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Member

From: Oxfordshire, UK

Registered: 2012-05-05

Posts: 90

Huawei E586 problems

I've just got a new 3g device - a Huawei E586 3g wifi router. I have been using an older Huawei (E583c), but the E586 offers enhanced performance and better battery life.

I have been using NetworkManager, so after the E586 had booted, I located it and entered the passphrase. At which point, NetwokManager spent a lot of time grinding away, and eventually came back and prompted me for the passphrase again. Couldn't get any further.

Initially I thought I must have a faulty device, but wanted to make sure. I've got several distros on my laptop, even though I use Arch pretty well exclusively these days. Anyhow, I restarted the machine into Salix (Slackware-based). Salix uses wicd rather than NM. I configured wicd for the E586 and told it to connect. It immediately became obvious that the device isn't faulty - wicd connected very quickly and the network connection runs fine.

I've since tried it under SalineOS 1.6, SalineOS 2.0dev2, Xubuntu 13.04 and even (first time its been started in several months) Windows Vista. With the exception of Xubuntu and Arch, the E586 connects fine every time.

Thinking that the problem might be a NM bug (I've hit several in the past), I installed Wicd on Arch. And still couldn't connect - it eventually failed. Looking at the log, these are the messages I'm getting:

2013/06/07 21:46:15 :: Generating psk...
2013/06/07 21:46:15 :: Attempting to authenticate...
2013/06/07 21:46:18 :: wpa_supplicant rescan forced...
2013/06/07 21:46:55 :: wpa_supplicant authentication may have failed.
2013/06/07 21:46:55 :: connect result is failed
2013/06/07 21:46:55 :: exiting connection thread
2013/06/07 21:46:56 :: Sending connection attempt result bad_pass

Since it seemed to be failing in the WPA authentication phase, I checked what versions of wpa_supplicant were being run by the different distros. Salix and Saline both run wpa_supplicant 1.0. I wondered if there might be a problem with version 2.0 which is current in Arch, so I used the rollback machine to revert to wpa_supplicant 1.1. No change, still failed to connect.

My latest attempt has been to disable wicd and install netctl. While I like netctl and have had no problems generating a working profile for the E583c, the profile I generated for the E586 is still failing. This was the result I got from my first attempt to start the E586:

fang@sirius:/etc/netctl$ sudo netctl start wlan0-MobileWiFi-ca07
Job for netctl@wlan0\x2dMobileWiFi\x2dca07.service failed. See 'systemctl status 
netctl@wlan0\x2dMobileWiFi\x2dca07.service' and 'journalctl -xn' for details.

I've checked both systemctl status and journalctl, but the results don't give me much extra information:

netctl@wlan0\x2dMobileWiFi\x2dca07.service -> '/org/freedesktop/systemd1/unit/netctl_40wlan0_5cx2dMobileWiFi_5cx2dca07_2eservice'

netctl@wlan0\x2dMobileWiFi\x2dca07.service - Networking for netctl profile wlan0-MobileWiFi-ca07
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/netctl@.service; static)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2013-06-10 04:51:15 BST; 4min 31s ago
     Docs: man:netctl.profile(5)
  Process: 20829 ExecStart=/usr/lib/network/network start %I (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE

and

Jun 10 04:51:15 sirius network[20829]: Failed to bring the network up for profile 'wlan0-MobileWiFi-ca07'
Jun 10 04:51:15 sirius systemd[1]: netctl@wlan0\x2dMobileWiFi\x2dca07.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jun 10 04:51:15 sirius systemd[1]: Failed to start Networking for netctl profile wlan0-MobileWiFi-ca07.
-- Subject: Unit netctl@wlan0\x2dMobileWiFi\x2dca07.service has failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
-- Documentation: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/catalog/be02cf6855d2428ba40df7e9d022f03d
-- 
-- Unit netctl@wlan0\x2dMobileWiFi\x2dca07.service has failed.
-- 
-- The result is failed.
Jun 10 04:51:15 sirius systemd[1]: Unit netctl@wlan0\x2dMobileWiFi\x2dca07.service entered failed state.

I'm currently stuck. I don't understand what the problem is, and I'm puzzled by the fact that older software seems to be working where both the most up-to-date distros on my laptop are failing.

Just to add to it, I've so far been quite unable to use either device  USB connected. So I'm really not doing too well....

Paul.