[kwlug-disc] Mobile internet 'sticks'

[Andrew Kohlsmith (Mailing List Account)]

On May 17, 2009 07:11:17 pm Colin Mackay wrote:
> I currently use Fedora 10 on my laptop, and I am wondering if anyone out
> there has had any experience with either Bell or Rogers and their mobile
> usb sticks?

I've used both the rogers new "red internet stick" and their older Novatel 
Wireless X950D expresscard modem.

Both show up just as regular old USB serial ports, and standard AT commands 
and PPP connect you to the interwebs.  I highly recommend umtsmon when using 
these devices.

Both of them had a little trick to them, at least when I used them.  You have 
to "eject" the SCSI disk they initially come up with before the serial ports 
show up.

Here's the udev rule I created to do this automatically:

$ cat old/etc/udev/rules.d/70-hsdpa-modem.rules
# for the novatel USDPA modem
# it shows the "driver cd" only, and won't show the serial ports
# until the drive is ejected.

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="block", ATTRS{vendor}=="Novatel", 
ATTRS{model}=="Mass Storage", 
RUN+="/usr/local/scripts/eject_supid_hsdpa_drive.sh"

And here's the script that the udev rule runs:

$ cat /usr/local/scripts/eject_supid_hsdpa_drive.sh
#!/bin/sh

sleep 1
eject ${DEVNAME}
sleep 1
modprobe option

The modems work great, no tethering crap or playing of games.  I'm on the 
6G/$30 plan and with an external antenna sitting in the laptop bag it's nice 
knowing I should be able to get internet damned near anywhere.

-A.