Bluetooth network connection to the Palm Pre from a linux machine

The Palm Pre in its current version has a very limited bluetooth stack. It only allows outgoing connections to audio devices. No serial port, PAN or even sending contacts to another phone.

It does however support incoming PAN connections.
This is how I do it.

1. First, pair the phone with your machine using your favorite gui (bluedevil, blueman) or command line utility.

2. Set up IP configuration for the bnep0 interface
In gentoo this is done in the /etc/conf.d/net file. I just needed to add the following line:

config_bnep0="10.1.1.61 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.1.1.255"

3. Firewall - set it up to allow traffic. Also need to set up masquerading/proxyarp for returning traffic.

4. Start a connection:

pand --connect AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF --role PANU --nodetach --master

Where AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF is the mac of the palm pre bluetooth interface

This will bring up the bnep0 interface and allow connecting to the pre via ssh, etc.

Known issues:
1. Most WebOS programs will not be aware of this connection (you won't be able to use the browser). But most terminal operations will be.
1. DHCP, DNS: The DHCP configuration is geared towards a mobile wifi hotspot and is kind of screwed up (or at least I don't understand it) for this purpose.
2. Proxy ARP / IP bridging mode instead of NAT (TODO)