Acer's Bluetooth Patch: is it Evil?
The official Acer 'Bluetooth Patch' presents itself as a script file. The abiding Unix advantage of doing a lot of stuff using plain text shell scripts is that they're transparent - you can read 'em to find out what they think they're doing. All the scripts in /etc/init.d that start up the various Linux services, for example, work along these lines. But not this 'Bluetooth Patch' script.
Some of it is readable. The opening comment line says that it's been constructed with a utility called Makeself. Makeself is a utility devised by Stéphane Peter that makes .tgz files self-extractable. The .tgz files are embedded in the Makeself scripts, so although they run like scripts, they're mostly full of binary code that completely conceals their actions.
At least that's how it seemed. I dropped an email to Stéphane suggesting that short of setting up a VMware Linpus sandbox, running the script and then walking through the whole system with find, I couldn't think of any way of determining the workings of this kind of script that can create executables or other scripts at will, and then run them. So, is Makeself evil? I asked him.
No, he says. No less so than any other installer. He explained that you can quiz a Makeself file from the command line about its contents:
[user@localhost bluetooth.sh]$ ./bluetooth.sh --info
Identification: install bluetooth patch
Target directory: bluetooth
Uncompressed size: 9768 KB
Compression: gzip
Date of packaging: Sat Oct 11 14:37:37 CST 2008
Built with Makeself version 2.1.4 on linux-gnu
Build command was: /usr/bin/makeself.sh \
"bluetooth" \
"bluetooth.sh" \
"install bluetooth patch" \
"./install.sh"
Script run after extraction:
./install.sh
bluetooth will be removed after extraction
Stephane goes on to say: "To examine the contents of the archive itself, and thus get a better idea of what happens, you can use the --noexec and --target options to simply extract the files, ie.
sh makeself.run --noexec --target /tmp/archive
You can then just peruse the contents of /tmp/archive in this example."
The Netbook Newbie's Guide to Linux
COMMENTS
Patch what patch?
I had no idea there was an "official" Acer bluetooth patch; at least my attempts at Windows update er I mean AA1 update (whatever it's called) have never offered it to me.
I have got about three-quarters way through the incredibly faffy procedure in this article and had some success using one or both of two different "dollar fifty" bluetooth dongles from dealextreme.com
Bluetooth on my AA1 does actually "work" in the sense that it can scan around the area and get responses from local devices. Sadly any attempt at a working ppp connection via my phone seems doomed; "no route to host" from the l2ping seems to be the scuppering factor.
Also the very presence of the netbook in the same room now seems to send a previously working Nokia PC Suite on an unrelated machine into a dither.
I have to say that if you get a 3G Huawei E160G dongle for the AA1 it just plugs straight in and works (via the inbuilt Mobile Partner software) so actually I wish I'd done that now instead of rashly buying a 3G phone.
EEEBUNTU
Hi
Just installed EEEBUNTU on my Aspire one ( w HDD) and am well happy with it. The only mod I've made is to use Synaptic to add Evolution using a full intrepid DVD for a repository. Added a 3, G3 dongle for when I'm out and about and it worked as soon as I plugged it in. Have previously made assorted mods to Linpus (some from these articles) but this is *much* better.
I don't use Bluetooth but there's a configuration option for it so I guess it's set up.
@AC
there are lots of versions of linux - and you are aware there are more than one version of windows? Would this bluetooth work if plugged into windows 95 - no. Windows 98 - no. Windows 2000 - no. XP - probably. Vista - probably.
Like I said , there are lots of linuxes. Its just a pity that Acer have a crap one.
But its ok as its linux to totally generalise and assume as it doesn't work on MY COMPUTER then it will never ever work on anyone elses.
Bluetooth on eeepc
Bluetooth on EEE pc 901 worked right out of the box...
no setup, no nothing: turn it on using the button to turn on networks; connect to the bluetooth app you want and download whatever you want to be downloading.
Linpus!
I dropped Linpus as soon as I could because almost everything I tried to install failed with a dependency error. It seems that Acer didn't put as much effort into the quality control of the software as they did the hardware Just install Easy Peasy Ubuntu Netbook Remix (http://www.geteasypeasy.com/) and then it just works. Both Cambridge Silicon Radio and Broadcom work with no configuration.
