Re: Looking for advice about using NM with a Sprint U301 modem

[Daenyth Blank <daenyth gmail com>]

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 11:19, Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 12:54 -0400, Daenyth Blank wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 08:12, Daenyth Blank <daenyth gmail com> wrote:
>> > On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 03:16, Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote:
>> >> On Thu, 2010-05-27 at 12:04 -0400, Daenyth Blank wrote:
>> >>> Hi all,
>> >>>
>> >>> I'm trying to find out some information regarding the Sprint U301 3G
>> >>> modem. Our use case for it is that it will be attached to an embedded
>> >>> machine running ubuntu with networkmanager, in addition to our
>> >>> software. I've been trying to get this modem to connect reliably and
>> >>> am having some issues with it. I've added a udev rule so that the
>> >>> usbserial driver is given the correct vendor/product information, and
>> >>> it connects automatically on boot, but not reliably. Some boots it
>> >>> does not connect at all and won't until I reboot. Sometimes it
>> >>> disconnects while the machine is running. If it disconnects either by
>> >>> itself or from deactivating the connection, it will not connect again
>> >>> and needs a reboot. The nm/mm logs say that serial requests are timing
>> >>> out when it's in the non-connected state. I haven't been able to
>> >>> recover from the disconnected state with anything about a reboot.
>> >>>
>> >>> Is there anything we can do with this device to increase reliability?
>> >>> Failing that, can you recommend a usb Sprint 3G modem that will be
>> >>> more reliable? If there are none, do you have any recommendations for
>> >>> any brand of 3G modem that will work well in this situation? The boxes
>> >>> will be deployed where manual access is not easy, so it needs to be
>> >>> able to connect and recover from disconnections automatically, or at
>> >>> least in a way that can be scripted easily.
>> >>
>> >> You're certainly not going to be able to get the WiMAX part of the
>> >> device working automatically since we dont' have drivers for the Beceem
>> >> chipset of the WiMAX side.  However, the EVDO side should work with
>> >> cdc-acm, so if you have to use 'usb-serial' there's already something
>> >> wrong.
>> >>
>> >> I suspect you need to use usb_modeswitch to eject the fake CD that the
>> >> device provides too, correct?
>> >>
>> >> Honestly, UTStarcom-based devices (which the 300 and 301 are rebrands
>> >> of) often don't work that well as you've found out.  I'd recommend a
>> >> Sierra device instead, as Sierra is also very active in Linux kernel
>> >> development and has great support for their devices.
>> >>
>> >> Dan
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> > Thanks Forest, Dan. I'm going to recommend to our client that we use
>> > the Sierra cards. Appreciate the advice!
>> >
>>
>> I'm looking into the 598 now, and I'm having a little trouble getting
>> NM to recognize it. I plug in the device and I can see by using dmesg
>> that the sierra driver gets loaded, but when I run
>> nm-connection-editor and try to edit the connection, it doesn't get
>> listed in the device dropdown. Is there anything I have to do to get
>> it recognized? I also haven't been able to find any good guides on
>> setting it up. I'm running Ubuntu Karmic right now.
>
> It should show up in the menu after a few seconds.  Try grabbing some
> debugging information as described here to figure out why things aren't
> working:
>
> http://live.gnome.org/NetworkManager/Debugging
>
> under the "Debugging NetworkManager 0.8.x 3G connections" section.
> Basically, we want to get modem-manager logs to find out why the modem
> doesn't appear to be found.
>
> Dan
>
>
>

I'll try to get that today, first with a normal install and then with
the configs that Forest suggested.