[clug] Virgin Mobile Broadband with Linux Huawei E220

Hal Ashburner hal.ashburner at gmail.com
Thu May 1 13:40:38 GMT 2008


Hello Clug,
Virgin mobile broadband was slightly more of a hassle to work through than I
was expecting so i just want to make these notes discoverable on the
interweb for the next person. I did this on debian stable and again on sid -
I imgaine most of it translates to other distros and BSD ok. Do yell at me
if I'm wrong about that, I am interested.

Right so you plug in the usb modem, a huawei E220 and you want it to be
represented by /dev/ttyUSB0
on BSD the device file would already be there, so (I guess) ensure the
relevant usbserial driver is loaded?
on linux using udev we can ensure the kernel modules are loaded when it's
plugged in.
1. Add a file /etc/udev/rules.d/50-huawei.rules

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="1003", SYSFS{idVendor}=="12d1",
RUN+="/sbin/modprobe option"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="1003", SYSFS{idVendor}=="12d1",
RUN+="/sbin/modprobe ppp_async"

"option" is the relevant usbserial driver on linux

2. create a file /etc/ppp/chat-E220

ABORT BUSY
ABORT ERROR
ABORT 'NO CARRIER'
REPORT CONNECT
TIMEOUT 10
"" "ATZ"
OK AT+CGDCONT=1,"ip","VirginBroadband"
OK "ATE1V1&D2&C1S0=0+IFC=2,2"
OK "AT+IPR=115200"
OK "ATE1"
TIMEOUT 60
"" "ATD*99#"
CONNECT \c

3. create a file /etc/ppp/peers/E220
debug
/dev/ttyUSB0
crtscts
#modem
refuse-chap
require-pap
noauth
nodetach
defaultroute
noipdefault
noccp
nobsdcomp
novj
user "irrelevant"
password "irrelevant"
/usr/sbin/chat -s -S -V -f /etc/ppp/chat-E220-nopin'


of particular interest there, and where virgin seem to differ from 3 mobile
and the other providers using this modem is
refuse-chap
require-pap
without those your modem logs will show you everything you expect on
initialisation but it will then mysteriously hang up on you.
without giving some string for user and password it also seems to
mysteriously not work despite that fact it doesn't seem to matter what.


4. at the prompt
pon E220

poff E220 to turn it off.

I Hope that saves someone some time.

-- 
Kind regards,
Hal Ashburner


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