Getting Reliance Netconnect USB modem on Ubuntu

Finally,the first Technical post on my blog, for, there seems to be lot of demand for this particular tweak.

Reliance Netconnect CDMA1x USB modems - ZTE MG880, manufactured by ZTE, "supposedly" come supported only for M$ Windows , but, I have got it working on GNU/Linux OS - Ubuntu with help from various online forums.


Additional Prerequisites in Ubuntu (I'm running 9.04):

• modprobe - program which intelligently adds and removes modules from the Linux Kernel. To get this program,generic kernel modules have to be added to the kernel by running the following command in the terminal.

          sudo apt-get install linux-generic

•  wvdial -It is a PPP dialer with built-in intelligence (Previous distros of Ubuntu used to have this packaged). To get this program do an apt-get

          sudo apt-get install wvdial

The following steps will help you get connected to internet using a ZTE mg880 USB modem. 

1. Plug in the USB modem, and manually mount it

$mount -t usbfs usbmodem /proc/bus/usb

2. Run a dmesg (dmesg is used to examine the kernel ring buffer,here, we check if the modem has been detected by the kernel)

$dmesg (don't bother about the elaborate o/p after executing this command)
3.Now, execute the next command and look for ZTE and the corresponding device id and vendor id.
$cat /proc/bus/usb/devices
I found these for my modem(it's the same for most ZTE mg880) -vendor id:0x19d2; product id: 0xfffd
4. Next, perform a modprobe to make the kernel aware of the modem
$sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x19d2 product=0xfffd
5. After modprobe, run a dmesg again,and if  the modem has been detected there will be a message saying that the USB core driver has been registered
6.Next, comes configuring the wvdial. To do this, run the following command
$sudo wvdialconf
To detect the modem wvdial will scan through all the serial ports, check the baud rates and give a message with the optimum baud rate and the port on which modem has been detected.
7. Now comes editing the wvdial config. 
$sudo gedit /etc/wvdial.conf
Edit the contents to:


[Dialer zte]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Modem Type = Analog Modem
Phone = #777
Username =
Password =
#username and password is your modem's phone number
ISDN = 0
SetVolume = 0
FlowControl = Hardware (CRTSCTS)
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Dial Command = ATDT
Baud = 9600
#Baud rate might vary
Stupid Mode = 1 

8. Finally, run the following command to set up the ppp connection. You are connected if the prompt acquires Local IP, remote IP, primary and secondary DNS. 

$sudo wvdial zte

Firefox will be in Offline mode, uncheck the option in the File menu,and happy browsing :)

wvdial.conf configuration is lost after reboot. A simple shell script can automate the process, which I leave it to you to work on ;)

PS: I tried the same on Fedora 11, but could not connect to the internet even after acquiring IP and DNS. I read in a forum that the ppp daemon was bugged. So, I tried compiling older ppp daemons from FC6 through to FC10,but with no use. 

Anyways, I'm more of a debian guy than an 'rpm-er' ;)

So, happy that it's up and running on Ubuntu. 

Happy Hacking ;)