arrghh. grrr... maybe not.

By basd on Jul 18, 2009 | In kde4, linux, tethered blackberry

So, I got the BES server connected. The thing to remember is never actually ask tech support for their uninformed opinion as to why things are not working.

...

They will refer you back to the system administrator, who will assure you they have no idea what they are talking about and refer you back to tech support, ad infinitum.

What you really do is call up and say, "please reset my BES provisioning." To which your carrier's tech support will say, "I assure you everything is set exactly right and there is no need for such action." Whereupon you say something like, "I'm absolutely certain you know what you are talking about. It is the most ridiculous thing that I am asking you to do something that I do not even know what it is, but please humor me and do it anyway, would that be ok?"

After the provisioning is reset, then you can try to activate to the server again and everything will work just fine. At least this is the way it has worked for both of my blackberries.

Unfortunately, when I got the BES server connected (and by the way, the jump from 8703e to 9630 is a BIG one), suddenly no more tethering. As collateral damage, my plasma desktop permanently crashed.

Arrghh. Grrr...

I tried the "take out the battery" thing, and the "turn everything off and turn it on again" thing. No luck. So, being time challenged at the moment, I gave up and used windowsXP. But, I really need my linux to connect.

So, once again having some time to experiment, I looked up my own blog notes on using barry and discovered that I once told myself to check the connection using barrybackup before running the actual modem support. Couldn't hurt; I tried it. Sure enough, barrybackup identified the 9630 by its PIN. So the connection was "good". I gave a name to the new blackberry exited (no backup or restore, just verifying the connection) and ran the barry modem software. Connection!

I used control C to exit the script -- I have found this to be the best choice of exit, as it runs a modem shutdown -- and tried to restart the modem. No blackberry. Checking again with barrybackup, no blackberry. Unplugged the usb cable and re-plugged it. Ran barrybackup. Blackberry has returned. Ran modem script. Worked again! Control C to exit, then ran script again. Modem worked again!

So, there is hope. I have not used this in battlefield conditions yet, but the proof-of-concept has me back online. Yay!

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Regarding the plasma crash -- I have a number of widgets running that get data from the internet. They do not seem well-behaved when there is no internet connection. When I was back to ethernetland, I reconnected and resurrected my plasma desktop, which was then temporarily okay WITHOUT the LAN connection. So, there seems to be a situation where some parameters get saved when there is no connection that cause a crash condition -- which can be removed if the desktop is started in the presence of an internet connection.

In other news, MozEX appears to be abandoned and I can't get it to work in Firefox 3.5. I wrote the project owner an email, but no response. If I get really bored I may have to figure out how to hack this code, because I have systems that require MozEX and I can't go on using outdated 3.0.4 Firefox forever. I looked a bit for alternatives such as a new project, but did not find any.