Mobile broadband-ubuntu 11.10

[Jomukuk]

Mobile broadband-ubuntu.
A little help needed !
The system was upgraded from 11.04 to 11.10 recently (beta)
On 11.04 I had no problems, it would see the adaptor and display it.
In 11.10, it does not. Immediately.
I installed the work-around so that the device seen as a USB memory stick was disabled.
Not much use.
The adaptor is seen as cdrom-1, so still does not appear as a mobile connection (noticed because I was looking for the thing in system....and cdrom-1 only appears after I plug the device in)
Using the command line to query usb devices (lsusb) the huwei device is shown.
Hmmmm.
I'm going bald here.....

John

[tpprynn]

Every other edition of Ubuntu us Mobile Broadbanders are thrown...

Do you still have a live CD for 11.04 (Or 10.04/10 if it worked then too)? You could run it and inspect /lib/udev/rules.d/40-usb_modeswitch.rules and see if the lines with the numbers that tally up with your modem as seen in lsusb are missing from 11.10. If they are, put the lines on a pendrive and paste them back in in 11.10.

What dongle is it you've got, what model name and number and which provider are you with? I might be stumped for what to say next but I've got round this sort of thing a couple of times. And what does it say in lsusb about the Huawei?

Another workaround is to use Saki3G:

http://www.sakis3g.org/

"Hello is that the Linux Foundation or whatever, yes, this is the managing director of Vodafone. I will sponsor your kernel if you help make our dongles obolete every eighteen months...." No, I'm sure this doesn't happen...

[Jomukuk]

What does lsusb respond with:
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 12d1:1003 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. E220 HSDPA Modem / E230/E270 HSDPA/HSUPA Modem
I still have a cd for 11.04 (have to, the system will not upgrade live.....) so I'll have a look...but the problem is not what it used to be a year ago (seeing the modem as removeable storage.....) this time "it" thinks the modem is a cdrom !
Mind you, I am so underimpressed with 11.10....the unity icons are so large, and not resizeable [yet]
I get so many warnings that everything is closing down that I feel like I'm back in windows ....
Compiz remains the same........and getting the desktop cube working needs a degree in extreme patience along with an ability to not throw a brick through the machine (acer aspire 5315)
Thanks for your help.....oh, and the report a program fault feature also crashes....so it cannot report itself...which is probably why so many faults are not corrected ?

John

[gandaran]

check if usb-modeswitch is installed, it should be but as 11.10 is still beta it could be missing.

[Jomukuk]

Usb-modeswitch 1.1.9-1 installed......about a week ago....the only difference is that it SOMETIMES recognises the adaptor.....after a period of time it will suddenly show 3internet in the taskbar...never immediately....usually after an hour or so...
And the device now shows as cdrom-1....oh well, it'll save me money on the data !!

[tpprynn]

Have you tried manually ejecting the cd-rom aspect of the dongle from the desktop as if it really were a cd-rom, with the right click on its icon and eject option? One or two dongles back I was having to do that for a while, it then showed up in Network Manager after a couple of seconds.

Annoying though, when I was with 3 earlier in the year that was the best Mobile Broadband speed-wise, often 6 meg down, 1 1/2 up, though they started dire. I have to go out right now but I'll make a suggestion when I get back if no one else has turned up with a solution, I don't want to rush it for the minute.

My T-Mobile (Huawei E167s) is working, but if I disconnect I have to reboot - not merely log out - before I can go online again. We never had that palaver about eighteen months ago.

[Jomukuk]

That's the first thing I looked for....I remember version 9....but i could not find removable storage on anything let alone the desktop.....then I installed the usb-modeswitch thinking that would solve it....well, it did, sort of.
It is now seen by lsusb...but still does not appear from boot....it's there as of this moment....but it takes a lot of time before the system sees the modem....
Very strange.

[tpprynn]

Okay this might be useless or you might have done this in the meantime or before.

Does your file /etc/udev/usb_modeswitch

read:

# Configuration for the usb_modeswitch package, a mode switching tool for
# USB devices providing multiple states or modes
#
# This file is evaluated by the wrapper script "usb_modeswitch_dispatcher"
# in /usr/sbin
# To enable an option, set it to "1", "yes" or "true" (case doesn't matter)
# Everything else counts as "disable"


# Disable automatic mode switching globally (e.g. to access the original
# install storage)

DisableSwitching=0


# Enable logging (results in a extensive report file in /var/log, named
# "usb_modeswitch_<interface-name>" (and probably others)

EnableLogging=0



...I think the DisableSwitching bit is the key bit...

And does /lib/udev/rules.d/40-usb_modeswitch.rules

have these lines:

# Huawei E220, E230, E270, E870
ATTRS{idVendor}=="12d1", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1003", RUN+="usb_modeswitch '%b/%k'"

They've kept rejigging usb_modeswitch, where its files sit and all that - once it's working, why don't they leave it alone... Debian 6 is different again, and Fedora 15 got on with a dongle its contemporary edition of Ubuntu couldn't.

One last thing - you haven't changed any BIOS settings at all? I altered one setting regarding 'legacy usb' at one point, out of half-cocked curiosity, and didn't immediately suss out that this was why one dongle stopped behaving.

The issue with E220 modems has very recently been reported a couple of times on Launchpad by the way. Different laptops mentioned so I'm assuming it's not you.

[Jomukuk]

Thank you for the suggestions, I'll attempt to sort it once I have the laptop fired up....tomorrow !

[Sergiu Bivol]

Hi,
I think I have the same problem in Kubuntu 11.10 - the modem is detected, but by default Mobile Broadband is disabled in Network Manager.
If I chech „[x] Enable Mobile Broadband”, it works. After a restart, it's disabled again.
No matter how I change the settings, it will always be disabled after a reboot.