3M using Verizon via USB cable

Plug USB cable into your Mac. It should auto-detect it and offer to configure it. Open System Settings and go into the Network applet and the below dialog box should appear. (Note: All pics can be clicked to be resized larger if difficult to read). 

You should see it defined in the network window as show below. 

If for some reason it does not appear, try to add it manually by clicking the + button at the bottom left of the network window.

Fill out the information as shown below substituting your own phone number where appropriate.  The password is vzw. This is only going to work if you have the Broadband Connect service added to your phone account. If not, it most likely will not work. (There are some hacks using older phones like e815 with old firmware to get around this. Try Google for how if interested).

Click the Advanced… button and configure the first tab (Modem) as below.  (Vendor: Other and Model Support: Verizon)

The last setting is what a lot of people don’t do, and leads to frequent disconnects. Click the PPP tab, then select Configuration menu entry next to Settings.  Ensure that PPP echo packets are OFF. 

Click OK and that takes you back to original Network window. Be sure to hit Apply.  IF not, the settings you just did won’t be save. I also like to check “Show modem status in menu bar” but that is optional.  If you do this you can easily connect using the icon in the menu bar.

That should do it. You should now be able to connect to the Internet anywhere Verizon has wireless broadband service.  Note that sometimes when my laptop is put to sleep, when it comes out of that mode, I can’t connect again until I unplug the phone’s USB cable and reconnect.

Motorola V3M using Verizon via Bluetooth

First step is to pair the phone to the Mac. With Motorola phones on Verizon, you have to first make your phone briefly discoverable.  To do this, on the phone press the Menu key, go over to “Settings and Tools”, choose 8 for Connections, then 2 for Bluetooth.  Choose the Setup menu entry.  I recommend changing the Name to something more descriptive so you can find it when searching for the device easily.  Make sure the Power setting is On and then select Find Me.  You’ll have 60 seconds after that to pair it. If you run out of time, simply repeat the above steps.

On the Mac, go to System Preferences in the Apple menu, then run the Bluetooth applet. Click the Set Up New Device button.  This will bring up the Bluetooth Setup Assistant. Click Continue, then select Mobile Phone from the choices.

A scan will occur for nearby mobile phones. Select the appropriate device. (It may take a minute or so to convert the MAC address (a bunch of hex numbers) to a device name.  If you’re in an area with other people’s phones you may see them listed as well. This is why it’s a good idea to rename your device, as mentioned above.  In the below example both of my phones are in range and viewable. Select the Verizon one (v3m in this example)

Click Continue button and you’ll be prompted by the phone to enter a pairing code if you agree to bond with the computer. The code will be displayed on the Mac, like the example below (the code you get will almost certainly be different)

The next dialog box asks you what you want to do with the phone (assuming the pairing is successful, if not repeat above steps).  Ensure the “Access the Internet with your phone’s data connection” is checked. 

Ah success, hopefully. But to be safe, go back into network settings and look for the entry for Bluetooth modem.  Go into advanced and confirm that PPP echo packets are off (it should be, now the default for bluetooth connections).  The settings should match what was specified for the USB connection.

At this point you should be able to dial into the net without a USB cable. Just be aware that this chews up battery power on your phone quickly (the v3m also gets quite warm too!)

Well if that’s all you care about (one modem configuration) then all is well. But in my case I wanted to define a second phone and that’s where I tripped up, as we’ll see in the next section — and how to get around it.

Nokia N95 using T-Mobile’s Internet service via Bluetooth

This should work the same on most modern Symbian based Nokia phones.  The first step before we setup the bluetooth connection is to ensure the phone is configured correctly to use T-Mobile’s (US) service.  You also need to buy a data package from T-mobile. My plan is a 5-year old $20/month for VPN (no ports blocked and a public IP, albeit a dynamic one) and 100 MMS messages included.  It uses an APN of internet3.voicestream.com.  You may have to use internet2.voicestream.com instead. 

To use the phone to tether to the laptop, you have to also set it up for that in addition to just configuring it to access the net from the phone.  

