I'm starting a new thread, because the one I started a few months ago does not appear to be getting any repeonses.

To see the previous thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-koala-804371/

I've come a bit further than then. The chat script now has the AT_OPSYS command removed as a result of my experiments talking to the card directly with screen /dev/umts.

The script /etc/ppp/peers/eplus now looks like this:
The persist and maxfail 40 options only serve to allow the chatscript to try again every 30 seconds or so. Occassionaly I also get a "NO CARRIER" reasponse, which I guess is to be expected.

The chat script looks like this:
The command "AT_OPSYS=3,2" (or whatever) are not recognised by the air card. That is somethibg I discovered by talking to the card directly wit the screeen command.

The result as shown by /var/log/syslog:
Doe anybody have any idea what so ever what in the blue blazes causes my card to hang up as soon as a connection is made?

Help please! Somebody must have a clue...

Thanks

Achim

I have looked at all your post from all the other sites. and seems you just need to make sure you have not messed up anything. Put everything back to the way the distro comes all configurations. Start from square one. Think wifi that uses pppd. Now read this real good. and then we will let the operating system run the protocols. Ok now I find kpppd works much better than gnome-pppd.
kubuntu 9.04 supports that old device out of the box. Thats if you want to run UBUNTU.

Thanks very much for the response, Drakeo.

I don't think I've messed anything up, but to be absolutely sure, I will do as you suggest. I have tried the Sierra Wireless site before (something over a year ago) and the instructions were incomplete (in some aspects just plain wrong). I note that there was a problem with Ubuntu 9.10 that should've been fixed in 10.4. If It hasn't been fixed, then that might be the cause of my problem... there isn't any further detail on that page, but maybe I can find something elsewhere on the SW site.

I'll have a go at reinstalling drivers and scripts from scratch after work. I'll let you know what happened.

Thanks again

Achim

Hi again Drakeo,

I just finished reading through the instructions on the SW site. It would seem, from the table in section 1 (Supported modems), that the AC850 is not supported. Not discouraged (yet) I read on.

Now I have to take a deep breath and plow on, because everything I've set up to date will have to be scrapped. It means removing a whole set of files and commenting out a lot of code...

Here goes nothin'... I'll keep you posted.

Achim

did you read this

Hi again Drakeo,

Firstly, in response to your last post: Yes, I have been aware of the card identification problem for some time. In any event, the firmware is definitely being found and aparently works. Here is an extract out of dmesg from an earlier attempt:

In the end I did not use the instructions on the site you suggested, because my card is not in the list of supported cards (old or not, it works well under Windoze). Instead I found the following info, also at sierra wireless:
http://sierrawireless.custhelp.com/a...-850%2F860,-ac

It is interesting to note that this and other sites always state that the firmware should be in /lib/firmware but ubuntu 10.4 already has it in /lib/firmware/cis. I have it in both locations, just to be on the safe side.

The problem occurs when my modem requests IP and DNS addresses:

I found the following gem of information at http://osr507doc.sco.com/en/NetAdminG/pppT.tsneg.html:

Since, in my case, the problem occurs in the IPCP negotiation, it would appear that there are no authentication problems. So where does that leave me? There are huge numbers of posts about IPCP negotiation, so others have obviously had similar problems.

Kppp is not an option (yet), because to install it you need a package manager and, hence, an internet connection. I tried downloading the individual packages (when they were not already installed) but ended up with 3 tiers of dependancies and decided to wait until I get home and can use Synaptic to handle it.

The season of good cheer is upon us and there are other things taking up our time. I will have a go at installing kppp between Christmas and the new year and I will keep on trawling through the many posts on various forums.

If, or rather when I find the solution, I will post it. As always any, and I do mean ANY, suggestions are more than welcome.

A merry Christmas to all reading this forum.

Achim

seems KDE kppd will configure this for you. In gnome Ubuntu you can still install kppd

Hi again,

I spent some time trying various things. Firstly I installed kppp and wvdial. I therefore have everything needed to apply the instructions on the aforementioned Sierra Wireless page.

(Note: the dates on the outputs below should be ignored. I had to redo some stuff, because I didn't save the output at the first attempt.)

