How to set up Tata Photon Plus (Huawei EC1261) on Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx
No need for the old wvdial people, Network Manager has a great built in support for Mobile broadband connections. It contains all the information about various service providers in various countries and it will hardly take you more than 5 mins to configure your device and get it working.
In this howto, I will tell you how to configure your Tata Photon plus device, which uses Huawei EC1261 wireless network equipment on Ubuntu 10.04. I don't guarantee but this howto should be able to help you configure other such devices on any linux distribution.
Now, when I first plugged the Photon+ usb, the system detected it as a usb-storage device and not as a mobile broadband. This can be usually understood by creating a mobile broadband connection using Network Manager. Once plugged, the device will probably appear as a usb storage device, but it is important that your system and hence the network manager recognize it as a usb-modem.
Check to see if your device is being detected as a usb-modem
You can check it at the first step of creating a mobile broadband connection using Network manager.
1. Right click on the Network manager icon and select "edit connections".
2. Now, go to "mobile broadand" tab and click on the add button.
3. If the wizard shows you the name of the detected device, then bingo! otherwise you might need to take some extra measures to make that happen. In the screenshot below, the device is detected by NM.
The reason for your device not being detected as a usb-modem but a usb-storage device is best explained in the description of the package usb-modeswitch.
Several new USB devices have their proprietary Windows drivers onboard, especially WAN dongles. When plugged in for the first time, they act like a flash storage and start installing the driver from there. If the driver is already installed, the storage device vanishes and a new device, such as an USB modem, shows up. This is called the "ZeroCD" feature.
On Debian, this is not needed, since the driver is included as a Linux kernel module, such as "usbserial". However, the device still shows up as "usb-storage" by default. usb-modeswitch solves that issue by sending the command which actually performs the switching of the device from "usb-storage" to "usbserial".
So, in order to make your device work, you will have to install usb-modeswitch package. Since, we are dealing with Huawei EC 1261 here, I was able to get it to work with the latest usb-modeswitch package(version 1.1.2), rather than the one available in 10.04 repo(1.1.0).
Please note that, the usb-modeswitch package in Ubuntu 10.10, Meerkat's repos are 1.1.4. So, direct installation from synaptic for Meerkat users, should work without any trouble.
Cont- for Ubuntu 10.04 or earlier - In order to install the latest version, you will have to download and install the squeeze(testing) packages from debian.
In order to install these packages run the following commands.
[shredder12]$ sudo dpkg -i usb-modeswitch-data_20100418-1_all.deb
[shredder12]$ sudo dpkg -i usb-modeswitch_1.1.2-3_i386.deb
Now, your system should be able to recognize the Tata Photon plus as a usb modem. Use the NM test mentioned above again. Now, go on and follow the wizard to fill all the essential details and get it running on your system.
63 Comments
Which version of ubuntu are you using? I hope you have tried restarting (just in case). So, does the NM show the Huawei usb as in the screenshot above?
You are supposed to download the .deb files, not .tar ones. The command should work fine then.
Apparently it worked for me by default, I am not sure if I restarted the system or not. But thanks for the reply, hope it will help others facing similar troubles.
When you plugin the device, run the following in a terminal "lsusb | grep 12d1". This will should give you a single line output. Read whats mentioned after "12d1:", if its 140b, it should work directly if its 1446 then you probably should try modifying a file. Open the file, run this command "sudo gedit /etc/usb_modeswitch.d/12d1:1446". This will open the file in the text editor. Now, you will see a line in that file TargetProductList="1001,1406,140c,141b,14ac". Just add 140b to the list, save the file and try again. Restart if necessar, plug in the usb and see if it works. Since, it was working earlier, it should work now too.
Thats weird. For reference, mine looks like this. Are you sure, you have the required usb-modeswitch packages installed at the moment. One more thing, open a terminal, go to the directory, run "cd /etc/usb_modeswitch.d/" and then run "ls | grep 12d1". This will let us know which filenames have 12d1 in them. Here is the output on my system.
Hi, try the "safely removal" option available in the nautilus window manager(right click the device icon) before unplugging the device (just in case). If you are still having troubles, use the method mentioned in this comment above. I think that way we can make things permanent.(fingers crossed
)
Well, the hardware vendors don't support linux, so the community members have to write their drivers for linux. Therefore, the latest technology takes some time to be available on Linux. It could be the case with you. Give a try to Ubuntu 10.10, its the most recent distro, so its a better chance that things might work here.
I have installed the latest usb_modeswitch i.e. 1.1.4
In the latest package device 140b is already added in the TargetProductList, hence not need to add manually.
Even then my modem is not recognized, when I connect it.
It works and every time correctly, if I execute the following command:
sudo usb_modeswitch -c /etc/usb_modeswitch.d/12d1:1446I need to execute it every time, I connect the modem.
Interestingly, the same modem worked in my friend's laptop just by connecting on Ubuntu 10.04 i.e. the same distro as mine.There was no need to install usb_modeswitch. (but on my system it does not work without usb_modeswitch command).
Hi, run "lsusb" in a terminal. Do you see a line showing Huawei technologies? If yes, then could you please post that line here. My system's output is:
Bus 006 Device 017: ID 12d1:140b Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
The output in your case is Bus 001 Device 005: ID 12d1:1446 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. In order for your device to be detected as a usb modem, it should be 12d1:140b (considering that its the same device). I am not sure why this didn't work for even once, but try using the method mentioned in comment above. Plugin the usb and see if it works now.
Hello,
I buy this device today itself, before 6 hours ago, i get success only 2 times to get connected with device. then no longer time i was able to connected during the experiments.
~15KB? This is the speed I get at my hometown where we don't have 3G. Photon was working better than broadband when I was in Delhi. The download speed was around 150KBps. I am not sure what could be the issue but Gurgaon shouldn't have any trouble. Does every user in your neighbourhood has a similar experience?
Also, note that its network is very bad. Too much packet drops happen every-time, which generally no one notices and Tata is not interested in understanding it. I cannot talk over Skype voice. It breaks a lot. Really and this is most frustrating to me.
Their customer care is really worst. When I complained them about the speed, their representative came, browsed speedtest.net, choose delhi server for checking speed with and boldly said to me that right now I am getting around 300kbps connection with download speed around ~40kbps, which according to Indian Govt. is taken as broadband. And then they closed my complaint ticket. They over-sold connections than their network capacity. And gradually, every customer is getting problems. I strongly won't suggest anyone to buy TATA Photon Plus oor any of their series. If you are interested in buying my device and connection, let me know. I can sell my just 1 month old device for 25% of cost, or maybe even less.
I have recorded most of conversation with Tata representative. I will soon be uploading it to my newly bought domain http://www.mytataphoton.com/ .
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