Wrestling with USB modem on slackware....
 

This is perhaps a long story and I have been with this for more than a week now without any progress.
First there is this usb modem that 'supports' linux. The other OS's (live cds) can go online with this however with Slackware 13.37 something refuses the binary application to make changes to the kernel (a very good thing) but then eventually the thing is I am not able to go online with this.
Then I try to go online with kppp. Sigh! It gives up ghost whenever it gets the chance. To top it the modem does not show itself under the usual '/dev/ttyUSB0' it shows up as '/dev/usbdev4.2' and kppp cannot use something as complicated as this.
So I download wvstreams and wvdial from slackbuilds to see if there is any chance of them working with this modem. Well, the slackbuilds do not compile - they fail with an error during make.
Next I manually try to link the /dev/usbdev to /dev/modem (when /dev/modem does not exist) and then with kppp I try to connect - well it gives me an error that the modem is busy! I try all the possible ways of linking in the man page n -s ln -P etc. Everytime I do this the modem is busy.
Can someone help me out here. Any observations or pointers would be appereciated.
Thanks for reading through.

are you talking about a mobile broadband modem?

in case you are running a custom kernel: maybe you kicked out the drivers from the kernel.
perhaps the modem is too new to be handled by slackware's usb_modeswitch.

could you please post the output of
while plugging the modem in, as well as

Hi,
i dont know how to technicaly explain, briefly this is what i do to get my usbmodem work
# lsub
the output shows string containing device vendor and product such as ID 201e:1023
since the modem comes with builtin storage i
# eject /dev/sr1
# lsusb
the product id now switches to 201e:1022
# modprobe usbserial vendor=0x201e product=0x1022
# pppsetup
follow everything pppsetup asks

Maybe it's worth trying to install network manager on 13.37 or upgrading to -current

I had some troubles with mobile broadband modems and they all ended with NetworkManager.:)

NetworkManager has a package called ModemManager that might work for your USB Modem.

Your Smartfren Haier CE682 modem is not supported by the version usb_modeswitch in Slackware 13.37.
I suggest:
1. Create a file named 201e:1023 in /etc/usb_modeswitch.d containing the information from here. http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modes...opic.php?t=807
2. Create a file named 99-haier-ce682.rules in /etc/udev/rules.d containing the information from here. http://zulkhamsyahmh.blogspot.com.au...on-ubuntu.html

Note: There is some confusion about what the actual message content string should be. This link uses the same message content string as that in step 2. http://14netbeaner.blogspot.com.au/2...etting-in.html

Hopefully this will allow your modem to be recognised and switched to modem mode when plugged so that you can then configure and connect.

PS - This is an old post of mine with a pppd chat script that you may find useful if you are attempting to use pppd. Obviously the parameters will need to be altered along the lines of those reported to work with wvdial. http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...4/#post4213848

Yes I understand that all network problems end with NetworkManager but the thing here is I downloaded all this stuff from slackbuilds and not one of them is compiling - leave alone installing properly. Or am I the only unluck one here?
Meanwhile I linked /dev/ttyUSButps_modem (six different devices are created - for some uneartly reason - for one usb device) to modem and then everything is working fine. Apart from the speed there is no other complain though.
I also downloaded netcat from slackbuilds and they are not even compiling properly. Is this something that is happening to me alone? Guess I should start a new thread for this.

Can you tell us what modem it is, that would help a lot. If /dev/ttyUSB0 doesn't show up it may be that the driver modules isn't loaded properly and it will not work no matter the software you use.

Goggling the vendor and product ID from the lsusb output shows that the modem is a Haier CE682 that has been supplied by Smartfren, an Indonesian ISP. The OP shows a location in India, so perhaps another ISP is involved.

Yes, but that is not the OP's modem, it is shrourdian's modem.

It would be great if the OP would have posted such info tho ... then the problem would have already been solved.

+1 to that.

BTW- You are hitting the forum with a vengeance. Welcome back!

Thanks, I have come back because by leaving I feel I am letting Pat V. down. I don't want to do that, in spite of some people pushing me to leave. My time now will be focused solely on Slackware and no other forum on here.

@allend , the Smartfren Haier CE682 is my part of demonstrating my newbie experience of configuring the type of modem i currently have (as H_TeXMeX_H mentioned) not the the original poster's one.
btw i thank you for the links, those really improve my messy config.

Sorry, I was not at the compuer for a while. I am talking about a Huawei modem from India.
Primaraly what I did was eliminate all the possibilities until I got the right one.
Like i said attaching the modem gave me six new devices (aweful) so all I did was link each one of them to /dev/modem (eg ln -s /dev/usbdev4.2 /dev/modem) and then try to connect usin kppp. (Perhaps you can understand my frustration now). I knew that out the six one had to work - or was it pure luck? Most of the devices I linked to gave me a 'modem is busy' message. I was thinking that this was something that could be worked out but then this was a message that essentialy told me 'sorry dude, you cannot connect now' and perhaps I misread it. Anyway one of them worked and I am online :)
The thing is it looks like they want me to use the binary drivers they gave me and Slackware does not want to so I listened to Slackware :).