Enable Wireless Tethering on a Rooted HTC Aria for AT&T

Enable Wireless Tethering on Rooted HTC Aria for AT&T Using Ubuntu

by amp on Oct.30, 2010, under Administration, Linux, Pro Tips, Products, Tutorials, Web Resources

Don’t want to buy one of those little wireless cards that Carriers are selling for $100? Me neither so I got wireless tethering on my HTC Aria that I use with AT&T.

Now what needs to be made clear is that this was not done on Windows but instead using Ubuntu. I actually found this easier to do on Linux and had trouble with Windows (big surprise?). Unfortunately the article was written while I was on a Windows Machine so some files may be RAR’d or ZIP’d as opposed to being tar’d'd’d'd.

Files you will need that should be downloaded right now and placed in your home folder. For ease of use, I suggest making a directory and putting them all there for example: /home/<user>/tetherfiles

Download all of these and store in an easy-to-remember location.

The first file we are going to use is the Android-SDK (software developers kit). You will need this to install applications manually that are not from the marketplace (since AT&T are the only ones that got rid of it..).

Step 1. Extract the contents of the android sdk kit

$ tar -zxvf android-sdk_r07-linux_x86.tar

Step 2. Copy the adb application from the tools folder to the /usr/bin folder (requires root).

# cp android-sdk_r07-linux_x86/tools/adb /usr/bin/

Step 3. Setup the rules file under /etc/udev/rules.d/ and name it “51-android.rules”. The file must contain the following (1 line) : *** Note : You must be ROOT!

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="00b4", MODE="0666"

Alternatively, you can just copy paste this line in and it should take care of it.

echo "SUBSYSTEM==\"usb\", SYSFS{idVendor}==\"00b4\", MODE=\"0666\"" > /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

Step 4. Restart udev.

$ sudo restart udev

Step 5. Make sure USB Debugging is enabled by going to Settings > Applications > Developer > USB Debugging (make sure there is a checkmark next to it) and plug it into your ubuntu laptop or desktop. Now use adb to get a list of devices. The result should look similar to this..

$ adb devices
List of connected devices
HT07YR002154

Step 5. Unzip wireless_tether_2_0_5-pre3.apk from it’s respective ZIP archive and install it to the HTC Aria using adb. Make sure you have your device ID written down. My devices ID in the previous step is HT07YR002154. I expect yours to be different. Correct syntax should be “adb install <apk file> <device ID>”.

$ adb install wireless_tether_2_0_5-pre3.apk <device ID>

Step 6. Now that we have the actual Wireless Tether application installed, we need to copy over the binary file it will use. Unzip fw_bcm4329_bin.zip and you should have the fw_bcm4329.bin file. This file will need to be in the “android.tether” folder located in root of the SD Card. If you have your phone plugged in feel free to switch it from Charge only to Disk Drive, then you can simply copy it over that way.

$ mkdir /media/<device>/android.tether
$ cp fw_bcm4329.bin /media/<device>/android.tether/

That’s it. Feel free to now launch the Wireless Tethering applicaton. You can add this to your Aria’s *slides* as a program (you know, the thing under “widgets” in the add menu). Upon opening it will find the configuration BIN and should work like magic.

As always, comments are appreciated as well as tweets and the retweets. Also, if there are any questions I will try to answer them as quick as I can.

Good luck!

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