In accordance with the instructions I tried wvdialconf create. The first time it failed. I figured I would try configuring kppp anyway and quickly discovered that my device symlink (/dev/umts) is not available in kppp, but /dev/modem is in the list. Hence I changed my udev rule as follows:

Restarting udev gave the following result in /var/log/syslog:

So at some future stage I'm going to have to change the udev rule, I suppose. None-the-less the device was mapped to /dev/modem and I could continue. Before I did anything else, I tried wvdialconf create again and got the following response:

At this point the light on the card is flashing orange, not green, so something isn't quite right. Hence, I also tried the following:

This is as expected, so I plowed on regardless. Next step was to try configuring kppp. I selected /dev/modem as the device. I then went to the "Modem" tab and clicked the button "Query Modem...". The modem was found and determined to be ready. Kppp then issued 7 ATI-comands. the response from each one looked something like this:

Next I set up the account. I know from earlier experimentation that both PAP and CHAP work with eplus as ISP, so I initially left the PAP/CHAP authentication setting. This got me an immediate "ERROR". So I tried just PAP as suggested by Sierra Wireless. This gave the following response in the log window:

Since I set the option to auto redial when disconnected and similar stuff, this response comes up again and again. Note that my card was still flashing orange!

I'd really like to know what is happening but /var/log/syslog only gives the following information:

That last bit just kept repeating. Then I tried just CHAP authentication and got the following in /var/log/syslog:

Once again I either get the "modem hangup" problem or I get the "Terminating on signal 15". Oddly enough when I first did this, the LED on my card went green!! Now it is back to orange.

With all the experimentation I haven't come any further than with the command pon eplus that I was using earlier. For anyone not familiar with this command, it is just shorthand for pppd call eplus where %eplus" is the pppd script in /etc/ppp/peers.

Soooo... has anyone got any other ideas? This is really getting me down. I seem to be close to a solution but just can't quite nail it down. All suggestions welcome.

Cheers

Achim

you did follow this link right write looks like the modem side is working is the firmware installed for the radio side.

The link you refer to is in fact the very first one I used to try to get the card working back in August 2006. I had the same problem back then. I have fiddled with options, changed laptops, upgraded the operating system (all many times over) and am now back approximately where I started. The information on that page doesn't appear to have changed much since 2006, though I note it was last edited in July 2008.

The only thing I haven't tried is changing the card. Reason... it works under Win 2000 and Win XP using 3G-Watcher. This was achieved on an old ACER Aspire as well as my HP nx6325. I previously had both these machines set up as dual boot Linux/Windoze and the card did not work under Linux. It now continues not to work with Linux on an IBM T43. I know others have had success with the same card (check the links in my earlier posts... especially the ubuntu Forum) but I'm ready to give up.

The new standard is USB these days. Newer laptops don't have a PCMCIA slot anymore. Does anyone know of a USB modem card that will work under Linux?

BTW... what do you mean with "radio side" firmware? Nobody has ever mentioned such a thing before and I've seen no references to such a beast in any other forum nor in any of the stuff from Sierra Wireless.

Achim

P.S. It is often mentioned in various posts concerning the AC850 that it identifies itself as an AC750. I have seen no evidence of this at all... see responses to pccardctl ident and the responses to the ATI commands issued by kppp. Never-the-less I note that the firmware for the AC750 has changed in recent times (now 140 bytes instead of 132) whilst the firmware, labeled SW_8xx_SER.cis, for the AC850 has not. Maybe I'll try using the AC750 firmware and see if that works.

