Monday, July 2, 2012

sakis3g command line

sakis3g
     http://www.sakis3g.org/
is a wonderful bit of kit. Dionisios has obviously spent ages and ages fully documenting a very elegant piece of software. Very well done. Woohoo!
But *nix man pages (and sakis3g man is no exception) tend to have 'way too much information and little or no examples for the beginner. They seem to think that you want a PhD in the subject. 
I don't. I just want it to work. 
Now.
The way my head works is that I need a quick intro and demonstration, to get a feel for the beast. Then, after I have basic functionality in place, I will go study the documentation for an access to nirvana. 
Engineers always read the instructions. Cover to cover. But they need a starting concept. Something simple.
The script is elegance supreme. It just works. 
But it "just works" with a GUI with a number of click this click that kind of Microsoftish stuff.
I want a single command line command that will kick it off and let me get on with life.
The following works with thanks to
     http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1993179:
    sakis3g connect --nostorage --pppd APN="MyAPN, e.g., ppbundle.internet" APN_USER="Myusername" APN_PASS="Mypassword" USBINTERFACE="Mydigit from ttyUSB, e.g., '3'" USBDRIVER="option" OTHER="USBMODEM" USBMODEM="MyUSBmodem_MAC_address_from_lsusb"
Obviously, change My* to Your* throughout...
I've suggested to Dionisios to add some such simple guidance on his wiki, but in the meantime I hope this will help someone else.
But again, meant to be helpful. This is a hugely wonderful bit of kit. Thanks to Dionisios.

No comments: