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devius

Member

Registered: 2010-11-11

Posts: 22

[SOLVED] Can't connect with Huawei E1550 3G modem

I have this 3G modem and have been trying to make it work for a few weeks now without success. I know it does work properly because I managed to connect with it a while back on Ubuntu and I think Fedora as well. I followed all the guides in the Wiki about 3G modems, and even some threads in the forum, but with no success.

I'm using KDE with network manager and that probably also doesn't help. I never got this modem working in KDE before (tried with opensuse 11.2), but on gnome it seems to work just fine for some reason (although I never tried it with arch linux because I would rather not install another desktop environment). After all this time trying to set it up, I suspect it's down to some sort of permission problem. Here's what I know:

1. It is detected correctly upon insertion and usb_modeswitch does its thing correctly, changing ids from 12d1:1460 to 12d1:140c.
2. After switching It shows up on lsusb as Bus 001 Device 009: ID 12d1:140c Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
3. I'm on the following relevant groups: rfkill, network, networkmanager.
4. I can connect with wvdial although I'm still left without network connectivity, probably due to lack of correctly setup routes and dns (although I have the relevant wvdial.conf auto options turned on). Setting the default route to what I think would be the correct one doesn't help, and adding the correct dns servers to resolv.conf also doesn't work. The blue led on the modem does stay lit up indicating a connection has been established, and ifconfig reports that an IP address has been added to the ppp0 interface.
5. I have installed networkmanager version 0.8.1, modemmanager 0.4 and ppp 2.4.5
6. I have a connection profile for the 3G modem called TMN on networkmamanger with all details correctly filled in (pin, phone number, APN)
6. This is the output of daemon.log relating to networkmanager after I click on the connection (which fails instantly):

<info> Activation (ttyUSB0) starting connection 'TMN'
<info> (ttyUSB0): device state change: 3 -> 4 (reason 0)
<info> Activation (ttyUSB0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) scheduled...
<info> Activation (ttyUSB0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) started...
<info> (ttyUSB0): device state change: 4 -> 6 (reason 0)
<info> Activation (ttyUSB0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) complete.
<info> Activation (ttyUSB0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) scheduled...
<info> Activation (ttyUSB0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) started...
<info> (ttyUSB0): device state change: 6 -> 4 (reason 0)
<info> Activation (ttyUSB0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) complete.
<warn> GSM modem enable failed: (32) SIM PIN required
<warn> GSM PIN unlock failed: (32) Operation not allowed
<info> (ttyUSB0): device state change: 4 -> 9 (reason 28)
<info> Marking connection 'TMN' invalid.
<warn> Activation (ttyUSB0) failed.
<info> (ttyUSB0): device state change: 9 -> 3 (reason 0)
<info> (ttyUSB0): deactivating device (reason: 0).

And this is the same output but relating to modemmanager:

(ttyUSB0) opening serial device...
Got failure code 3: Operation not allowed
(ttyUSB0) closing serial device...

Any ideas? I have been searching and there were some folks affected by this in the first months of this year, but since then it's supposed to have been fixed. The problem is that in my case it's not. All my packages are up to date. I also tried installing networkmanager from testing (0.8.2) but it didn't solve the problem, so I reverted back to the current stable package.

Last edited by devius (2010-11-13 12:54:40)

hume's doona

Member

Registered: 2009-12-11

Posts: 206

Re: [SOLVED] Can't connect with Huawei E1550 3G modem

Some providers are picky between plans. It *could* be a case of a setting for prepaid vs postpaid for the same provider or something similar. Has this wvdial.conf worked before?

devius

Member

Registered: 2010-11-11

Posts: 22

Re: [SOLVED] Can't connect with Huawei E1550 3G modem

I don't know. This was the first time I tried to use wvdial. On the previous distros I tried and the modem worked I never had to use it. Network Manager managed it just fine Not the case now with kde and arch.
That plan stuff doesn't seem likely because I am using the same settings I used before when it did work. I just tried it on a windows laptop and it worked fine.

ijanos

Member

From: Budapest, Hungary

Registered: 2008-03-30

Posts: 443

Re: [SOLVED] Can't connect with Huawei E1550 3G modem

Just an idea that sometimes work: take out the SIM card, put it in a phone, disable the simlock so it wont ask for the PIN code, and put it back in the modem.

devius

Member

Registered: 2010-11-11

Posts: 22

Re: [SOLVED] Can't connect with Huawei E1550 3G modem

Holy mobile networking!!
It worked! This is obviously a problem with the pin not being passed from networkmanager to modemmanager. The two don't seem to be working properly together, at least on KDE. Of course that with this "fix" if I ever loose the modem I risk someone using it and getting a huge bill at the end of the month... so, I'll keep an eye on this.

Note: This isn't exactly solved because if I activate the simlock option of my SIM card again, I'm back to the same situation, but I'll mark the thread as solved, and update it when a better solution is found.

Last edited by devius (2010-11-13 12:56:06)