HUAWEI ( E173-u) Not Working in Ubuntu 14.04

Question

I have recently Installed Ubuntu 14.04 . From the beginning of the Installation I had a problem with my Dongle. That is. When I first connect my modem ( After doing the necessary network setups )

It shows the modem. When I try to connect to the Network, It just disappears from the Network menu. Then I have to remove the dongle couple of times and plug it to work.

So I tried searching on the web & Edited this file

/lib/udev/rules.d/40-usb_modeswitch.rules

# Huawei E173 (Viettel 3G)
ATTR{idVendor}=="12d1", ATTR{idProduct}=="1446", RUN+="usb_modeswitch '%b/%k'"

Here I have replaced 1446 wih the previous value, The reason I chose 1446 is when I used the lssub command , I got a vendor ID & Prod. Id. So i replaced them with this.

My Problem now is, The device is not recognized. Even after several unplugs. So I need a way to fix it or bring the old /lib/udev/rules.d/40-usb_modeswitch.rules File.

Can anyone help me?

Answer 1

If you are Indonesian, just go to http://modemlinux.wordpress.com and look for a tutorial there. You can try global tutorial. And as thrvers[1] said always, try to trace your modem with tailf /var/log/syslog to know what actually happens.

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[1] Indonesia Ubuntu Forum USB modem hacker. He is also known broadly as Reza He.

Answer 2

Here are the relevant lines from my rules file:

# Huawei E173 (Viettel 3G)
ATTR{idVendor}=="Huawei", ATTR{idProduct}=="14b5", RUN+="usb_modeswitch '%b/%k'"

# Vodafone (Huawei) K4511
ATTR{idVendor}=="Huawei", ATTR{idProduct}=="14b7", RUN+="usb_modeswitch '%b/%k'"

# Huawei E173u-2, E177
ATTR{idVendor}=="Huawei", ATTR{idProduct}=="14ba", RUN+="usb_modeswitch '%b/%k'"

However, my experience with Huawei modems (not this model though) has been that using their drivers gives much better results. All Huawei modems I have used, also show up as a CD drive when plugged in containing the drivers. If you are in luck then there will be a 'linux' subdirectory containing the linux driver with an "install" script that can be run as root. If that is the case with you, then I can tell more details on what steps I use to set it up. With 14.04 I had problems installing the driver as is, but worked after a small tweak.