Huawei E3131 modem shows as mass storage

Question

I am on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and updated the sysytem to the latest. I use Huawei E3131 USB dongle to connect to the Internet. Recently I noticed that the dongle is not detected as a modem. When I run the command lsusb it shows as mass storage device.

I have also installed usb_modeswitch on my system. I searched the Internet but could not find a solution. How to fix this issue to use this device as a modem.

Answer 1

With the help of Jos I could solve the problem. So I am posting it as an answer.

1. Plug the USB dongle to the computer.
2. Open the terminal and run dmesg.

It will show how the device has been detected. In my case it shows as a mass storage device.

Run lsusb to view the vendor and the product ID.

Then install libusb-xx if it is not on your system already. Download tarball and follow the steps on the terminal. Goto the folder where the file was downloaded and run,

tar xjf libusb(your_version).tar.bz2
cd libusb(your_version)
sudo make install

Then Download latest usb_modeswitch tarball and install it.

tar usb-modeswitch(your_version).tar.bz2
cd usb-modeswitch(your_version)
sudo make install

Follow the same steps to download and install usb-modeswitch-data-(your_version).tar.bz2

tar usb-modeswitch-data-(your_version).tar.bz2
cd usb-modeswitch-data-(your_version)
sudo make install

After that run the below command

sudo usb_modeswitch -v 12d1 -p 14fe -M '55534243123456780000000000000011062000000100000000000000000000'

It will probably correct the problem and should start showing mobile broadband signal. lsusb command now shows the device as a modem.

Reference