UTStarcom released a new firmware image for its F3000 wireless phone.  I have written about this device in the past and at the time  had not used it enough to fully consider all of its weaknesses – my apologies if you purchased it based on my recommendation.

There is however some good news.  I found myself unable to get this thing to register at all last week and decided to test out the new firmware to see if it would fix the problem, luckily it did.  I find the phone is no longer as hot while in use, it also appears to handoff much nicer.

There still are issues with connectivity as well as battery life though I now feel as if I wasn’t completely ripped off (plus I got text messaging to work).  The phone was quickly discontinued and the company offers little to no support, I believe they still occasionally release new images (probably because they feel guilty for selling this to people).  Bottom line : don’t buy it unless it is super cheap! If you have one already don’t give up on it.  Upgrade the firmware and lets hope for more bug fixes in the future.

Just a quick post for those of you who have ran into issues with VMWare after a dist-upgrade.

If apt did not download the matching kernel headers on update, just run apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`.

Once that has completed type uname -r and remember the kernel version.  You can then just symlink that version as follows :

ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-2.X.X.X /usr/src/linux

Afterwards type

/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl

And it will ask you where your C header files are.  You can then just type

/usr/src/linux

And all will be dandy, leave the rest of the configuration to default unless you need to change something.  I am sure most people already know this, it is quite basic however may be useful to some.

After receiving a call from Paris, France from a gentleman who has spent the last two days trying to convert his SCCP Cisco 7940G to SIP – I decided to share my findings to the rest of you – I sure hope it works for you.

Setup a tftp/dhcp server on a linux or windows box and have it plugged into a switch (or use a crossover cable if you are provisioning one phone at a time) – tftp setup is out of scope for this article however for Windows users, google “solarwind”, Linux try atftpd + dnsmasq (works well for me).

I built up a standard tftpboot directory which should help you get at least an older SIP image on your phone, upgrading to a newer image is up to you.  Copy the contents of THIS FILE into your tftp root directory (linux : /tftpboot) and chmod 777.  This is the (very hard to find until now) version 6.3 firmware so send me your praise or donate some money for beer to paypal@rappiddev.com.  I hope I don’t get arrested for releasing this to you… keep it quiet will ya?

Once you have all of that done you should just have to change the *<mac>*.* (any file with MAC in the title) to the MAC address of your Cisco Phone.

If you keep getting CTL or TLV errors – remove the CTLSEPMAC.tlv file while the phone is stuck in the reboot loop.  Should advance you to the next step where it actually loads the firmware.

Once again I hope this works out for you – feel free to send me your feedback!