Synchronising a Nokia 5800 Mobile Phone with Linux

After playing around with the Nokia 5800 phone I managed to get most stuff working except for being able to back up my contacts from the phone to my desktop. After some research, I discovered a few tools that made it possible to setup and test this feature.

Author and Copyright

Copyright 2009 by Raj Mathur. The contents of this document may be reproduced under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA) licence.

About the Phone

When my Motorola A1200 (MotoMing) started dying in stages I started looking around for a replacement. The last few Motorola phones had got me used to a touch screen, so the choices were a bit limited. Finally settled on the 5800 because:

• It runs Symbian, which Nokia is going to open-source Real Soon Now.
• It has just about every connectivity option you can think of, apart from infra-red.
• It has a decent outdoor camera (sucks indoors and in bad light)
• It's cheap Bought mine for Rs 13,500 (~200 euros) and it should be even cheaper now.

Downside:

• The phone has no built-in PDF reader. WTF?
• No ODF (OpenOffice.org) or OOXML (MS-Office) document reader.

What Works Out of the Box

File Transfers work fine, either with Bluetooth (use the Gnome bluetooth-applet since KDE 4's bluetooth support is horribly broken) or using the supplied micro-USB cable.

GPS Traces and GPS Places import into jOSM without problems. Mapped a couple of tracks outside Manali and B Block Munirka so far.

What Doesn't Work

None of the various Linux Mobile Tools I've tried so far are able to connect to the phone with any level of success. So far the failure list includes:

• Wammu/Gammu
• KMobileTools
• Gnokii

Would be nice to have something that let's me compose an SMS on the computer and send it through the phone, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon.

Environment

OK, on to backing up the contacts. Whatever follows was on a Debian GNU/Linux x86 machine with the following:

• Debian GNU/Linux Testing
• Linux kernel 2.6.30-1-686
• multisync0.90 0.92.0~svn355-1
• multisync-tools 0.92.0~svn355-1
• USB Integrated System Solution Corp. KY-BT100 Bluetooth Adapter

Initial Setup

You first need to ensure that your computer is paired with the phone and you can browse files over bluetooth, etc. without needing authorisation. Once that is done, first test that you can connect to the phone from the command line. Run the command:

sdptool browse xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx | grep "\(Service Name\|Channel\)"

where the xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx is the bluetooth address of your phone. If you don't know that, put the phone into bluetooth discoverable mode and run:

hcitool scan

The sdptool command should produce some output like the following:

Service Name: AVRCP Target                                                  
Service Name: PnP Information                                               
Service Name: Phonebook access PSE
    Channel: 1
Service Name: Hands-Free Audio Gateway
    Channel: 2
Service Name: Headset Audio Gateway
    Channel: 3
Service Name: Audio Source
Service Name: AVRCP Controller
    Channel: 4
Service Name: Dial-Up Networking
    Channel: 22
Service Name: OBEX Object Push
    Channel: 5
Service Name: Imaging
    Channel: 6
Service Name: SyncMLClient
    Channel: 7
Service Name: OBEX File Transfer
    Channel: 8
Service Name: Nokia OBEX PC Suite Services
    Channel: 9
Service Name: Nokia SyncML Server
    Channel: 10

We're interested in Channel 7, the SyncMLClient.

Backing Up

We'll back up the contacts on the phone as individual VCard files into a directory on our computer.

Create a MultiSync Group

You need multisync0.90 (note, this is not the same as the multisync package) to do the backup. Start up multisync0.90 and select Add. Enter the name of the Group ("Nokia 5800 Backup" in our example) and click Apply.

Add Members to the Group

The group you just created must contain two members, one for the directory where the VCards will be stored and one for the phone itself. Click on Edit in your new group:

and then click on Add Member and select "File Synchronization":

Select the file-sync member and enter the name of the directory where into which your contacts must be stored (/home/raju/Contacts in our example):

The complete XML would look like this when you're done:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
    <config>
      <!-- directory path for file-sync -->
      <path>/home/raju/Contacts</path>
      <!-- should care of subdirectories (TRUE or FALSE) -->
      <recursive>FALSE</recursive>
    </config>

Now create the group member that will communicate with the phone. Click Add Member again and select "SyncML over OBEX Client".

