Get rid of Vodafone Mobile Connect Card driver for Linux

Back in August, I explained why I switched from shipped Xandros to the Debian Eee blend. I bought my EeePC with a 3G USB modem from Huawei:

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 12d1:1003 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. E220 HSDPA Modem / E270 HSDPA/HSUPA Modem

Thanks to Vodafone Mobile Connect Card driver for Linux, I could use it very easily. But compared to the Asus dialer, it is way slow! Between the time I click on the icon and the time I am connected, there is nearly two minutes because EeePC is not powerful enough to process quickly this bloated Python software.

While inspecting this program, you will notice that it uses wvdial behind the scene:

jlh 11626 11579 0 15:22 pts/5 00:00:00 /opt/vmc/bin/wvdial --config /tmp/VMC_uJJ0r/VMCYy5LXzwvdial.conf connect

Just copy the configuration file to wvdial.conf:

[Dialer Defaults]

Phone = *99***1#
Username = slsfr
Password = slsfr
Stupid Mode = 1
Dial Command = ATDT
Check Def Route = on
Dial Attempts = 3

[Dialer connect]

Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Baud = 460800
Init2 = ATZ
Init3 = ATQ0 V1 E0 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init4 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","slsfr"
ISDN = 0
Modem Type = Analog Modem


But running wvdial with this configuration will only work if you have already entered the PIN code with Vodafone Mobile Connect Card driver for Linux. I needed to find a way to automate this. I quickly googled for a solution without luck, so I devised a way to do it myself.

What I basically did was to use strace(1) on Vodafone Mobile Connect Card driver for Linux just when I entered my PIN code. Then I looked for the PIN code itself in the output file and watched about so I could figure out the dialog with the USB modem to unlock it.

Let's say my PIN code is 5678. First check where my PIN code is used:

jlh@r2d2:~$ grep -n 5678 strace.vodafone
68172:12333 write(29, "AT+CPIN=5678\r\n"..., 14) = 14


Line 68172. The line is sent on file descriptor 29. Let's find where this file descriptor is opened before line 68172. It may be recycled during the execution of the program, so only take the last one:

jlh@r2d2:~$ cat -n strace.vodafone | head -n 68172 | grep 'open.*= 29' | tail -n 1
66643 12333 open("/dev/ttyUSB1", O_RDWR|O_NOCTTY|O_NONBLOCK|O_LARGEFILE) = 29


And where it's closed:

jlh@r2d2:~$ cat -n strace.vodafone | tail -n +66643 | grep 'close(29'
74856 12333 close(29) = 0


We just have to get read(2) and write(2) calls on file descriptor 29 between line 66643 and line 74856:

jlh@r2d2:~$ sed -n '66643,74856{ /\(read\|write\)(29/p }' strace.vodafone
12333 write(29, "AT+CSQ\r\n"..., 8) = 8
12333 read(29, "AT+CSQ\r\r\n+CME ERROR: SIM PIN requ"..., 8192) = 39
12333 write(29, "ATZ\r\n"..., 5) = 5
12333 read(29, "ATZ\r"..., 8192) = 4
12333 read(29, "\r\nOK\r\n"..., 8192) = 6
12333 write(29, "ATE0\r\n"..., 6) = 6
12333 read(29, "ATE0\r\r\nOK\r\n"..., 8192) = 11
12333 write(29, "AT+CPIN?\r\n"..., 10) = 10
12333 read(29, "\r\n+CPIN: SIM PIN\r\n\r\nOK\r\n"..., 8192) = 24
12333 read(29, "\r\n^BOOT:12633134,0,0,0,64\r\n"..., 8192) = 27
12333 write(29, "AT+CPIN=5678\r\n"..., 14) = 14
12333 read(29, "\r\nOK\r\n"..., 8192) = 6
12333 read(29, "\r\n^SIMST:1\r\n"..., 8192) = 12
12333 read(29, "\r\n^SRVST:2\r\n"..., 8192) = 12
12333 read(29, "\r\n^RSSI:13\r\n"..., 8192) = 12
12333 read(29, "\r\n^BOOT:12633134,0,0,0,64\r\n"..., 8192) = 27
...


The important thing is to send the PIN, so we will just stop after sending the PIN (if it doesn't work, you can still try to add a few lines). Let's translate this to a chat(8) script:

ECHO ON
TIMEOUT 1
'' AT+CSQ
'SIM PIN required' ATZ
OK ATE0
OK AT+CPIN?
OK AT+CGSN
OK AT+CPIN=5678


Then, just before running wvdial with the stolen configuration file, just use:

jlh@r2d2:~$ /usr/sbin/chat -f pin.chat < /dev/ttyUSB0 > /dev/ttyUSB0
[...]


Note that if you try to rerun this chat(8) script, it won't work because the modem won't return what is expected. Given there is no way to implement branches in chat(8), I used a very small timeout so it will exit very quickly if the modem is already unlocked.

Debian on Asus EeePC 701 with Huawei USB modem from SFR or Vodafone

A few month ago, I bought a neat bundle from SFR, a french mobile operator, containing Asus EeePC 701 and a subscription to Internet through 2G/3G/3G+. The connection is achieved thanks to an "E220 HSDPA Modem" USB key from Huawei Technologies. All this stuff has been working very well out of the box with the pre-installed Xandros-based distribution (based on Debian).

All I wanted from this netbook was to be able to surf the web and open terminals without wasting time administer the beast. And well, standard EeePC distribution achieves this very well, and use OpenOffice as a bonus. Of course, I was lacking some stuff like gcc, mplayer, screen... That's why I harvested a few unofficial package repositories to cram my sources.list(5). There was obviously some conflicts between the repositories, but I really didn't care (although usually I'm very keen to make my package manager happy): I had a handful of configuration files backup'd on a USB key and in case of unrecoverable failure within the package system, I just had to restore the original state by pressing F9 at startup (EeePC is shipped with a cunning disk setup: two partitions, the first one containing the original system and the second empty one being mounted on top of the former using unionfs, so restoring the system basically means blanking the second partition).

But as time went on, one thing was more and more upsetting me: no package updates from Asus. As you may already know, this EeePC is also shipped out-of-the-box with remote root exploit (through Samba)... This was very annoying for me because I sometimes connect to other boxes using SSH, so one could hack my EeePC to steal my passwords or perform even more subtle things. So I turned off everything I could because the kernel provided by Xandros doesn't contain IPTables. But honestly, I was still worry about security.

I finally decided to spare some time to install an other, more up to date, distribution when I noticed that I couldn't use Firefox 3 because most of the required libraries were not available. A friend of mine had tried Ubuntu EEE or EEE Ubuntu, whatever. At first, I thought it was a good choice because it could fit both the low administration and up-to-date-ness requirements. But he quickly told me that Ubuntu was far more too memory hungry. Moreover, I don't like these kind of bloated distributions; they somewhat remind me Windows where everything is done behind the scene without giving me any choice unless I really dig deep to understand how things work together. So I forgot Ubuntu and kept on with Xandros

Then I read that Asus was working with Debian in order to maybe replace Xandros on EeePC some day. This caught all my attention as this implied that Debian EeePC support should be very good. What finally decided me to give Debian Eee a shot, despite my disappointing experience with Debian on my girlfriend's laptop last year, was this post from the Debian Eee PC Team, which looked quite encouraging. Additionally, Debian is one of the cleanest distribution; or rather I should say this is one of the less messy ;-) (hey, it's Linux!).

I fetched the Debian Eee's WPA Installer and spread it on a USB key. I could install Debian flawlessly through my WPA/TKIP router. I went for a 256 MB swap partition and all the remaining space as one big partition, and asked for a desktop installation, hoping to find again the regretted Xandros' usability.

And I am very happy. Given this is based on Debian testing, all packages are fairly up to date: Firefox 3 is here! This is a great improvement because it can achieve true full screen like Opera; it's damn important because EeePC 701's screen is really small for web surfing. All devices seems to be supported, although I haven't tested all of them; some shortcut keys are working (contrast keys for example), but volume keys don't. But honestly it's not a big deal compared to what I won and hopefully it will be resolved soon.

The "hardest" task was to make the Huawey modem USB key work. The current kernel (2.6.25...something) is supposed to support it, but anyway you have to somehow manage to enter the PIN code because there is a SIM card in it. Fortunately, the Vodafone Mobile Connect Card driver for Linux (wow, what a name!) handle it perfectly: just beware to download the i386 installer, which is not available as a package at time of writing. You just have run it and tell that your user must belong to the "vmc" group. Then don't forget to logout so as to be in the "vmc" group effectively and run the "vodaphone-mobile-connect-card-driver-for-linux" (I'm not kidding). Edit the profile, and change username, password and APN host to "slsfr" and the DNS servers to "172.20.2.10" and "172.20.2.39" as noted in this french forum post. And voila! You can connect to Internet over 3G+ and even read the SMS and directory stored on the SIM card!

Ok, it's not a package and it spreads some files but... it works! And if you ever want to remove it, you could still follow the installation script to know what as been copied (/etc/udev/rules/ and /usr/bin mainly if I recall correctly). The graphical interface is heavy and I would have preferred a neat command-line tool, but I won't complain more. In open-source, if you want it, just code it! :-)

In summary, if you're fed up with your Xandros, go for Debian/Eee! (It's hard to say when you are a BSD guy ;p.)