Wed 22 Aug 2007
I’ve used this configuration, with minor tweaks on 3 different laptops, with 3 different OSes (if not 4) with great success. There’s so little good Linux info on evdoforums.com (at least I have a hard time finding it), and the posts I made link to a site that’s non-existant now, so I realized I had to repost this info. I’ve had both the Merlin S620 Sprint PCS EVDO card, and the Sierra Mobile AirCard 575, and now have a Dell built-in EVDO modem.
For all 3 of them, the only difference was the modprobe line, for vendor and product ID, as noted below.
Merlin S620:
modprobe usbserial vendor=0x1410 product=0x1110
Sierra 575:
modprobe usbserial vendor=0x1199 product=0x0019
Dell Sprint 5720 PCI-Express Modem
modprobe usbserial vendor=0x413c product=0x8134
I saved the appropriate PPP files at /etc/ppp/peers/1xevdo and at /etc/chatscripts/1xevdo_chat. In this post, I’ve blanked out the parts that are particular to my install (phone number), but it should be pretty easy to recreate your settings.
/etc/ppp/peers/1xevdo:
-detach
ttyUSB0
115200
debug
noauth
defaultroute
usepeerdns
user $(full-phone-number)@sprintpcs.com
show-password
crtscts
lock
lcp-echo-failure 4
lcp-echo-interval 65535
connect '/usr/sbin/chat -v -t3 -f /etc/chatscripts/1xevdo_chat'
/etc/chatscripts/1xevdo_chat:
'' 'AT'
'OK' 'ATZ'
'OK' 'ATE0V1&F&D2&C1&C2S0=0'
'OK' 'ATE0V1'
'OK' 'ATS7=60'
'OK' 'ATDT#777'
CONNECT CLIENT
Since I do several bits of work through the console, including accessing my Cisco VPN, and in some cases naim and tmsnc (console AOL and MSN chat) inside a screen session, scripts for these setups work great for me. I wrapped the whole thing up inside a bash script called $HOME/bin/evdo.sh - and I just call that when I want to get online, after inserting the card.
~/bin/evdo.sh:
sudo /sbin/modprobe usbserial vendor=0x1199 product=0x0019
sleep 5
sudo /usr/sbin/pppd call 1xevdo
The sleep statement helps make sure that the modprobe has completed, scanned the device, and settled before calling PPP.
My Dell D620 arrived, and I was able to quickly determine the changes for an “always there” card, vs. a pluggable PCMCIA card.
First I created /etc/modprobe.d/usbserial with the line:
options usbserial vendor=0x413c product=0x8134
and added “usbserial” to the end of /etc/modules so that the card would always come up at boot (sudo lspci -v | less to find the exact product ID and vendor - I only have 2 “Dell” devices on my laptop). I set my radio kill switch to affect only my EVDO and bluetooth radios, letting the software (~/bin/rfkill.sh in Linux and the Dell software in Windows) handle the WiFi - I use WiFi all the time, but only want the battery-draining EVDO in a few specific instances. So I added “cat 0 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000\:03\:00.0\rf_kill” to my “evdo.sh” file to kill the wireless when I wanted to use EVDO - no need to ever have them both on.
March 7th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Is this supposed to be a tutorial. No offense but none of this worked for me in Ubuntu Gutsy on a Dell XPS 1330. Any pointers?
March 8th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
My personal Linux requirements include having as many tools as possible available via SSH / console, including the ability to change networking - so I didn’t set my EVDO card via KPPP or NetworkManager. If you’re interested in a pure shell-oriented approach using “pppd”, this is for you, but was never intended as a pure newcomer tutorial.
I’ll copy this in an email to you, Ed: I’m curious what brand card you have, if you’ve activated it via Windows first (was required for me on all 3 cards), and what product/vendor ID your particular card lists - that is sometimes the only piece that’s missing.
rob@lt00-bofh:~$ lsusb |grep -i dell
Bus 005 Device 003: ID 413c:8134 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 413c:a005 Dell Computer Corp.
rob@lt00-bofh:~$ sudo lsusb -s 005:003 -v |grep -i cdma
iProduct 2 Novatel Wireless CDMA
This shows that Device 005:003 is my modem (005:002 finds no matches in the 2nd grep). In that case, my modprobe subcommands are: “usbserial vendor=0×413c product=8134″, and from this you can see the changes to my /etc/modprobe.d/usbserial file. Hope that helps a bit more!
April 5th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Hi,
I have a ZTE USB EVDO modem that identifies itself as ID 05c6:6000 Qualcomm, Inc. Have been using it in ubuntu (hardy beta) with the modprobe line - except that I’m using the airprime module instead of the generic usbserial module.
I think the performance is better with the airprime module as compared to the usbserial - especially when I’m in areas with speeds more than 50 kbps.
If only I could monitor the signal strength through gnome-ppp (which I use from the GUI).
April 6th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
c_c - I read a bunch on evdoforums.com about people really liking the speed of the airprime module, I just haven’t tried it out yet.
As for signal strength, Sprint put together a very nice document on how to set up EVDO on Linux, and in that they state specifically that there is no way to monitor signal strength on any of their modems in any distro of Linux.
February 11th, 2009 at 10:54 am
The new E6400 series from Dell has a signal readout LED right above the keyboard, so you can at least visually see the signal strength of the evdo card.