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Finding Your Phone, the Linux Way

Issue 199

From Issue #199
November 2010

Jan 01, 2011  By Daniel Bartholomew
 in
If you have a Nokia N900, you can set it up so that it helps you find it the next time you lose it. The methods shown here, with modifications, can be used on other Linux phones as well.
Conclusion

My current setup is not perfect. The main problem is that if the phone is sitting somewhere not changing networks and not being used, it might be several hours before the low-battery warning event happens and the phone discovers it is lost. As soon as one of the cron alternatives is ready, I probably will switch to using that and have the phone check every half hour to see if it is lost.

Also, the scripts I've created so far are pretty rough. With some more hacking, this will improve. But even in their current state, although they may not guarantee I will recover my lost or stolen phone, they will give me a better chance.

Finally, I don't know if there's any way for me to prevent myself from setting my phone down and forgetting about it. As much as I tell myself it will not happen, I know that someday it will. Thanks to the openness of the N900, I can do things other phones can only dream about.

Daniel Bartholomew works for Monty Program (montyprogram.com) as a technical writer and system administrator. He lives with his wife and children in North Carolina and often can be found hanging out on both #linuxjournal and #maria on Freenode IRC. He also would like to apologize to his wife for all of the SMS messages he sent her while testing the scripts.

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how about an Andriod way?

Boo's picture
Submitted by Boo (not verified) on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 11:53.

how about an Andriod way?

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