Some failed attempts earlier to use my T Mobile G1 android phone as internet connection for my laptop did not stop me from succeeding this time. It is fairly complicated but if you have not other choice to get an internet connection, then you can follow this. You will need a USB data cable for this setup.
Follow the instrustions at http://graha.ms/androidproxy Thanks to Graham Stewart for discovering this very useful trick and developing tools to use this.
(copying here for easy reference with my notes added)
Installation
This shouldn’t damage your phone, but if it does, it’s your own fault!
* Install the app on your android phone, by clicking here (from your phone browser of course)
You might have to change your settings to permit apps that don’t come from the Google Market by going to your home screen and choosing MENU > Settings > Applications > Unknown Sources.
* Turn USB debugging on on your phone
On your G1 go to the home screen, press MENU > Settings > Applications > Development, then enable USB debugging.
* Follow the instructions here to install the Android driver – you’ll need to do this on Windows & Linux but apparently not on the Mac.
Note: You can actually skip the udev rules step, I did not need this, but your milage may vary.
* Download and install the Android SDK for your computer platform. Alternatively if you are on Windows and don’t want a 100 meg download, just get the ADB utility from here
* Plug your phone into your computerUsing the Socks Proxy
The SOCKS proxy will let you connect things like firefox to the internet
* Choose Tetherbot from your phone’s menu
* Press the “Start Socks” button on your phone
* Move to the directory that has the adb utility, using inside the Sdk Tools folder and runWindows: adb forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080
Linux/Mac: ./adb forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080* Now you should have a socks proxy running on port 1080 that you can use to configure firefox
* Set your firefox proxy : Options > Advanced > Network > Manual Proxy ConfigurationSocks Proxy: localhost
Port: 1080Leave the others blank
* Remember to disable your proxy settings in firefox if you want to stop using your phone.
Earlier I was stuck at adb refusing to recognise my phone. Today also I had the same problem with my Debian GNU/Linux sid on 2.6.30. I decided to try my luck with Mandriva and adb correctly listed the device (I still has to figure out why it did not work with Debian).
Though we got this far and got the socks proxy setup, most of the software does not support DNS resolution via socks (I could only find curl with this option via -socks5-hostname). So I resolved the ip address of my company web access on my phone (nslookup on terminal application) and used that gateway to connect to the internet.
It would be good to have a DNS resolution via proxy method (something similar to proxyfier on Windows and MACs) and support for this in all applications.
Update: Firefox allow with an advanced configuration option. Type about:config in address bar, filter proxy and trun on
network.proxy.socks_remote_dns
It is disappointing to see all tethering apps removed from the Market (Google T Mobile following Apple AT & T model), but you could always install it directly from author’s website without going through market. Probably it is time to create a Bazzar without restrictions.
Lame and oh soooooo old of a story
Dave,
Yes, but still exciting for me. I wanted to do this for sometime, but never pushed myself to the end. Also EFF advised not to jailbreak since I signed the petition to legally allow jail breaking. But that could not hold me enough this time. Thanks for stopping by.
- Praveen