Comments on: Howto: Debian Lenny & Huawei E160G

By: Pete Revell

Pete Revell — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 21:32:52 +0000

I have a friend who is lying strapped to a bed with a broken neck. In order to stave off death by boredom, he got his wife to buy an ASUS EEE PC4G(170) running linux, and a HUAWEI E160G with 3 branding. I have been given these items, with instructions to get them working. In this, I have singularly failed, and I am really so linux-ignorant that I have no idea where to start. I can report that when trying to compile the modeswitch utility, it dies because it can’t find gcc or strip.
Is there anybody who can offer really basic advice? I’m not even sure which linux I am using, but I think it is based on Debian.
I know the dongle works, because everything springs to life on my windows laptop.

By: Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:06:56 +0000

Yes, Intrepid includes Network Manager 0.7, it’s good news for ease of use! I’ve tried a Live CD of Intrepid recently but didn’t really use it for a prolonged period; the improvements seem to be worth the upgrade but for me, Debian is still my main workhorse.

By: Mark Williams

Mark Williams — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:30:56 +0000

I just got one for my ancient Dell laptop, with Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex; plugged the dongle in, after a few seconds a box came up - New modem detected, click the network icon to connect…. More or less out of the box.

By: Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:24:01 +0000

With newer kernels I dont think you need USB modeswitch anymore, as the “option” driver seems to pickup the USB tty ports quite easily on it’s own.

I’m not sure which packages to get for Hardy, probably better looking for a more Ubuntu biased guide. Alot of people have had success using wvdial and gnome-ppp, so if you don’t feel like upgrading to a development version of Network Manager their is another choice.

By: Bruno

Bruno — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:29:27 +0000

I’ve been trying this on Ubuntu Hardy and I can’t get it to work.

I manage to get USB_modeswitch to work fine but only when udev is restarted. It will not recognise the device when I plug it in after udev starts. Is that normal? And if yes, how can I get USB_modeswitch to run whenever the device is plugged in?

The next problem is that a version of NetworkManager (v0.6.6) is installed by default on Ubuntu but it doesn’t see the USB TTY ports. Is this the same software as the NetworkManager 0.7 that you mention in the article and should I upgrade it? If yes, how do I do that without losing the network connection? And how do I configure NetworkManager in the first place?

Sorry if all this sounds like very basic questions but my knowledge of how Linux works under the covers is not good enough to allow me to understand what’s not working.

By: Experimentation Failure | tensixtyone

Experimentation Failure | tensixtyone — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:09:50 +0000

[...] In the process of configuring my machine again I’ve noticed that the older guide for the E160G using Network Manager is a little wrong, so I’ll have to update that sometime. For now I’ll be sticking on [...]

By: Emilio

Emilio — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:35:46 +0000

It seems that the last SVN update solved the problem. Now although the DNS is 4.2.2.4 the connection is working. I travel by train myself and for the first time I had a good connection for all the trip.

By the way, in my case the DNS override in NM is not working.

By: Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:06:02 +0000

Yes, sounds familiar. I used to attribute this down to a dodgy connection (as usually i’m travelling on the train). Maybe you could override the DNS in the NM settings, as DNS isn’t firewalled on Three.

Personally I use my own DNS servers, as I like being able to use “hostname” instead of hostname.domain.com.

By: Emilio

Emilio — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:40:45 +0000

Hi,

I have the same modem and NM 0.7. When I manage to connect the datarate is good and the browsing smooth. However 9 out of 10 attempts I have as primary dns: 4.2.2.4 or 10.11.12.13. Under these circumstances, although the connection is active I cannot browse. Could you please check your log or tell me if you have experienced similar problems?

Thanks

Emilio

By: Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:57:12 +0000

Max: check your usb_modeswitch config to make sure you uncommented the lines for the E220 device, also you might need to use the -H1 command to use the Huwaei switch command. Check usb_modeswitch –help.