The only reason I asked was to find a base foundation of your work. I believe you have a couple threads here and a couple threads in som other forums. In that link was one thing out of all those forums you have been posting to I did not see you write about. as your device is no longer in the Sierra Wireless data but the next card up is. It uses the same protocol. the time out is a big thing it allows the server to search and send for your account next make sure you speed is correct because it will also drop you.
please read this link here you will find that unfortunately your 850 is not supported. but from the looks of this it may be. but the firmware could be different. You will see that in 10.04 Sierra Wireless modem is supported through network manager. it shows usb for instructions but your device if the kernel module is loaded should be seen.
those directions are for 10.04. you will note the kppp setup also has changed for 10.04. this is a big deal.
whythat file must be executable. hang in there. do not let the usb direction confuse you it is all a com connection. tty*
Hang in there.
Please read this for 10.04

Hi Drakeo,

about 24 hours before your reply-post I bought a Nokia CS-15 from Amazon. Why? Because the blurb assured me that it has support for Linux. The documentation confirms this BUT (there's always a "but", isn't there) the installation did not work as specified. Why am I not surprised?

Apparently the device registers itself as a CD-ROM initially. One then installs a .deb package on the CD-ROM and:
1. the CD-ROM becomes a modem.
2. new modem management and dial up software is installed.
Sounds like just the ticket for a jaded aging hacker who's looking for an easy way out.

BUT: The device did not register itself at all. Using lsusb revealed that the device had been recognised as a usb device. The log in /var/log/syslog gave a dizzying list of errors which I couldn't even begin to understand. I then got on the net and started looking for information. The following post gave me a vital clue:
http://www.petrilopia.net/wordpress/...-15-and-linux/
I used the suggested usb_modeswitch (er... after I had installed it, that is). The result was that the CS15 now flashed green.

In accordance with the information from the Nokia site (http://mea.nokia.com/support/product...cs-15/software), I downloaded and installed the package which should have been on the pseudo-CD-ROM. This resulted in a new rule: /etc/udev/rules.d/25-nokia-zerocd.rules.

In /var/log/syslog I then found:
I basically ignored this and plowed on.

OK. Next step was to configure kppp. The main thing here was to select the correct device. From /var/log/syslog I could see that there were now 4 new devices: ttyACM0, 1, 2 & 3. Again with help from the Nokia site I selected ttyACM0 which showed up in the list of devices for the modem configuration.

My first attempt to connect gave (in the kppp terminal):
Up to that point everything was fine. Here's the output from /var/log/syslog:
I tried various changes and options and always got this result or (last time) "Terminating on signal 15". In desperation I tried changing the script in /etc/ppp/peers (created cs-15). You can pretty much guess what it looks like (i.e. not much different from the original eplus script). Then I entered pon cs-15 and got:
Of course I tried heaps more than just that. I've really only shown the brightest low-lights in this dismal failure.

Sorry if this seems disappointing to you given the time you have spent on the problem with the AC850, but consider how disappointing this all is for me. I'm going to keep trying with the CS-15 for this week. After that I will send the CS-15 back. There is some hope, after all, that I'll get this USB-stick working. Whether or not I get it working I will make another attempt at getting the AC850 to work. The trouble is that the instructions from Sierra Wireless are not straight forward and they are sometimes ambiguous (e.g. "Prior to installing the driver, the kernel source code must be downloaded into /usr/src/linux." The package manager - synaptic - suggests the headers are sufficient. What about a link to the source, do I really need to copy it all to /usr/src/linux?) For this and similar reasons I haven't tried it this weekend.

Once again I've used up my only free day (Sunday) with hacking around on my laptop.... One of these days my wife is going to kill me!

Cheers

Achim

P.S. My reflections on USB sticks and modern PCs had nothing to do with the different protocols. I know that given the right driver, the PCMCIA and USB devices look the same to the OS. However, newer machines are not equipped with a PCMCIA slot and some day I will need a new laptop... get my drift?

My efforts to get the CS-15 working have been successful. You can see what happened on this other forum:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/log...088fb2f3eab721

I now have another problem and I'm not sure if it was a result of installing the card or a glitch from my upgrade to ubuntu 10.10. If I knew how to uninstall a package that has dependency problems, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble. I'll have to look into it.

If anyone else has a CS-15 that they want to get running, I would strongly advise against installing the zero_cd package from Nokia. If you have Ubuntu 10.10, then you don't need to do anything special. The link above has a wvdial.conf that works without any other changes required (no mode_switch, no udev rules). If you're really lucky, the graphical install might even work... apparently it has for some people.

I hope to get back to the AC850 problem soon... honestly!

Achim