GNOKII FAQ
Pawel Kot, pkot@bezsensu.pl
Hugh Blemings, hugh@blemings.org

$Id: FAQ,v 1.41 2008/03/01 14:54:34 pkot Exp $

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. What is gnokii?

A. It is the name of a project that aims to develop tools and drivers for
   Nokia mobile phones. These tools include modem drivers, console tools,
   GUI applications etc. All software that forms part of the project is
   released under the GNU General Public License.  Please see the COPYING
   file for more details on license/copying issues, the lack of warranty
   and where to send a postcard if you like gnokii :-)  Gnokii is designed
   to work on a variety of operating systems (Linux, FreeBSD, etc.) and
   hardware platforms (PPC, Intel, etc.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. How do you pronounce gnokii?

A. You can pronounce gnokii as "gnooki" or "gnocki" as you prefer :-)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. What models are supported?

A. You can assume that your phone is supported, however there are rare cases
   that you will get very limited functionality with gnokii. If you have a
   fairly modern phone you should use the following model setting in your
   config file:
    - model = series40, if you have Nokia non-Symbian Series60 phone,
    - model = gnapplet, if you have Nokia Symbian Series60 prior to 3rd
    Edition phone,
    - model = AT, for all other.
   If you have some older Nokia (like 6210) phone you may try using its
   brand name, eg. model = 6210.
   See also our <http://wiki.gnokii.org/index.php/Config> for configurations
   known to work.

   Symbian series60 3rd edition (most Nokia n and e series) are not
   supported by gnapplet driver due to changes in Symbian API. For now you
   can get some functionality using AT driver.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I get "Hmmm... GSM_LinkOK never went true. Quitting." message when
   running gnokii. What's wrong?

A. Gnokii cannot connect to the phone. Possible reasons are:
    - wrong serial port is defined in gnokii config file,
    - you are using the wrong cable,
    - you are using not supported phone model,
    - you don't have permission to write to /dev/ttySX device.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. Does mgnokiidev need to be suid root?

A. Yes. gnokiid needs to create a symbolic link in the /dev directory.
   mgnokiidev is the program which does this and hence it must be suid
   root so it can write to the directory. mgnokiidev is executable only
   for gnokii group members (and root) so it presents a minimal security
   risk.
   
   Be sure that you don't use a version of gnokii older than 0.3.5
   if you want to install mkgnokiidev suid root and give the access for
   execution for untrusted users. Earlier versions had security
   problems and allowed people to write to an arbitrary file.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. Should any other gnokii binary be installed suid root?

A. No. There is no need. gnokii isn't intended for setuid/setgid operation.
   If you set the setuid/setgid bit, you're taking a huge security
   risk. All you need is read/write permission for the device you are using
   for connection (port option in the config file). You can safely do it
   using groups management.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q: Can I use IrDA with 6210/7110 and gnokii?

A: Yes. Just put this line

        connection = irda

   into your config file.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I'd like to send/receive sms, to handle voice calls, etc from my own
   application. What should I do?

A. If the license of your application is GPL the easiest solution is to
   use libgnokii. In this case you needn't to handle low level stuff,
   libgnokii will do it for you. If you want to use a scripting language,
   Konstantin Agouros had written a perl module, you can download it from

   http://www.agouros.de/gnokii

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. Can I get a copy of the protocol for the <insert phone model here>?

A. We don't have any formal documentation of the protocols in use.

   Since we get this request once a week on average we'll repeat the answer
   here... :)

   We don't have any formal documentation of the protocols in use.

   The best source we can offer is the knowledge assembled by Nagy Balazs
   and Marcin Wiacek. You can find result of their work in Docs/protocol/
   subdirectory in gnokii sources. Note that not all known protocol functions
   are implemented in gnokii.

   Alternatively there are some web sites that have collated some
   information:
   
     Nokia 5110/6110
       http://www.gadgets.demon.co.uk/nokia61xx/protocol.html

     Marcin Wiacek's pages are also useful;
       http://www.mwiacek.com

     Nagy Balazs' pages:
       {Seem to have dissapeared, anyone have a new link ? - Hugh}

     If you find the previous pages hard to read, there's a good introduction:
       http://www.embedtronics.com/nokia/fbus.html

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. Does gnokii work under Sun's Solaris?

A. In general yes, but it depends on hardware -- your serial port
   must support at least 115200 baud rate. Sun Enterprise 250 machine is known
   to work with gnokii.  Earlier Sparc machines (IPC, IPX, Classic) probably
   won't work due to hardware limitations.

   If your hardware doesn't support 115200 baud rate you can try the M2BUS
   mode (don't forget it needs an M2BUS capable cable). It is much slower
   but it should work.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. Could you tell me the key for on, off and select menu in
    gnokii --keysequence function?

A. M: menu, N: names, P: power, G: green phone, R: red phone, U: up, D: down
   +: increase volume, -: decrease volume, 0123456789#* as is. N means
   cancel for Nokia 3210 and 3310. Only the nk6100 (6110 and compatibles)
   and nk7110 (7110 and compatibles) drivers supports this functionality.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. How can I redirect a call without the broken gnokii --divert command?

A. You can use the gsm-code *21*yournumber# for this. Pipe it in per
   stdout to gnokii with the following command: "echo '*21*yournumber#G' |
   gnokii --keysequence". The 'G' at the end stands for the handy key with
   'Green phone'-symbol on it. Note: This will take some time, because your
   provider has to affirm it. I.e. redirecting to a number in Munich,
   Germany (tested on Nokia 8210):
   echo '*21*089123455678#G' | gnokii --keysequence

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I get 'undefined symbol: GSM_ELogHandler' when runnig gnokii. What's
   wrong?