From the phone’s menu, choose Tools, then Settings, the scroll down and select Connection. From that menu choose “Packet Data.”

Enter the appropriate Access Point DNS name as show below. Just highlight it and select OK on the phone to enter it.   (Trivia, it’s voicestream.com because T-Mobile was once called VoiceStream)

Now back out of these screens and go back to the Tools screen, and choose Bluetooth. Make sure this phone has a descriptive name, turn on Bluetooth and make sure the phone is visible.

NOW we should be able to pair and configure the phone, as was done with the Motorola example above. To save me time, I won’t dup most of the screens above. 

As above, open the Bluetooth Setup Assistant and pair the phone to the computer and tell it to use the phone as a modem. Fill in the next screen as shown, using id/password of tmobile/tmobile. Now, doing this is going to overwrite some of your settings for your first bluetooth modem. A real hassle. But don’t fret.

Now if you go back to network settings you’ll see the former bluetooth modem settings are wiped and replaced. Set the phone number to *99#, veryify PPP echo packets are turned off as above, and then click apply.  You should be able to make a call through this phone now using the Connect  button. If the phone prompts for connection, you can get rid of that prompt by going into bluetooth settings on the phone and setting the computer as an authorized device.

How to have two Bluetooth modems configured

So, now that we wiped out the first settings, what now? Well this was where I was stuck for years and Google didn’t help, hence why I’m writing this post — hoping someone Googling for same info will find it and it will be of use.

The answer is to define two Bluetooth serial ports, one for each paired device. This can of course be extended to more than two if needed.

Open the Bluetooth preferences and select the first modem to configure (in this example, my v3m). Click the action wheel and choose “Show More Info”

Note if Edit Serial Ports already shows as above, you don’t need to do show more info.  Either way, choose to Edit Serial Ports and you should see a dialog box similar to below. Just ensure the “Show in Network Preferences” box is checked, then click Apply.

Go back to Network Preferences and it should prompt you that a new device was added. Select the device, and rename it to something more descriptive, like “V3M Dun” for example. Now configure it using the same settings as the original bluetooth setup above.

After done, do the same steps for your second phone. For my Nokia, the steps were a wee bit different so I suspect it may differ for other phones as well.

First, the Bluetooth settings for the N95 would not allow me to edit the serial ports. I had to choose “Show More Info” as above, then have it “Update Device Services.”

Next, the configuration screen was slightly different, as shown below. I had to select the Dial-UpNetworking line and then check to have that added to the Network Preferences.

As before, go into Network Preferences. It should prompt to add the device. Rename it, then configure it as was done above.

Final optional step is to delete the original Bluetooth Modem config since you’ll be using the bluetooth serial ports into each phone.  When done your Network Prefs and modem dialer menu should look similar to below.

Postscript

Some steps here can probably be eliminated, like each separate configuration of the bluetooth modem before defining the bluetooth DUN serial ports.  

If anyone reading this has anything to add, suggestions, or corrections, please leave a comment. Most likely your comment will get stuck in a moderation queue. My blog is a bit boring and I get maybe two legit comments a year on it (along with 20,000 spam comments that thankfully get handled OK)

Unfortunate timing, since my wife and I had to head home as well. We went to Penn Station to catch an Amtrak train south. The place was mobbed. My wife got a bit in front of me, trying to find a seat. We crammed ourselves into the train, no seats to be found. Yet another crappy train ride standing most of the way.In front of me was a black woman, next to her was an open seat with stuff piled on it. My wife was half-way down the car. I was about to ask the seated woman if the seat was vacant (I was pretty sure it was since there was only one seat check on it). Before doing so, the black woman asked. The asian woman who was seated said something to the black lady, got up, went forward in the car a bit, said something to my wife, came back with my wife, said “Sorry” to the black lady, and my wife sat down.

I figured the woman knew my wife, but I started wondering if that was true, so I sent my wife a text message “Do you know that lady?” She sent me a reply back “Never seen her before in my life.

