Huawei E220 in Gutsy Gibbon (Kubuntu)

I received a package earlier today, and was very happy to find out that it’s the Huawei E220 that I ordered few days ago. This Huawei E220 is a 3G card that supports speed of up to 3.6 Mbps, using HSDPA technology, and it makes me can’t wait to have it work with Gutsy Gibbon. After struggling for quite some time, I found out that the answer to my problem was just these two lines of command:

sudo modprobe -r uhci_hcd
sudo modprobe uhci_hcd

If that short version of my solution doesn’t help, please read ahead…

I’ve been trying to get this modem to work with Gutsy Gibbon, but the online howtos that I found on the net doesnt reliably work for me.

Weird enough for me initially as sometime I can just use wvdial (more on this afterward) and get connected, while most of the time I got various errors about the modem. With these non-reproducible errors and successes, I do some trial and error while looking at the kernel logs, and came up with this one final observation;

shakir@herugrim ~ $ uname -r  # just to show the kernel I'm using, as your mileage may vary
2.6.22-14-generic

At one shell I run this to see kernel messages;

sudo tail -f  /var/log/messages

and got this messages upon plugging in my Huawei E220 to the USB port;

usb 3-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 5
usb 3-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
usbcore: registered new interface driver libusual
usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial
/build/buildd/linux-source-2.6.22-2.6.22/drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for generic
usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic
/build/buildd/linux-source-2.6.22-2.6.22/drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial Driver core
/build/buildd/linux-source-2.6.22-2.6.22/drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for GSM modem (1-port)
option 3-1:1.0: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
usb 3-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB0

Nice, it has detected my Huawei E220 as GSM modem, and attach it to /dev/ttyUSB0. Let’s create a wvdial configuration to connect to the telco (Celcom in my case). My /etc/wvdial.conf looks like this;

[Dialer Celcom3G]
Phone = *99***1#
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Username = user
Password = pass
ISDN = 0
New PPPD = yes
Baud = 1843200
Init2 = ATZ
Init3 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Modem Type = Analog Modem

So let’s just connect;

shakir@herugrim ~ $ sudo wvdial Celcom3G
WvDial<*1>: WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.56
WvModem<*1>: Cannot get information for serial port.
WvDial<*1>: Initializing modem.
WvDial<*1>: Sending: ATZ
WvDial<*1>: Sending: ATQ0
WvDial<*1>: Re-Sending: ATZ
WvDial: Modem not responding.

Ouch, an error. The modem has been detected, what could go wrong? After some time, and no success with the available tutorials, I finally got this working, as the problem was related to the USB drivers. What I did was to reload the uhci_hcd module

shakir@herugrim ~ $ sudo modprobe -r uhci_hcd

Lets take a look at what the kernel says about this;

[..snipped..]
Dec  4 22:45:24 herugrim kernel: [ 1343.504000] usb 3-1: USB disconnect, address 6
Dec  4 22:45:24 herugrim kernel: [ 1343.504000] option1 ttyUSB0: GSM modem (1-port) converter now disconnected from ttyUSB0
Dec  4 22:45:24 herugrim kernel: [ 1343.504000] option 3-1:1.0: device disconnected
[..snipped..]

and then lets load the module back again

shakir@herugrim ~ $ sudo modprobe uhci_hcd

and see what happens;

USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v3.0
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1a.0[A
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: UHCI Host Controller
[..snipped..]
usb 3-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
usb 3-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
option 3-1:1.0: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
usb 3-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB0
option 3-1:1.1: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
usb 3-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB1
option 3-1:1.2: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
usb 3-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB2
[..snipped..]

Last time the GSM modem was attached to just /dev/ttyUSB0, but now it’s also attached to /dev/ttyUSB1 and /dev/ttyUSB2. And I guess it’s time to connect using wvdial;

WvDial<*1>: WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.56
WvModem<*1>: Cannot get information for serial port.
WvDial<*1>: Initializing modem.
WvDial<*1>: Sending: ATZ
WvDial Modem<*1>: ATZ
WvDial Modem<*1>: OK
WvDial<*1>: Sending: ATZ
WvDial Modem<*1>: ATZ
WvDial Modem<*1>: OK
WvDial<*1>: Sending: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
WvDial Modem<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
WvDial Modem<*1>: OK
WvDial<*1>: Modem initialized.
WvDial<*1>: Sending: ATDT*99***1#
WvDial<*1>: Waiting for carrier.
WvDial Modem<*1>: ATDT*99***1#
WvDial Modem<*1>: CONNECT
WvDial<*1>: Carrier detected.  Waiting for prompt.
WvDial: Don't know what to do!  Starting pppd and hoping for the best.
WvDial: Starting pppd at Tue Dec  4 22:49:25 2007
WvDial: Pid of pppd: 6433
WvDial<*1>: Using interface ppp0
WvDial<*1>: local  IP address 10.188.15.175
WvDial<*1>: remote IP address 10.64.64.64
WvDial<*1>: primary   DNS address 202.188.0.133
WvDial<*1>: secondary DNS address 202.188.1.5

It works, yeay As usual, lets create a script for this;

#!/bin/bash

sudo modprobe -r uhci_hcd
sudo modprobe uhci_hcd

echo "Waiting kernel to detect modem device"

# Wait till the kernel recognizes our E220
while true; do

        # Read log
        tail -n 20 /var/log/messages  > access.history
        sleep 1
        tail -n 20 /var/log/messages  > access.current

        LOG=`diff access.history access.current | grep ">" | tr -d ">"`

        # Check if it is detected
        if [[ "$LOG" =~ "converter now attached to ttyUSB1" ]]; then
                echo "Modem device detected, dialing..."
                # If it is, get out of the loop immedietly
                break
        fi
done

rm access.history access.current

# Start dialing
sudo wvdial Celcom3G

p/s: The script is now maintained here. Please go there to see the latest updates and discussions

Tags: bash, gutsy, hsdpa, linux, script, ubuntu

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Information Insemination. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.