A. gnokii didn't install correctly. You probably had gnokii installed already
   and you either forgot to run 'make install' or the installation didn't
   overwrite the old library. Remove the old libgnokii.so and then rerun
   'make install'.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I had problems during compilation with gnvcal.lx/gnvcal.c. What should I do?

A. Install flex. It should be available in every Linux distribution as well
   as in CygWin.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. Which cable for the Nokia phones should I use?

A. For Nokia 61X0/51X0 models you should use DAU9P cable. Nokia 61X0 models are
   also able to use an infrared connection.

   For Nokia 7110/62X0/6310 models you need either DAU9P or DLR3P cable. With
   DLR3P cable you can use AT commands to talk to the phone. These phones are
   also able to use an irda connection.

   For modern Nokia phones without external memory (6100, 3100, 3120, 3200,
   3220, 6610, 7210, 7250, 68xx, 6200, 6220) use DKU-5 cable. The recent
   replacement for this cable is named CA-42.

   For modern Nokia phones with external memory (6620, 7610, 6630, 3230, 6230,
   668x, 9300, 7710, 9500, 3200) use DKU-2 cable.

   Most Nokia phones that have no visible connector have one under the battery.
   See our cables page (http://www.gnokii.org/cables.shtml) to find sites
   with more details and some suggested places to buy the cable.

   For other vendors see user manuals and vendor websites.

   Most of the modern phones have the irda or bluettoth connector.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I get 'Sorry, phone has not yet been converted to new style.
   Phone.Functions == NULL!' message. What's wrong?

A. You're using an ancient version of gnokii! Upgrade! See our downloads
   page for the details (http://www.gnokii.org/downloads.shtml).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I get 'ERROR: Modem DCD is down and global/require_dcd parameter is set!'
   What should I do?

A. Either comment out require_dcd variable in the config file or set it to 0

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I can't compile gnokii. It fails when building the po directory.

A. You need to run gettextize. See autogen.sh and INSTALL files. If you don't
   have it on your system, grab the -current tarball which should have all
   needed files already generated.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. When connecting by IrDA I got "Couldn't open PHONET device: No route to
   host" message. What can be wrong?

A. Something's wrong with the irda device setup. Try to run:

echo 115200 > /proc/sys/net/irda/max_baud_rate

   and see whether it helps.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. My phone is not mentioned as supported by gnokii, but it seems that it is
   similar to the one of the mentioned in the supported phones list? What
   should I do to check this out?

A. It is quite simple. If you use AT compatible phone you can just use
   'model = AT' in the config file. If you have Nokia and you would like to
   enable FBUS mode (it has more facilities then AT mode), there are few
   things you should do.
   
   For example, let's say you want to check the support for Nokia
   6211, which should be compatible with Nokia 6210. First, find the
   correct driver. The drivers are located in the common/phones/ directory
   within the gnokii sources:

pkot@bzzzt:~/gnokii/common/phones$ grep -n 6210 *
nk7110.c:148:      "7110|6210|6250|7190",      /* Supported models */
nk7110.c:958:   /* This is ugly hack. But the picture message format in 6210
nk7110.c:1197:  /* Nokia 6210 and family does not show not "fixed" messages from the
nk7110.c:1610:  /* 6210/7110 needs to seek the first free pos to inhabit with next note */

   Line 148 in this case is the one you want as it is where we define
   the GSM_Phone structure. Just add new model, so the line will contain:

7110|6210|6250|7190|6211

   Once this is done, look in the file common/misc.c.  It contains a large
   phone capabilities table. Find the one for the phone that is similar to
   yours. In our case this is 6210:

{"6210",  "NPE-3", PM_CALLERGROUP | PM_CALENDAR | PM_SPEEDDIAL | PM_NETMONITOR | PM_EXTPBK | PM_SMS | PM_FOLDERS }

   We will replace two first fields as for our phone. The second field is
   the phone model identifier. In most of the phones to get this type on
   your phone keyboard the following sequence: *#0000#. If it doesn't work
   search the Internet for the information. Let's say in our example that
   the string is NPL-3. Our line will contain:

{"6211",  "NPL-3", PM_CALLERGROUP | PM_CALENDAR | PM_SPEEDDIAL | PM_NETMONITOR | PM_EXTPBK | PM_SMS | PM_FOLDERS }

   This is almost everything. Now recompile the sources and add
   "model = 6211" (according to your Nokia model) to the config and try if
   it works. In any case let us know (to the gnokii mailing list) about the
   result.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. I'm using the Win32 gnokii distribution and got the error "Couldn't open
   FBUS device". What's wrong?

A. Make sure that you put in the config file "port = com1:", not
   "port = :com1".

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. How do I enable debug output?

A. Place the new section in your config file (or update existing section in
   a similiar way):

   [logging]
   debug = on

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. Gnokii does not work with my Fedora system with planetccrma patches.
   Could you please fix it?

A. There is nothing wrong with gnokii. Please contact people from
   planetccrma responsible for the kernel patches and ask them to fix the
   problem.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q. Please help me configure my Nokia eXX/nYY to work with gnokii.

A. Nokia e and n series are Symbian Series60 3rd Edition based. Our gnapplet
   driver is not compatible with this OS (yet). You can get limited
   functionality (due to Symbian limitation) by using AT driver.
