Symbinux

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Talk to legacy Nokia phones from a modern Linux, Windows or macOS desktop. Symbinux is a clean-room implementation of the Nokia FBUS/MBUS serial protocols over USB (with a serial-cable path today and raw-USB/BB5 on the roadmap), packaged as a Rust core + CLI with a cross-platform GTK4 (gtk4-rs) GUI. A legacy libadwaita GUI in Python stays usable until the Rust GUI fully retires it.

Symbinux is a declared fork of Nokinux (2008-2010), a Bash/Python project born in the Italian Ubuntu community to configure Nokia phones from Linux, of which Davide Pica (davidebr90) was one of the original authors alongside other contributors. Symbinux carries its name and spirit forward, rewritten from scratch to today's standards.

The protocol is reconstructed from the open-source gnokii and gammu projects and validated against documented real captures. It uses no proprietary Nokia code, libraries or binaries.

What it does

• Identify a phone (model, IMEI, hardware and firmware version).
• Phonebook read (and experimental write) across ME/SIM memory.
• Netmonitor diagnostics.
• SMS read/send (experimental).
• Auto-detect the connected phone and its platform (Nokia legacy / Android / Apple iOS), each exposing its own capability set so the UI adapts.
• Wireless discovery — Bluetooth and Wi-Fi scanning, plus PBAP contact pulls over Bluetooth on Linux, behind one portable symbinux-wireless API (BLE on Windows/macOS via btleplug, honest unavailable states elsewhere).
• Device classification — scanned Bluetooth devices are tagged by vendor and form factor (Apple watch, Android phone, TV, headphones…) from vanilla identification signals, shown as combined badges.
• Data recovery / export — recovered phonebook, messages and calendar normalise to portable vCard / vMessage / iCalendar records regardless of transport.
• Advanced device inventory — an lsusb-style view of everything connected (VID:PID, extended names, classification) to debug detection issues.
• Raw frame mode for protocol reverse-engineering.

See docs/FUNCTIONS.md for the full CLI reference and safety classes, and docs/NOKIA_SERVICE_MODES.md / docs/VANILLA_CONNECTIVITY.md for how the phone is reached with no software installed on it.

Architecture

symbinux/
├── crates/                     # Rust workspace (the core)
│   ├── symbinux-protocol/      # FBUS/MBUS framing + typed decoders/export — pure, no I/O, fully tested
│   ├── symbinux-transport/     # serial (termios) + raw USB (nusb, pure Rust), enumeration
│   ├── symbinux-devices/       # USB fingerprinting + per-platform dispatch
│   ├── symbinux-wireless/      # portable Bluetooth/Wi-Fi/PBAP/notifications
│   ├── symbinux-cli/           # `symbinux-fbus` gnokii-style command-line tool
│   └── symbinux-gui/           # gtk4-rs desktop GUI — links the core directly
├── src/symbinux/               # legacy GTK4 + libadwaita GUI (Python), shells out to the CLI
├── udev/                       # unprivileged-access rules
├── data/devices.json           # known VID/PID table (community-maintained)
├── docs/                       # PROTOCOL_NOTES / FUNCTIONS / ROADMAP / SETUP / …
└── packaging/                  # flatpak/ (Linux) + windows/ (installer)

Layers are strictly separated: framing (no I/O) → transport (I/O) → CLI / GUI. The Rust GUI (symbinux-gui) links the core crates directly — no subprocess bridge; the legacy Python GUI holds no protocol logic and shells out to symbinux-fbus.

Quick start

# Core + CLI
cargo build --release

# What is connected right now (no phone required):
target/release/symbinux-fbus devices --all

# Identify a phone over a DKU-2/CA-42 cable (or --usb to claim it directly):
target/release/symbinux-fbus identify --port /dev/nokia_fbus

# Shell completions (bash/zsh/fish/…):
target/release/symbinux-fbus completions bash > ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/symbinux-fbus

# GUI (Rust · GTK4, Linux/Windows/macOS)
cargo build --release -p symbinux-gui
target/release/symbinux-gui

# Legacy Python GUI (Linux, until the Rust GUI fully replaces it)
pip install -e ".[gui]"
symbinux

On Windows the GUI ships as a double-clickable per-user installer (GTK runtime bundled) — see packaging/windows/README.md.

Unprivileged access (no sudo in normal use) is a one-time udev install — see docs/SETUP.md. How the app owns the connection (claiming USB directly, forcing a Bluetooth pair) is described in docs/CONNECTION_MODEL.md.

Requirements

• Rust ≥ 1.89. On Linux, libudev + pkg-config (for serial-port enumeration). No libusb — raw USB access is pure-Rust via nusb.
• For the Rust GUI: the GTK4 development libraries (libgtk-4-dev on Debian/Ubuntu, MSYS2 mingw-w64-x86_64-gtk4 on Windows, brew install gtk4 on macOS).
• For the legacy Python GUI: Python ≥ 3.11, GTK4 and libadwaita (gir1.2-gtk-4.0, gir1.2-adw-1 on Debian/Ubuntu).
• A real Linux machine, or WSL2 with USB passthrough for hardware tests. The protocol codec is fully testable with no hardware (cargo test).

Tests

cargo test        # protocol codec against real-capture fixtures + transport
pytest            # Python GUI/backend

Safety

Firmware/flash writes are not implemented and are refused. Only read commands run by default; anything that modifies the phone is opt-in, and raw-frame mode is gated behind an explicit flag. Details in docs/PROTOCOL_NOTES.md.

License

GNU AGPLv3 (or later). See LICENSE. This is compatible with the GPL/LGPL of the gnokii/gammu documentation the protocol notes draw on.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.