Tag Archives: Nokia

Legacy BTS Site manager on Linux

Another post in the “vendors thought Java would last forever but the web would just a fad” series, this one on getting Nokia BTS Site Manager (which is used to administer the pre-Airscale Nokia base stations) running on a modern Linux distro.

For starters we get the installers (you’ll need to get these from Nokia), and install openjdk-8-jre using whichever package manager your distro supports.

Once that’s installed, then extract the installer folder (Like BTS Site Manager FL18_BTSSM_0000_000434_000000-20250323T000206Z-001.zip).

Inside the extracted folder we’ve got a path like:

BTS Site Manager FL18_BTSSM_0000_000434_000000-20250323T000206Z-001/BTS Site Manager FL18_BTSSM_0000_000434_000000/C_Element/SE_UICA/Setup

The Setup folder contains a bunch of binaries.

We make these executable:

chmod +x BTSSiteEM-FL18-0000_000434_000000*

Then run the binary:

sudo ./BTSSiteEM-FL18-0000_000434_000000_x64.bin

By default it installs to /opt/Nokia/Managers/BTS\ Site/BTS\ Site\ Manager

And we’re done. Your OS may or may not have built a link to the app in your “start menu” / launcher.

You can use one BTS manager to manage several different versions of software, but you need the definitions for those software loaded.

If you want to load the Releases for other versions (Like other FLF or FL releases) the simplest way is just to install the BTS site manager for those versions and just use the latest, then you’ll get the table of installed versions in the “About” section that you can administer.

Nokia 3310 connected to test GSM network running with Osmocom

Twenty years of the Nokia 3310

This year I started writing a series of blog posts about building GSM networks.

I already had a bunch of phones for testing available, but there’s only one phone I wanted for running the tests…

The Nokia 3310.

To my amazement, you can still buy refurbished Nokia 3310s (new case, battery and screen) for about $12 USD each.

So I bought one;

I learned that 1 September 2000 was when the 3310 was released, making it 20 years old this month. 20 years is also about the time between charges…

Happy Birthday 3310!