Before we start: [[insert usual disclaimers about this technically violating the Verizon TOS]]. With that out of the way...
PDANet looks like a good solution for battery-chewing Bluetooth DUN tethering, but their $30 proprietary desktop app is for wired tethering on Windows only. Where does that leave us OS X folks who want a straightforward wired tethering solution, or something open source?
I've tried Tetherbot + Foxyproxy, but that's Firefox-only and I never could get the DNS to resolve properly through the phone's connection.
I stumbled on azilink, which works by running a vpn tunnel through your phone. But azilink is strongly biased towards Windows users, to the point that the author says "if you're using linux, or god forbid, OS X..." in his directions. And the preferred client for azilink, OpenVPN 2, is a headache to install directly on OS X (you can install Macports or build it by hand from source, but that's a nonstarter for most users).
That said, with a little setup work, you can get everything to tether by running one shell script. I assume you know your way around a BASH prompt here (if you don't, this is decidedly not the right solution for you).
- - Enable USB debugging and 3rd-party app installation (System Settings -> Applications -> check Unknown Sources; Development -> check USB debugging).
- - Install azilink on the phone.
- - Install the Android SDK to get the adb tool
- - Either add the SDK's tools folder to your PATH or copy adb to /usr/local/bin/
- - Install Tunnelblick, a nice OS X VPN GUI that runs on OpenVPN2. Just copy it to your Applications folder, and run it to set up your system. (I used Tunnelblick 3.0b22).
- - Get the activate/deactivate shell script from #701122 - Pastie and save it as, for example, ~/azilink.sh
- - Make the script runnable (e.g. "chmod 744 ~/azilink.sh" at the Terminal)
Phew! But once that initial setup is done, all you have to do to tether your phone is:
When you're done, ctrl-c tears down the connection.
- - Run azilink on the phone and check the box to start the service.
- - Run the script ("~/azilink.sh") on your Mac from Terminal.
To make it even easier in the future: Right-click the shell script in the Finder, choose Get Info, and Open With -> Applications/Utilities/Terminal (DON'T apply that to all; that could be risky). Then you can run the script by just double-clicking it in the Finder without having to go through manually starting a Terminal session.
That pre-first-run setup's a bit of a hassle, but it should be *much* more friendly on the batteries than BT or Wifi-based solutions, and this runs using entirely free open-source tools.
Big thanks to Mochabyte on the xda-developers Dream forum for doing most of the hard work; I just streamlined the process to not require macports and openvpn2 from source, and added (hopefully) straightforward directions for the whole setup process.
--TomThere's no need to use the terminal. Just install PDANet (June Fabrics PDA Technology Group) on your phone & your Mac. I successfully tethered my phone with the USB cable and with Bluetooth. I'm using Froyo with Motorola Droid, Mac OS X 10.6.4 (snow leopard).
Sun Nov 27 14:08:15 2011 NOTE: the current --script-security setting may allow this configuration to call user-defined scripts
Sun Nov 27 14:08:15 2011 ******* WARNING *******: all encryption and authentication features disabled -- all data will be tunnelled as cleartext
Sun Nov 27 14:08:15 2011 TUN/TAP device /dev/tun1 opened
Sun Nov 27 14:08:15 2011 /sbin/ifconfig tun1 delete
ifconfig: ioctl (SIOCDIFADDR): Can't assign requested address
Sun Nov 27 14:08:15 2011 NOTE: Tried to delete pre-existing tun/tap instance -- No Problem if failure
Sun Nov 27 14:08:15 2011 /sbin/ifconfig tun1 192.168.56.2 192.168.56.1 mtu 1500 netmask 255.255.255.255 up
Sun Nov 27 14:08:15 2011 /Users/ahmedabouelnour/azilink.sh up tun1 1500 1502 192.168.56.2 192.168.56.1 init
add net 0.0.0.0: gateway 192.168.56.1
Sun Nov 27 14:08:15 2011 WARNING: potential route subnet conflict between local LAN [192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0] and remote VPN [128.0.0.0/128.0.0.0]
add net 128.0.0.0: gateway 192.168.56.1
Sun Nov 27 14:08:15 2011 Attempting to establish TCP connection with 127.0.0.1:41927 [nonblock]
Sun Nov 27 14:08:16 2011 TCP connection established with 127.0.0.1:41927
Sun Nov 27 14:08:16 2011 TCPv4_CLIENT link local: [undef]
Sun Nov 27 14:08:16 2011 TCPv4_CLIENT link remote: 127.0.0.1:41927
Sun Nov 27 14:08:20 2011 Connection reset, restarting [0]
delete net 128.0.0.0: gateway 192.168.56.1
delete net 0.0.0.0: gateway 192.168.56.1
Sun Nov 27 14:08:20 2011 /Users/ahmedabouelnour/azilink.sh down tun1 1500 1502 192.168.56.2 192.168.56.1 init
Sun Nov 27 14:08:20 2011 SIGUSR1[soft,connection-reset] received, process restartingWe've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.
