Any help with Vodafone Mobile Broadband and Linux, please...

Johnc.eire

Ok, situation is:
(a) I've brought a Vodafone Mobile USB dongle modem thingy for use with my RedHat Linux distro on a laptop;
(b) I can't make Linux read the software on the dongle.

I *know* there's stuff on the dongle, since when I plug it in to my - working! - Windows system, it immediately starts to install. Using Explorer, I can see a bunch of files there, including an 'autorun.inf' file.

Whe I put the dongle into my laptop, it gets recognised as a CD-ROM (so the device driver is working correctly, right?), but any further attempts at using the stuff results in various messages to the effect that there's no data on the device.

I guess the question boils down to - How do I make Linux handle a Windows 'disk' device?

Any help much appreciated... I'm a complete Linux newbie & probably shouldn't be messing with stuff like this, but ya gotta start somewhere, right?

JohnC

gerryk

The disk device is not really relevant, as it will only contain the drivers and applications for Windows. The communication device is what you should be interested in.

What version of RedHat is it? Also, what make/model is the dongle... probably a Huawei something or other.

Can you plug it in, then open a command prompt and enter 'dmesg' and paste the last 20 or so lines in here?

Johnc.eire

Hi Gerryk - thanks for coming back.
I've done what you said - here's the part of the dmesg log applicable to the dongle (you're right - it's a Hauwei)

******************************************************************
usb 1-7: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
usb 1-7: New USB device found, idVendor=12d1, idProduct=1520
usb 1-7: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
usb 1-7: Product: HUAWEI Mobile
usb 1-7: Manufacturer: HUAWEI Technology
usb 1-7: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi3 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 5
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
usb-storage: device scan complete
scsi 3:0:0:0: CD-ROM Vodafone CD ROM (Huawei) 2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
sr1: scsi-1 drive
sr 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr1
sr 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 5
usb 1-7: USB disconnect, address 5
usb 1-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
usb 1-5: New USB device found, idVendor=12d1, idProduct=1520
usb 1-5: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
usb 1-5: Product: HUAWEI Mobile
usb 1-5: Manufacturer: HUAWEI Technology
usb 1-5: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi4 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 6
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
usb-storage: device scan complete
scsi 4:0:0:0: CD-ROM Vodafone CD ROM (Huawei) 2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
sr1: scsi-1 drive
sr 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr1
sr 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 5
******************************************************************

Am I right in thinking that the dongle is being recognised?

Johnc.eire

oops, sorry.
command
cat/etc/redhat-release
gives
Fedora release 11 (Leonidas)
in response...

gerryk

Yup it is. But you need to switch the mode of the device to get it to behave as a communication device.
Try the following...

yum install usb_modeswitch

Then edit /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf and replace the contents with the following...

DefaultVendor=  0x12d1
DefaultProduct= 0x1446

TargetVendor=   0x12d1
TargetProduct=  0x140c

MessageEndpoint= 0x01
MessageContent="55534243000000000000000000000011060000000000000000000000000000"

Then run usb_modeswitch (as root) and post the output of dmesg again.

Johnc.eire

Ok, I made the changes you specified (had to do a bit of messing around with access priviliges, but got there in the end)

and then ran the usb_modeswitch command & got "No default vendor/product ID given. Aborting"

The dmesg command generates considerably more output than before, but the only bit I can see that appears to be applicable to the dongle is:

usb 1-5: New USB device found, idVendor=12d1, idProduct=1520
usb 1-5: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
usb 1-5: Product: HUAWEI Mobile
usb 1-5: Manufacturer: HUAWEI Technology
usb 1-5: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice


Hope this means something to help in further problem solving...

gerryk

Ok, something isn't right with the /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf
The necessary parameters were provided, but it didn't pick them up. Can you go through in painful detail what you did?

Johnc.eire

Ok, here goes...

Through 'Filesystem', drilled down to the /etc folder & located the 'usb_modeswitch.conf' file.
In 'Text Editor', made the specified changes
Tried to save the modified file, but got a message telling me I did not have the required privilege.
Quit out of 'Text Editor' wiithout saving the changes.

From 'Properties' for the file, discovered that it was owned by root

In 'Terminal', used 'ls -ld' command & found that the access string on the file was 'rwxr-xr-x'
Used 'su' command to change to root, then chmod to change the access rights to '777'

Back again to 'Text Editor', and re-entered the changes. Tried to save, but again got denied. Tried to save under a slightly different name (usb_modeswitch1.conf), but still got denied. (This nailed the problem down - for me - to access rights for the /etc folder)

Back to 'Terminal', then 'su' & 'chmod' for the /etc folder to '777'

Back to 'Text Editor', re-entered the changes and (successfully) saved the result as 'usb_modeswitch1.conf'

Back through 'Filesystem' to the /etc folder, renamed 'usb_modeswitch.conf' to 'usb_modeswitch_old.conf' and 'usb_modeswitch1.conf' to usb_modeswitch.conf'

Back to 'Terminal', then 'su' and 'chmod' to reset access privileges toi what they were before I started.

So now I have the original file as 'usb_modeswitch_old.conf' and the modified version as 'usb_modeswitch.conf'

Still in 'Terminal' with 'su' command still in place, typed 'usb_modeswitch' and got the 'Aborting' message.

That's it - as far as I recall.

gerryk

Ok... I'm going to start by introducing you to a tool which makes all of this easier.
sudo

sudo provides granular privilege escalation for times just like these. Basically, you create an entry for your user in /etc/sudoers, something along the lines of:

johnc ALL=(ALL) ALL

Now this will allow your user to run any command with root privs. It can be made more specific, but that's a job for another day.

Secondly, learn to use vi. vi is a commandline editor, so it's easy to run it with elevated privs, unlike some of the GUI editors. Time spend learning vi will not be wasted, it is the standard unix editor and will be found on any system you encounter.

Now, for the bad news... your /etc directory is now broken. Not terminally, but some services will fail to run if their config files do not have the correct permissions... sudo and ssh/sshd being among them. This is to reduce the possibility of system compromise, and is a good thing. Unfortunately, this doesn't help you.
Generally, the rights for files in /etc will owner read/write, group read/write and (depending on the file) world no access or read only. This holds for most, except /etc/init.d, which will be owner and group rwx and world nothing.
Because you didn't chown anything, it will be reasonably straightforward to fix this... it will just take a bit of time, patience, and a clean install to use as reference.
Look on this as a learning exercise... that's what I did when I broke both permissions and ownership on an entire filesystem when I was starting out with Linux.

Now, back to your original problem... try running is as follows, as root...

usb_modeswitch --default-vendor 0x12d1 --default-product 0x1520 --target-vendor 0x1d21 --target-product 0x140c

and let's see what dmesg produces afterwards...