Computerbank has a client who got a Sierra wireless 312U USB mobile broadband modem from Telstra. Can we get it to work?
First of all the registration and activation part had to be done in Windows. We could not work around this. Not with the time frame we had. One of our volunteers has a dual boot laptop - thanks go out to Barry.
Under our custom version of 9.04, we tried to set it up using sakis3g script. Although Sakis would find and initialise the modem it could not make a successful connection. We also tried to connect via network manager (after modem was initialised by sakis3g). We could not get it to work.
Under our custom 10.04 the device was recognised by network manager but again, as with 9.04, we could not get it to connect.
Log messages like these appeared:
sierra ttyUSB2: resubmit read urb failed.(-1)
NetworkManager[836]:
At some point I decided to install the driver from: http://sierrawireless.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/641/~/can-i-use-a-sierra-wireless-modem-on-linux-machines-%28direct-ip-modems%29%3F
Doing this has not made a difference to how network manager operates. I will try this on another machine without doing the driver installation. Update to be provided.
Finally got it working with wvdial. I used GnomePPP to detect the port.
Here is the wvdial.conf file:
[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB2
Init = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","telstra.bigpond"
Phone = *99#
Username = enterusername@bigpond.com
Password = enterpassword
New PPPD = yes
Stupid Mode = on
**Init string help from http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1576784 though for us the APN section was different.
Popped this info into Gnome PPP (including the INIT string) and can also get it to work successfully.
Now I can rest. I would rather have got it working in network manager but Gnome PPP is easy enough for newbie users.
I should mention I tried with network manager 0.8 (lucid repositories) and then I upgraded to cutting edge networking manager from the 'trunk' repositories. The cutting edge network manager detects and shows signal strength for the Telstra UTMS network. In some ways this is handy (checking network availability) but it still doesn't work.
There was not a lot of information around about this device as it is so new. Some Ubuntu 10.10 users reported that they had it working out of the box. I only wish it had of been the case on this setup. We tried to get it working on a 10.10 live CD but could not. Same issue we had on 9.04 and 10.04.
If I had more time on this issue and with the device I might try different kernels. The device has to be handed back on Tues. If anyone comes across this and has a different story to tell or they got it working with network manager please let me know.
We tried to call Telstra to verify what APN the account was using. One help desk staff did not know what this meant! The APN is pretty important.
With an incorrect APN in the init string wvdial and gnome ppp will not work. If you are wondering about the wvdial error message --> Cannot get information for serial port it might be your APN is wrong. This was the case for us.
Frustrating, but relief to finally have it going.
Update: On 9.04 using sakis3g to initialise the modem (it creates the /dev/ttyUSB ports) I could get it working with gnome ppp. No updates to the driver.
I can also get it to connect with Network Manager in 9.04.
Also with cutting edge Network Manager (0.8.1.998) under 10.04!
It is possible that setting APN telstra.bigpond via the init string has helped. This time around under 9.04, sakis3g gave me the choice telstra.bigpond as the APN. With previous attempts it had not done this, it had different choices. Strange.
