Bluetooth rfcomm -- enabling serial stuff for a cell phone

[Jud Craft]

Hey there.

I'm trying to use BitPim for one of my cell phones, but BitPim seems
to only work well with COM ports.  From an article at Ars Technica
[1], I read how to map a Bluetooth channel to a com-port using
/etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf.  (Under Windows the mapping is done
automatically, but you must specify it in Linux, I guess).

Here's the deal:  Bluetooth doesn't map the channel automatically at
startup, even though that's the purpose of rfcomm.conf.

Ars Technica mentions that in the Bluetooth properties in GNOME, you
must check the "Enable Serial" option to activate the rfcomm mappings.
 However, I know that the Bluetooth stack in GNOME has been changed
from Bluez to something new (just the generic gnome-bluetooth, I
guess), and it does not provide this option.

That article was written before the new Bluetooth stack, so I can't
find an option to enable the rfcomm mappings.  If I manually issue a
command from the console (like "rfcomm connect /dev/rfcomm0 [MAC
address of phone] [channel number]") I get a "permission denied", and
if I do that as root, BitPim can see it but not use it.  So I can't do
it on my own manually; the correct workflow and permissions to do it
elude me.

Does anyone have any ideas?

1.  http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2007/12/using-a-bluetooth-phone-with-linux.ars