[gentoo-user] GPRS connection through usb

[gentoo-user] GPRS connection through usb

[Simon]

Hi there,
  i've recently acquired a pda (htc tytn) and a good data plan.  Right
now, i can access the internet from my computer by setting up the
phone as a wifi ad-hoc station, but this takes so much battery, it's
not the optimal setup.

  What i would need is to use the usb cable to connect to the cell
modem.  But I'm a bit lost as to what to do...  the documents i found
on this don't seem to talk about the same things (there seems to be
many ways of doing this...?) and many are out of date...

  I was wondering if any of you could give me a general idea of what i
need (specially if you could clarify whats the best vocabulary to use
in google) or confirm what I found so far...

  From what i understand, I believe i will need some kind of kernel
module (device driver) which will turn the usb device into a
networking interface.  Then I think i would setup some kind of
connection normally (is it PPP? or something else?).  The cellphone
would also need to be setup to share its data connection to usb (but
this seems quite simple... the linux part is the problem).

Thanks for help and pointers!
Simon

Re: [gentoo-user] GPRS connection through usb

[Håkon Alstadheim]

Simon wrote:
> Hi there,
>   i've recently acquired a pda (htc tytn) and a good data plan.  Right
> now, i can access the internet from my computer by setting up the
> phone as a wifi ad-hoc station, but this takes so much battery, it's
> not the optimal setup.
>
>   What i would need is to use the usb cable to connect to the cell
> modem.  But I'm a bit lost as to what to do...  the documents i found
> on this don't seem to talk about the same things (there seems to be
> many ways of doing this...?) and many are out of date...
>
>   I was wondering if any of you could give me a general idea of what i
> need (specially if you could clarify whats the best vocabulary to use
> in google) or confirm what I found so far...
>
>   From what i understand, I believe i will need some kind of kernel
> module (device driver) which will turn the usb device into a
> networking interface.  Then I think i would setup some kind of
> connection normally (is it PPP? or something else?).  The cellphone
> would also need to be setup to share its data connection to usb (but
> this seems quite simple... the linux part is the problem).
>
>   
You do NOT need PPP, but you do need a fairly recent kernel (>= 2.6.27 
at least, not sure of the details). You need at least 
CONFIG_USB_RNDIS_WLAN as m or y. With udev and 'm' things work mostly 
automatically on the linux side. On the phone you enable advanced 
networking (or else you will see the phone as ttyUSB? and you will need 
ppp). Then you plug in and run "dmesg -c" until things quiet down. You 
should see a new eth? interface. Enable internet sharing on the phone, 
and you should see in "dmesg -c" that your new ethernet interface 
disappears and reappears. If it does not reappear your kernel is too 
old. On my gentoo box i can now start the interface like a regular 
ethernet interface. I have a debian box with a kernel from unstable 
where dhcp fails on the phone 'ehternet' device, so I have to do "ip 
addr add" and "ip route add" manually to get the network going (somehow 
the ifup command on debian prints the assigned ip and the gateway ip, 
gut does not configure the device properly). Do some googling to fill in 
the details, I'm not using this regularly.

Re: [gentoo-user] GPRS connection through usb

[Simon]

> You do NOT need PPP, but you do need a fairly recent kernel (>= 2.6.27 at
> least, not sure of the details). You need at least CONFIG_USB_RNDIS_WLAN as
> m or y. With udev and 'm' things work mostly automatically on the linux
> side. On the phone you enable advanced networking (or else you will see the
> phone as ttyUSB? and you will need ppp). Then you plug in and run "dmesg -c"
> until things quiet down. You should see a new eth? interface. Enable
> internet sharing on the phone, and you should see in "dmesg -c" that your
> new ethernet interface disappears and reappears. If it does not reappear
> your kernel is too old. On my gentoo box i can now start the interface like
> a regular ethernet interface. I have a debian box with a kernel from
> unstable where dhcp fails on the phone 'ehternet' device, so I have to do
> "ip addr add" and "ip route add" manually to get the network going (somehow
> the ifup command on debian prints the assigned ip and the gateway ip, gut
> does not configure the device properly). Do some googling to fill in the
> details, I'm not using this regularly.

Wow, thanks for the clear and thorough reply!
I've recently upgraded to kernel 2.6.29.1 (i used to have 2.6.24 with
several external drivers) so i should be fine.
I'll give this a try asap, but since i have a day off tomorrow, i
might do some fiesta tonight, in any case, i should reply soon with
success or failure!

Thanks again! Simon

Re: [gentoo-user] GPRS connection through usb

[Simon]

> You do NOT need PPP, but you do need a fairly recent kernel (>= 2.6.27 at
> least, not sure of the details). You need at least CONFIG_USB_RNDIS_WLAN as
> m or y. With udev and 'm' things work mostly automatically on the linux
> side. On the phone you enable advanced networking (or else you will see the
> phone as ttyUSB? and you will need ppp).

This is done, no prob.

> Then you plug in and run "dmesg -c"
> until things quiet down. You should see a new eth? interface. Enable
> internet sharing on the phone, and you should see in "dmesg -c" that your
> new ethernet interface disappears and reappears. If it does not reappear
> your kernel is too old.

doing `ifconfig -a` only shows the interfaces that were there before,
no changes here.  the dmesg output contain USB debug info, but nothing
about interfaces or networking.

I believe I'm missing another kernel config somewhere?
Btw, this is with 2.6.29.1...

Thanks!