On 11/23/18 5:02 PM, Adam Borowski wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 01:28:00PM +0100, Alessandro Selli wrote:
>
>>   Right, many USB modems show up as something different than a
>> networking device when they are plugged-in.  I haven't used any of them
>> for a long time, but I remember many of them show up as a CDROM device
>> which carries the Windows drivers and/or some Windows utility.  The
>> actual modem shows up after the CDROM device is unmounted or ejected.
>
> Ie, usbmodeswitch. This might or might not work with modemmanager -- in my
> experience, it works _randomly_. Including having the dongle suddenly
> switch while the connection is running, with obviously fatal results. And
> modemmanager seems to be unable to recover.
>

Ok, today I paid a visit to the seniors' club to see what can be done. I
found their old USB stick modem, inserted it into the Devuan box ...:

root@devuan:~# lsusb
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 19d2:0017 ZTE WCDMA Technologies MSM
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0951:1642 Kingston Technology DT101 G2
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0000:3825
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
root@devuan:~# usb_modeswitch -v 19d2 -p 0017
Look for default devices ...
    product ID matched
  Found devices in default mode (1)
Access device 005 on bus 002
Current configuration number is 1
Use interface number 0

USB description data (for identification)
-------------------------
Manufacturer: ZTE,Incorporated
      Product: ZTE WCDMA Technologies MSM
   Serial No.: MF6670VIPD010000
-------------------------
Warning: no switching method given. See documentation
-> Run lsusb to note any changes. Bye!

root@devuan:~#


... then I tried again but with some more options:

root@devuan:~# usb_modeswitch -v 19d2 -p 0017 -K
Look for default devices ...
    product ID matched
  Found devices in default mode (1)
Access device 005 on bus 002
Current configuration number is 1
Use interface number 0
Use endpoints 0x01 (out) and 0x81 (in)

USB description data (for identification)
-------------------------
Manufacturer: ZTE,Incorporated
      Product: ZTE WCDMA Technologies MSM
   Serial No.: MF6670VIPD010000
-------------------------
Sending standard EJECT sequence
Looking for active driver ...
  OK, driver detached
Set up interface 0
Use endpoint 0x01 for message sending ...
Trying to send message 1 to endpoint 0x01 ...
  OK, message successfully sent
Read the response to message 1 (CSW) ...
  Response reading failed (error -7)
  Device is gone, skip any further commands
-> Run lsusb to note any changes. Bye!

root@devuan:~# lsusb
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 19d2:0017 ZTE WCDMA Technologies MSM
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0951:1642 Kingston Technology DT101 G2
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0000:3825
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
root@devuan:~# usb_modeswitch -v 19d2 -p 0017 -K -R
Look for default devices ...
    product ID matched
  Found devices in default mode (1)
Access device 009 on bus 002
Current configuration number is 1
Use interface number 0
Use endpoints 0x01 (out) and 0x81 (in)

USB description data (for identification)
-------------------------
Manufacturer: ZTE,Incorporated
      Product: ZTE WCDMA Technologies MSM
   Serial No.: MF6670VIPD010000
-------------------------
Sending standard EJECT sequence
Looking for active driver ...
  OK, driver detached
Set up interface 0
Use endpoint 0x01 for message sending ...
Trying to send message 1 to endpoint 0x01 ...
  OK, message successfully sent
Read the response to message 1 (CSW) ...
  Response reading failed (error -7)
  Device is gone, skip any further commands
Device handle empty, skip USB reset
-> Run lsusb to note any changes. Bye!

root@devuan:~#


... seems that -K (eject memory stich driver) and -R (reset) did not
change much (if anything). Any idea?

>>    The package modemmanager is supposed to take care of the correct
>> initialization of a number of known and supported modems using udev's
>> rules (the ASCII package install 18 such rules).  Yet, I think sometimes
>> human intervention is still needed, and of course several USB modems (as
>> well as PCMCIA/CardBus ones and some WiFi dongles and Access Points) are
>> partially, poorly or not supported at all.
>
> Alas, we're deeply in the "sacrifice a young black goat" land. The quality
> of drivers, firmware and _hardware_ is so egregious that it's far more
> effort effective to take an old phone and set up tethering.
>

There is no modemmanager there, as well as no vwdial, ppp, etc installed
per default in this Devuan distro. I will have to download .deb packages
elsewhere and bring them here to continue ...

Misko