On Windows, once you plug in the device, it will mount a read-only cdrom device and the drivers are installed and configured. Wonderful user experience. I know because I tried it out on my wife's Toshiba notebook.
On Linux... well, it works but only after a little Google research.
The device is a Huawei E270 HSPDA modem. Vodafone (UK) is also offering this device and there is a vodafone mobile connect card driver for various Linux distros. Unfortunately, their latest driver requires a higher kernel version than that of SLED 10. I could have used their earlier version (1.0) but the SLED 10 SP2 installed on my Thinkpad T61p is 64 bit and that didn't go too well. 
My solution? Turns out that SLED 10 SP2 ships with a nice little program called umtsmon. The latest version is 0.8 and its working really well for me. You can also find it on the openSUSE Build Service. Some links as reference here and here.
I'm able to surf the Web on SLED 10 SP2 with my Huawei E270.
The caveats (work-in-progress to resolve) are:- I have to boot up my Thinkpad with the device attached so that /dev/ttyUSB* appears. If I hotplug the device while SLED 10 SP2 is running, it will auto-mount the read-only CD-ROM device with Windows drivers (not a big issue) BUT there will be no /dev/ttyUSB* available for umtsmon to work with.
- I have to run umtsmon as root because of some permissions issue with normal user unable to initiate a pppd session.
PS: With reference to my previous post on the NAT setup with Xen, hoping to bridge to the Xen clients on a private subnet so as to access the Web with the USB 3G modem attached.... another work-in-progress.
Great, look I installed the SLED10 SP2 and installed UMTSMON and I have HUAWEI (CE0682) usb modem, after connecting the usb to SLED, the usb wont show up the and you dont see the modem, then I start to use command, lsusb and I could see it and it is second Bus
ReplyDeletecnd7502kqz:~ # lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 12d1:1001
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Then I run the UMTSMON command and it gives me an error:
cnd7502kqz:~ # umtsmon
umtsmon version 0.8-SLED10 .
installing GUI SIGABRT handler
##P1 t=161: aLocale '(null)' denied
error: command interface-name failed
##P1 t=161: *** CRITICAL ERROR: Could not connect to the smpppd, the application will close.
Make sure that you are in group dialout and that smpppd is running.
DCOPClient::attachInternal. Attach failed Could not open network socket
DCOPClient::attachInternal. Attach failed Could not open network socket
*** umtsmon version 0.8-SLED10 closed due to an unrecoverable program error.
##P1 t=173: Critical Popup - application will halt
And I tried to insert the model to kernel and it gives me an error:
cnd7502kqz:~ # insmod /lib/modules/2.6.16.60-0.23-smp/kernel/drivers/usb/serial/usbserial.ko vendor=0x12d1 product=0x1001
insmod: error inserting '/lib/modules/2.6.16.60-0.23-smp/kernel/drivers/usb/serial/usbserial.ko': -1 File exists
The funny thing I could use the same modem with umtsmon on OPENSUSE11 and it works fine but with SLED10 SP2 it does not work any tips will be great
You can add a udev rule to ignore the fake volume - see http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:HUAWEI_E220_Support
ReplyDeleteThanks Marco,
ReplyDeleteI'm lazy and going to live with this for now... I have already tested it with openSUSE 11.1 and it worked seemlessly... which means this challenge will be gone in a few months as I upgrade to SLED 11 on my business Thinkpad. :)