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 :-)

I am back home from Amsterdam where I presented a talk titled "PHP 5 - The Year After" at the EuroOSCON conference.

On Monday I arrived in time for lunch (which I had together with Rasmus Lerdorf). In the afternoon I attended Brian Fitzpatrick's tutorial on Subversion. In the evening I enjoyed Damian Conway's "Fun with Dead Languages" extravaganza which was preceded by Larry Wall's "9.3th State of the Onion".

On Tuesday I unfortunately had to leave the conference almost directly after my own presentation; I would have loved to stay for the whole conference.

I enjoyed being at the conference and had good conversations, for instance with Russel Nelson and Bruno Souza with the OSI, Jeff Waugh of GNOME and Ubuntu Linux fame, Gervase Markham of Mozilla Firefox fame, and Matthew Langham.