“Wow, I had a hard time believing what I just witnessed. This Asian woman just simply didn’t want a black person sitting next to her, so she went down the aisle of the train and grabbed the first white person she saw.

At the next stop, as people got off the train, I made sure this lady got herself a seat.

Really pretty disturbing. I would have hoped this sort of thing never happens in this day and age. Guess I was being naive.

So she proceeds to tell me my drivers license expires on Friday and I won’t be able to use it to come back after that.

YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME.

So I say I’ll worry about it Sunday and she says “Fine, don’t say I never warned you.”

While waiting for my flight I do some googling for info and find a few horror stories about TSA and expired drivers licenses.

Gessh… a few other accounts told about how doing this can land you on the TSA watch list too, even after you get your license renewed.

Fortunately, I have a valid passport back home and a understanding wife who is going to send it to me here.

Now I just have to pray the passport doesn’t get lost.

Update July 2008: Since writing this I’ve found out that TSA will let you board a flight without ID or expired ID but you have to fully cooperate with their attempts to verify your identity. They will use some sort of national database with information about you and ask you a series of questions to determine if you are really you. So be prepared to know all sorts of information like your former addresses.  What they ask can change for each incident and person.  Wired has an article with more info about this.

Not only does it barf on websites that use GoDaddy, but also with my imap and smtp ssl certs used for my email. A pain when reading or sending on the N90.

I ensured the intermediate certificate was installed in the server correctly but that didn’t work.

Then I found a posting on Nokia support forum that said to install the root certificate in the phone using its native browser (not Opera). Which I did, by browsing to GoDaddy’s SSL certificate page and downloading the “Valicert Root — DER Format” root certificate. Once clicked, the phone’s browser prompts to install the cert and that root cert works for email as well!

Now I’m happy again!

There’s a script to rescan the scsi bus from a website that automates the process, but it didn’t work on one host I tried it.

I found that since we use qlogic drivers there’s a command that has to be run first to let the driver know that a rescan is coming (I guess).


echo "scsi-qlascan" > /proc/scsi/driver-name/adapter-id

After running it, I got this goodness in fdisk for the new device!

Disk /dev/sdd: 2000.4 GB, 2000414572544 bytes


In case that link goes dead…

1. Type about:config into the Firefox location bar.
2. Right-click on the page and select New and then Integer.
3. Name it privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins
4. Set the value to 2.

So, the idea is to move the data around live. This requires making a RAID 1 mirror on top of lvm — not usually done this way. It also requires learning enough about mdadm to be able to create a mirror without destroying the good data (ouch). The process of intially creating the mirror will require the regular lvm device be unmounted and the RAID (md) device mounted. But after that is done, the syncing of the mirror can happen live. Hence downtime is kept to an absolute minimum.

There’s a real derth of information out there for doing this type of thing, and maybe for good reason. I’m also disappointed that this is quite a bit of hassle compared to how I used to do this sort of thing on a DG/UX (Data General) system back in the mid 90s.

1. Create a new phys volume on temporary disk
2. Create a new volume group on new disk with larger extent size (32 megs)
3. Mirror the old data and new data together. NOTE: This requires RAID on top of lvm, not lvm on top of RAID
4. Break the mirror after it syncs, leaving data on the temporary disk
5. Create a new PV on the original disk with 32 meg PEs
6. Extend the volume group onto the new PE
7. Move the PEs from the temporary disk to the original disk
8. Shrink the volume group so it lives just on the original disk

Of course, before doing any of this, testing and documentation is required, hence this post. Also, this procedure was used and tested on RHEL 3. For the love of your job, data, sanity, and all that is holy, do not trust what I am saying here. Use it as a guide with other docs and test it on non-production box with data you can afford to lose. Then before doing it on a production box, make sure you have safe backups — preferably multiples.

Some commands to use to get a feel for what is on your disk already

• pvscan
• vgdisplay -v vg_group_name

For purposes of the demo, the good data is on vg san0 and physical device /dev/sdd. The temporary disk will be named san2 on /dev/sdc.

