Sebastian Bergmann

Today I received my OpenMoko / FreeRunner mobile phone Linux computer.

Here is how I set up the USB networking between the FreeRunner and my notebook (which runs on Ubuntu Linux):

1. sudo aptitude install dnsmasq
2. sudo iptables -F
3. sudo ifconfig usb0 192.168.0.200 netmask 255.255.255.0
4. sudo route add 192.168.0.202 usb0
5. sudo iptables -I INPUT 1 -s 192.168.0.202 -j ACCEPT
6. sudo iptables -I OUTPUT 1 -s 192.168.0.200 -j ACCEPT
7. sudo iptables -A POSTROUTING -t nat -j MASQUERADE -s 192.168.0.0/24
8. sudo echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

Now you can log into the FreeRunner via SSH using ssh root@192.168.0.202 and the FreeRunner has network access through the USB connection.

In anticipation of the Neo FreeRunner phone that I pre-ordered, I installed the OpenMoko software stack using this tutorial for getting an emulation environment on my Ubuntu system.

So far, I like what I see. Of course you cannot really test the phone features (telephony, GPS, ...) in an emulated environment, yet this is enough for a first impression of the platform and its software stack.

My next project will be to figure out how to build software packages for OpenMoko and try to build PHP 5 and PHP-GTK2 for it. How nice would it be to build applications for your phone in PHP? Very :-)