Setting up 3G without working internet?

[Skooter]

Is it possible? I live in an area where is literally no high speed options- other than a broadband card. Go figure. Trouble is, I got rid of my phone line some time ago and am now finding out that installing my 3G card on Ubuntu is a fiasco. Seems like I need internet to get internet and that just isn't possible for me. Can I download what I need directly onto a disk from windoze? Cause that seems to be my only option. If not, then it seems like Linux needs to re-think their approaches on 3G networks setup.

Thanks for any advice you can lend.

[bigtomrodney]

If you are using Ubuntu 8.10 or later, with Network Manager 7.x you shouldn't need to download anything. Most broadband cards such as the Huawei ones have the driver already in the kernel and Network Manager will detect and let you configure it automatically where possible, or let you configure it manually if needed.

Just check out the icon in the system tray beside your clock. If it's disconnected it should look like two monitors with an orange warning sign on it.

[Skooter]

I am using Ubuntu 8.10. I saw that Network Manager and tried it set it up, but it doesn't even seem like my card is being picked up. I checked and it is supported.

[bigtomrodney]

Can you post more information about your card? Post the output of the command below after plugging it in. Use [ code ] tags to enclose the output here.

dmesg |tail 30
lspci
ifconfig

[Skooter]

Okay, I got outputs... now how do I transfer them to windows so I can post them here? I tried saving to a disc as a .ODT file and opening it with Star Office in win- but that didn't work...

[bigtomrodney]

You can either save them in gedit as plain text (i.e. a .txt file) or if you are using Open Office you can choose to save them as .doc Windows 2000/XP so that they can be opened in either MS Office or Star Office.

[Skooter]

Got it, thanks!

Your first command(dmesg |tail 30) didn't work. It said "no such file or directory". But I ran this one which I saw somewhere else: $ sudo dmesg|grep -i ttyUSB

And got:

[ 12.656192] usb 3-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[ 12.657099] usb 3-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB1
[ 12.657483] usb 3-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB2
[ 12.657771] usb 3-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB3
[ 12.658026] usb 3-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB4

..in return. Does that help at all?

The others:

$ lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ/P/PL Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ/P/PL PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV770 [Radeon HD 4850]
01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc HD48x0 audio
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 01)
04:01.0 Communication controller: Agere Systems LT WinModem (rev 02)

$ ifconfig

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:21:85:14:ef:2d
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:220 Base address:0x4000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:480 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:480 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:30080 (30.0 KB) TX bytes:30080 (30.0 KB)

[bigtomrodney]

Sorry, my bad on the tail command, it was supposed to be

dmesg |tail -n 30

Looks like we don't need that now anyway. It does seem to be picking up your device as a GSM modem anyway and I see you have a winmodem there too which I'm hoping is a wired phone connection!

Try going back into Network Manager again. Right-click on the icon and go to edit connections. From there go to the Mobile Broadband tab and try to add a connection. The usual dialup command is *99# to establish a connection. Who is your provider by the way?

[Skooter]

Actually, the phone line is out of commission. The phone line was disconnected some time ago, when I got a company cell phone and my Sprint card(that's my service). That's what is making this hard, I think.

I'll see if I have the installation disk; maybe it has Linux drivers on it, but I doubt it.

[bigtomrodney]

I've done some reading and it seems a lot of people have had trouble with Sprint mobile broadband.

Here's a link, I hope it can be of some help to you. If I can help out any more with this just ask...I know this stuff can seem like rocket science sometimes but it's not all that bad

Sprint Mobile Broadband - NST Wiki