My laptop is BenQ Joybook S52 which comes with built-in IrDA. Anyway, I have never used to try. My cellphone is Siemens CX65 which also comes with built-in IrDA. I would like to access the files inside the cellphone for both read and write, e.g., to backup and to change ringtone. Note that my operating system is Ubuntu Edgy Eft so it should be a possible mission.

First of all, IrDA device must be found and works properly. I verify the device using dmesg.

$ dmesg|grep -i irda
[17179593.216000] irda_init()

Not finish yet. I have to start irda-utils to activate irattach.

sudo invoke-rc.d irda-utils start

If you don't have irda-utils installed, simply install it.

sudo apt-get install irda-utils

In addition, I have to load kernel modules so add below lines to /etc/modules.

ircomm_tty
irtty_sir

If you don't want to reboot, just run modprobe.

sudo modprobe ircomm_tty
sudo modprobe irtty_sir

I found many approaches to achieve my goal, e.g., OBEX, SCMxx and SieFS. To access file system inside CX65, I choose to try SieFS. Unfortunately, SieFS is not available in Ubuntu. Luckily, I found debian packages available in a personal repository so I have to download, patch, and fix some dependencies to make it compilable on Ubuntu. After installation, SieFS should be usable as follows.

siefs -o device=/dev/ircomm0 /media/mobile

To unmount, use fusermount instead.

fusermount -u /media/mobile

For phonebook, SCMxx has been chosen.

sudo apt-get install scmxx

The device to use is /dev/ircomm0 again. To test the connection, use below command.

scmxx --device /dev/ircomm0 -i

If you want to add SieFS in /etc/fstab, use below line.

/dev/ircomm0  /media/cx65  siefs    user,noauto,device=/dev/ircomm0    0   0

And don't forget to create /media/cx65 with correct permission.

sudo mkdir /media/cx65
sudo chgrp fuse /media/cx65
sudo chmod 775 /media/cx65

Then mounting cellphone is pretty easy.

mount /media/cx65

References

• Ubuntu GNU/Linux on the HP Compaq nw8240
• Siemens CX65 and Ubuntu

Tags: ubuntu, cx65, irda