To configure this, select the syncml-obex-client member on the left and enter the following configuration:

When you're done the XML would look something like this (xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx is the bluetooth address of your phone):

    <?xml version="1.0"?>
    <config>
      <!-- (Only for bluetooth) The bluetooth address if the bluetooth mode is selected -->
      <bluetooth_address>xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx</bluetooth_address>
      <!-- (Only for bluetooth) The bluetooth channel to use. `sdptool browse $MAC` to search for the correct channel -->
      <bluetooth_channel>7</bluetooth_channel>
      <!-- (Only for USB) The usb interface number of the SYNCML-SYNC target. use syncml-obex-client -u (you will need access to the USB raw device) to find it. -->
      <interface>0</interface>
      <!-- The string that the plugin will use to identify itself. Some devices need a special string here. -->
      <identifier>PC Suite</identifier>
      <!-- The syncml version to use: 0 for 1.0, 1 for 1.1 and 2 for 1.2 -->
      <version>1</version>
      <!-- if the plugin should use wbxml -->
      <wbxml>1</wbxml>
      <!-- The username to use. Leave empty to not require a username -->
      <username></username>
      <!-- the password for the username -->
      <password></password>
      <!-- sets the connection type to use. 5 means obex over usb, 2 means obex over bluetooth -->
      <type>2</type>
      <!-- If wbxml is enabled, defines wether the wbxml should use string tables -->
      <usestringtable>0</usestringtable>
      <!-- Never send ADD command, but send REPLACE (not needed normally) -->
      <onlyreplace>0</onlyreplace>
      <!-- Workaround around for mobile phones which only use local timestamps and _no_ UTC timestamps! -->
      <onlyLocaltime>0</onlyLocaltime>
      <!-- Sets the maximum allowed size in bytes of incoming messages (some device need this option set). Example: 10000 -->
      <recvLimit>0</recvLimit>
      <maxObjSize>0</maxObjSize>
      <!-- The name of the contacts db. Must be the same as the phones sends -->
      <contact_db>Contacts</contact_db>
      <!-- The name of the calendar db. Must be the same as the phones sends -->
      <calendar_db>Calendar</calendar_db>
      <!-- The name of the note db. Must be the same as the phones sends -->
      <note_db>Notes</note_db>
    </config>

Note that the only things we have changed above are the phone bluetooth address, the channel and the identifier. Everything else is the default.

Do the Backup

That's it, you're ready to backup your contacts from the phone to the directory you specified. Click on Refresh and your synchronisation should start. It may take some time to it to complete, be patient.

Troubleshooting

There are a number of tools out there that can help you isolate and diagnose problems you may face in getting the connectivity and synchronisation working. The ones that I used are:

sdptool

Use it to browse the services on your phone and confirm the channel used by the phone's _SyncMLClient_. The command (repeated here for completeness) is:

sdptool browse xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx | grep "\(Service Name\|Channel\)"

syncml-obex-client

This tool (part of the opensync-plugin-syncml package on Debian) let's you do a raw connect to the SyncML client on the phone and just dump the information it receives on the screen. To run it, give the command:

syncml-obex-client --slow-sync text/x-vcard Contacts -b xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx 7 --identifier 'PC Suite' --wbxml --dumpinfo

You should get your phone's contact list flowing past in your terminal window. If it doesn't work, the diagnostics will help you isolate the problem.

msynctool

Actually this is just a command-line version of the multisync0.90 GUI, but using it may help you locate the source of any problems you're having. To run it, give the command:

msynctool --sync 'Nokia 5800' --slow-sync contact

Conclusion

The Nokia 5800 mostly plays well with Linux, though Gnokii & co. do need to get up to speed with supporting connectivity to this model. Having got my contacts backed up I can rest easy and actually use the phone for some useful purpose, like making calls and stuff. I'd be glad to try to help sort out any issues you may face syncing your contacts, though be warned that I'm not a bluetooth or OBEX expert by any means.

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