Tag: linux

Reliance/TATA Broadband data card on Linux

I am going to collect my past postings and new findings related to using Reliance/TATA Broadband card on Linux here. Here is a posting of mine from rimweb.in in Nov 2009:

“I have tested two Reliance Broadband card on offer right now for connectivity on Linux. I have tested this on Fedora 11 and it uses Linux 2.6.29 Kernel.

1. Huawei 1261 card – Works right away – once you insert it, it gets recognized as a USB device connected to one of the ports as a serial device. You can use normal RConnect package for Linux with slight modification for device name to make it work. On older version of Linux kernel, this may get recognized as a storage device and one may have to use usb_modeswitch to put it into modem mode.

2. LG LXU 800 – For this card, I had to insert usbserial module with vendor and device number as follows to get it to work.

login as root and run

#modprobe -r usbserial
#modprobe usbserial vendor=0xeab product=0x9357

Now insert the device and look at the /var/log/messages file or use “dmesg” command to see, if it gets attached to a serial device.”

yesterday I again had to try using a new Broadband Data Card from Reliance. It is from ZTE (Probably ZTE 2726). If you insert this in USB drive, you get the following message from Kernel on FC11 running Kernel 2.6.32:
=====
Aug 27 17:05:00 ranjan kernel: usb 2-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 4
Aug 27 17:05:01 ranjan kernel: usb 2-2: New USB device found, idVendor=19d2, idProduct=fff5
Aug 27 17:05:01 ranjan kernel: usb 2-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Aug 27 17:05:01 ranjan kernel: usb 2-2: Product: USB Storage
Aug 27 17:05:01 ranjan kernel: usb 2-2: Manufacturer: ZTE, Incorporated
Aug 27 17:05:01 ranjan kernel: usb 2-2: SerialNumber: 000000000002
Aug 27 17:05:01 ranjan kernel: usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Aug 27 17:05:01 ranjan kernel: scsi13 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Aug 27 17:05:06 ranjan kernel: scsi 13:0:0:0: CD-ROM ZTE USB Storage FFF1 2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
Aug 27 17:05:06 ranjan kernel: sr1: scsi-1 drive
Aug 27 17:05:06 ranjan kernel: sr 13:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 5
Aug 27 17:05:07 ranjan kernel: sr1: CDROM (ioctl) error, command: Xpwrite, Read disk info 51 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00
Aug 27 17:05:07 ranjan kernel: sr: Sense Key : Hardware Error [current]
=====

The way to get this to work is to use usb_modeswitch available at

http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/

usb_modeswitch is not much easier to use and comes with support for large number of USB data modem having mass storage built in. Unlike earlier version of this, here you just need to install software package and its data package and it works all by itself:

Download

(1) http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/usb-modeswitch-1.1.4.tar.bz2 (or its newerversion, if available)
(2) http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/usb-modeswitch-data-20100826.tar.bz2 (or newer version)

Install these after extracting by using “make install” command. You have to make sure that you have ‘tcl’ package installed. You have to also make sure, you have libusb-devel package or its equivalent installed for successful installation. Once you install, your device would get detected as a DATA Modem and you can use it to connect to Internet.

Meshprog – USB device opening failure on Fedora 11/12

I had been using meshprog to program Meshnetics Zigbit Evaluation Modules on Linux. I discovered that it was not getting programmed on Fedora 11 or 12. It took me some time to figure out what was happening. I am recording this here in case some one else faces the same problem. Here are my observations:

1. Meshnetics modules use UART to USB converter from Silicon Labs – CP2102. This has idVendor=10c4, idProduct=ea60 as shown by Kernel message.

2. I found that /dev/ttyUSBx to which it was getting attached was not opening by Meshprog

3. System log showed the following :

May 22 20:56:28 ranjan kernel: usb 4-1: cp210x converter now attached to ttyUSB3
May 22 20:56:30 ranjan NetworkManager: <info>  (ttyUSB3): ignoring due to lack of mobile broadband capabilties
May 22 20:56:30 ranjan gpsd.hotplug: gpsd_control(action=add, arg=/dev/ttyUSB3)
May 22 20:56:30 ranjan gpsd.hotplug: socket /var/run/gpsd.sock doesn’t exist
May 22 20:56:30 ranjan gpsd.hotplug: launching gpsd -F /var/run/gpsd.sock
May 22 20:56:30 ranjan gpsd.hotplug: socket /var/run/gpsd.sock doesn’t exist
May 22 20:56:30 ranjan gpsd.hotplug: can’t reach gpsd

4. So it looked like it was trying to attach it as a GPS device by starting gpsd

5. I located the hotplug rule for this and disabled that. In Fedora 11 it s in :

/etc/udev/rules.d/99-gpsd.rules

I commented the line :

#SYSFS{idVendor}==”10c4″, SYSFS{idProduct}==”ea60″, SYMLINK=”gps%n”, RUN+=”/lib/udev/gpsd.hotplug.wrapper”

6. Now it works !