Qualcomm Gobi WWAN modem no longer appears in Network Manager

Question

Not sure what happened here. I installed Cinnamon on my Ubuntu 12.10 environment yesterday, rebooted when finished and everything was working fine. I even used my WWAN modem after my fixed line broadband went down. However, after starting my machine this morning and seeing that my fixed line is still having problems (intermittently), I clicked the network applet and my WWAN device wasn't listed. It's not in the main network manager window either.

It is still present on the system, however:

$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 05ca:18b0 Ricoh Co., Ltd Sony Vaio Integrated Webcam
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 05c6:9221 Qualcomm, Inc. Gobi Wireless Modem (QDL mode)
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 04e8:6865 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd 
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0409:005a NEC Corp. HighSpeed Hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 147e:1000 Upek Biometric Touchchip/Touchstrip Fingerprint Sensor
Bus 008 Device 002: ID 044e:3017 Alps Electric Co., Ltd BCM2046 Bluetooth Device

Debug output from modem-manager, refers to a device that is blacklisted:

modem-manager[10186]:  [1355478137.024491] [mm-manager.c:866] device_added(): (tty/ttyUSB0): port's parent device is blacklisted
modem-manager[10186]:  [1355478137.024607] [mm-manager.c:875] device_added(): (tty/ttyS0): port's parent platform driver is not whitelisted
modem-manager[10186]:  [1355478137.024700] [mm-manager.c:875] device_added(): (tty/ttyS1): port's parent platform driver is not whitelisted
...

I couldn't see anything relevant in the debug output for network-manager, but I've created a paste for it just in case.

In /lib/udev/rules.d/77-mm-qdl-device-blacklist.rules, I found the following line that matches the device IDs from the lsusb output:

# Generic Gobi QDL device
ATTRS{idVendor}=="05c6", ATTRS{idProduct}=="9221", ENV{ID_MM_DEVICE_IGNORE}="1"

I tried commenting out the second line and restarting network-manager/modem-manager but it didn't help. I've no idea where to go from here, does anyone else have any ideas?

Answer 1

Ok,

Mi Thinkpad has this modem, and now it works.

1. Get a Windows with this driver (for Windows) working. If you don't have, want dual boot, you can try a VirtualBox installation. Get the drivers, and ensure it works with Windows.

2. Install gobi-loader

   sudo apt-get install gobi-loader
   

3. Copy these files, from windows to Linux

sudo mkdir /lib/firmware/gobi
sudo cp -p '/windows/c/Program Files/QUALCOMM/Images/Lenovo/UMTS/amss.mbn' /lib/firmware/gobi/
sudo cp -p '/windows/c/Program Files/QUALCOMM/Images/Lenovo/UMTS/apps.mbn' /lib/firmware/gobi/
sudo cp -p '/windows/c/Program Files/QUALCOMM/Images/Lenovo/6/UQCN.mbn' /lib/firmware/gobi/

Be careful because your Windows filesystem may vary

Restart

It should work

COMMENT: You can also, mount your Windows partition, if you want in /mnt and therefore pick these files from that place

Answer 2

I think you missed the part about manually copying the firmware files manually in the previous answer. I had a similar issue with a friend's netbook. It was an HP Mini 210–1076NR, but same gobi loader issue.

I blogged about it a while back, it was for Ubuntu 10.10: http://csgeek-random.blogspot.com/2011/02/hp-mini-2101076nr-ubuntu-netbook-1010.html

The relevant part though is probably this document:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&objectID=c01738839&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Depending on your provider, you'd need a different firmware file. You won't need to re-install gobi-loader each time, but you'll probably need to reboot at least when you change firmwares. Try messing around with the files 'till you find the right one.

I'm not sure if those codes are unique to HP or not, I would go based on the HP document.. if all else fails, google around I'm sure whatever vendor you have will have a document on some cryptic website with this information.

Hope this helps.