Initial test set up

pvcreate /dev/sdc
vgcreate -s 16m san2 /dev/sdc # NOTE: Using 16m as extent size just for testing
lvcreate -l 60 --name newhome san2

RAID 1 (mirror) background

Idea will be to create a RAID 1 mirror consisting of the main data disk and a “missing” disk. This will start it off in a degraded mode. After that we can add the temporary (new) disk to it as a hot add and it wil rebuild the mirror onto it. After that is done, we mark as bad the original disk and leave ourselves with data on the new disk. Then we kill the mirror and go back to naked lvm.

Finding info on if you could create a mirror and preserve old data, let alone if it’s on top of lvm was difficult, as in, my googling could not find anyone who did it.

Creating the mirror

THE ORDER OF THE DEVICES BELOW IS CRITICAL. The first device will be the master and will copy to the second device.

mdadm --create /dev/md0 -l 1 -n 2 /dev/san0/home /dev/san2/newhome
mdadm --detail /dev/md0
mount /dev/md0 /mnt/home

If that bothers you (and it really should) you can create the array with just the original disk, mount it, then hot add the second disk into the array after you know the data is there. Also, if you’re paranoid after reading the various notes below and intend to fsck the md device before mounting, it’ll save you time if you do it like this since the fsck won’t be beating the disk at the same time as the mirror sync is going.

mdadm --create /dev/md0 -l 1 -n 2 /dev/san0/home missing
mdadm --detail /dev/md0
fsck -f /dev/md0
resize2fs /dev/md0
mount /dev/md0 /mnt/home
mdadm /dev/md0 -a /dev/san2/newhome

At this point the mirror should start rebuilding. Now it will say it has three devices and the missing will still be listed, but when it’s done the rebuild it only shows the two devices (but the total # of devices still says three). So maybe there’s a better way to do this, but it works.

Run the –detail option again to monitor when the drive is done rebuilding. At this point we should be able to break off the original disk and be left with our data on the new disk.

But before doing that, just in case, we should create an mdadm.conf file so if the array has to be stopped and restarted, we don’t have to scan for it.

echo -e 'DEVICE\t/dev/san0/home /dev/san2/newhome' >> /etc/mdadm.conf
mdadm --detail --scan >> /etc/mdadm.conf

Stopping / Restarting the array

mdadm --stop --scan # will stop the array
mdadm --detail --scan # will start the array iff mdadm.conf file above was appended with correct info
mdadm -Ac partitions -m 0 /dev/md0 # will start it back up (if there is no config file)


Breaking the mirror

After (and only after, verify first) that the mirror syncing is done (.e.g. mdadm --detail /dev/md0), the mirror can be broken and we’ll have two identical mountable ext3 lvm partitions. One on the original disk, one on the temporary (new) disk. Before killing the mirror, be sure to unmount any file systems using the mirror. When checking the rebuild status with mdadm, look for a line that says “Rebuild Status :” — if that line is not there, it’s rebuilt.

umount /dev/md0
mdadm --manage --set-faulty /dev/md0 /dev/san0/home
mdadm --manage --set-faulty /dev/md0 /dev/san2/newhome
mdadm --stop --scan

Once this is done we can actually mount and use the parition, but the raid “superblock” will still be associated with each partition and that could lead to it accidently being restarted. To really destroy the mirror, the raid superblock needs to be zeroed out.

mdadm --misc --zero-superblock /dev/san2/newhome
mdadm --misc --zero-superblock /dev/san0/home

IMPORTANT NOTES

NOTE: This procedure goes for minimize downtime at the risk of file system safety. Before starting this you really should fsck the disk you are going to mirror — offline. Also, read notes below.

NOTE: The set-faulty commands above aren’t really needed if you’re just going to zero the superblocks right away but if you don’t, you could technically mount up both partitions, make changes, then unmount them and restart the mirror with probably really bad effects.

NOTE: fsck will fail on the mirror device because the size of the device shrinks a wee bit. However, once the mirror is broken, a fsck should work and pass OK.

NOTE: When you import a disk with an ext3 file system into a mirror like this, the physical size of the partiton shrinks a bit because the md superblock is stored at the end of the partition. Hence while it will mount, it will fail a fsck and there’s the risk (I think) that real data might overwrite the raid superblock, especially if the partition is filled. Hence to be very safe, one should run ‘fsck -f /dev/md0 ; resize2fs /dev/md0′ against the new raid partition before remounting. However, once you do this, when you destroy the mirror the filesystem probably should be rezised out to original size again.

Reference websites

• Software RAID Howto
• Article on RAID

The current version of horde we use has a calendar that is private only. The new version provides many groupware features including shared calendars, however, we are going to look at other groupware products as well.

It’s been basically narrowed down to either Microsoft Exchange or the latest set of Horde apps. One of my techs has set up a test exchange environment and to say it’s bloated is an understatement. Now granted it does a lot, but everything I hear is that most organizations hardly use all of Exchange features. There’s also a huge hardware cost. We do 40,000 email accounts on one dual-xeon 3 ghz box runnign Linux. Apparently we need a farm of several exchange servers to handle that kind of a load. Even only giving 10% of our users exchange would require at least four servers (two front-end and two back-end). Ouch.

Regardless, I have no religion about either platform, as long as the resources are provided to adequately support the chosen platform.

So this blog entry is mainly a place holder to jot down notes and experiences and is not going to be complete. So don’t consider this a formal case study or implementation guide. It will also focus primarily on horde since another tech has done Exchange. Hence it may seem biased towards that product.

NOTE: This is all done on Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4

Trick was to go into the wp-login.php file and find the

case login:

… statement, then go down a few lines and change the

$redirect_to = 'wp-admin/'

… statement and change it to just

$redirect_to = '/'

… to get the behavior I wanted.

If your blog isn’t in the root of your domain then that redirect should be to where it sits.

My last Quiznos Meal

You are looking at the last meal I will ever buy at Quiznos. They did the unforgiveable, they switched from Coke products to that Pepsi sludge.

It’s no secret that both Pepsi and Coke work to get exclusive rights to provide their stuff in places like this, by providing “incentives” to the owners to switch. And of course, the people that run these places see dollar signs in their head and switch, thinking that most people don’t care less — and probably that is true — but not this person.

I can’t imagine what the Coke and Pepsi reps tell their customers when working a deal like this. Do they say “You won’t lose any customers because they don’t care?” If they say this, then they are admitting that their product is not so special.

Well, some people care. Nothing beats a nice cold Diet Coke. Diet Pepsi is horrible. It’s bad enough that it does influence my decision. There’s a Subway down the street, and by golly, they toast their stuff now, and they serve Coke products, so I’m switching. I even told the franchise owner I was switching after he told me he couldn’t sell Coke products due to the contract.

Now I’m sure Quiznos won’t care less that ole Weave is switching, and I’m sure they may pick up some diehard Pepsi losers, but that’s not the point. What happened to the customer is always right? What happened to giving the customer what they want? Why not provide them a choice?

WE DESERVE THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE OUR OWN BRAND OF FIZZY DRINK

I know places lose some revenue from doing exclusives. Is it more than the incentive, I don’t know. Is the loss of goodwill worth it? 7-Eleven certainly has both company’s products in their fountains, for example. And for a while, they were making a big deal about giving people a choice.

My employer “used” to have both brands available in our cafeteria, but they switched to an exclusive Pepsi arrangement a year or so ago. And you know what happened? They lose revenue cause of it. How can I make such a claim? Because from actual experience I know I and other Coke lovers now smuggle in our own supply. So instead of dropping $1.25 on a bottle of Diet Coke there a few times a day, I just bring in a 12 pack of my own. The company cafeteria operation now gets squat.

And if the pain of having to wash down my meatball sub with a Diet Pepsi wasn’t bad enough, to make matters worse, it wasn’t even an iTunes “free song” winner.