My first Inspiron Mini
A rock'n'roll Friday evening: setting up a Dell Inspiron mini 12 for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ignatzz's little sister Sarah. She chose this as her sole PC, as she like the idea of Linux. It's bigger than your average "netbook" - a really good 12" 1280*800 screen, but very thin and light. It's nearly as svelte as a Macbook Air, but a grand cheaper. Keyboard's not great - the punctuation keys like comma and full-stop are half width and it has a mere 40G hard disk, rather than either a shockproof SSD or a capacious HD - but it's very slim, very light, almost silent in operation and feels and looks smart and professional. I was quite taken with it. Fitted in her handbag alongside PSU and dongle, too. Very neat.
Snag is, she doesn't have broadband, so bought a Virgin Mobile 3G USB dongle - actually a Huawei E160, which on Windows also appears as a CD-ROM drive containing the software. No damned use on Linux, this functionality - you can't even mount the volume; it merely complicates the issue.
3G dongles allegedly work like a dream on Ubuntu 8.10, but the Mini 12 comes with 8.04 - the LTS edition, which seems a better choice to me than upgrades every 6mth. I've done them and they are far from foolproof.
My gods, though, getting it working was an uphill battle! It took roughly from 7:30pm to 11:30pm. Getting the NetworkManager 0.7 installed wasn't too bad. Then I needed to add USB modeswitch, in order to flip the dongle from virtual-CD mode to modem mode.
The new network manager needed 2 reboots to come to life. First reboot, nothing. I got no network icon in the notification area, so no way to connect to a wireless network at all. Happily, I had a cabled connection available. Then I installed modeswitch and tried again. Now the familiar little network icon appeared and seemed to detect the dongle, and I could add the connection info - but there was no option to go online. Spent hours fiddling with this; Google was no help. It's as if nobody else has encountered the problem, which I find unlikely. Eventually, I tried the Vodafone data-card dialler tool, and it told me no supported modem was connected. I removed and reconnected the dongle, and lo, it appeared and the Vodafone tool saw it.
And so did the Network Manager - even though all sources claim the dongle needs to be plugged in before you boot up - and finally I got a "connect" option. Some wrangling with the right APN - found via the invaluable table on FileSaveAs.com - and it tried but failed to authenticate. (An APN is an Access Point Name and it varies from one ISP to another. GPRS connections don't need a phone number, username or password - they know who you are from your SIM's EMEI number - but the machine needs to know the APN to get a working Internet connection. "Internet" is common, but Virgin uses "goto.virginmobile.uk", which one is unlikely to find by guesswork.)
Next stumbling block: the dialler kept asking for a password, but password had she none. Disabled authentication on the PPP tab and it finally worked.
As the very grateful Sarah said as she disappeared into the night, "I could never have got that working! I'd have just returned the dongle and the notebook as non-working."
A bit more work is required in this area, methinks. A backport of the network manager to the current LTS edition, perhaps, and a well-written HOWTO. I scoured dozens of websites and forums to find the info, and naturally, much of it is mutually contradictory. The bulk of reports tell you to install a modem dialler such as wvdial or gnome-ppp - or the Vodafone thing - which is rather counterproductive. Firstly, the new Network Manager includes GPRS support (and CMDA for Americans) for 3G, including dialling and disconnecting (though sadly no signal strength, speed or traffic meters, which with a 3G monthly cap would be very useful things to have). Secondly, if you use an external dialler, GNOME doesn't "know" it's online, so Firefox and so on start up in offline mode all the time.
So, in summary, to use a 3G Dongle on Ubuntu 8.04:
[0] You absolutely need a working network connection to hand to begin. Ideally, a wired one; at various stages, you might break the Wifi client, so if that's all you had, you'd be stuffed. Get the laptop on a fixed connection and ensure it's fully updated. You don't want to download hundreds of meg of patches over your bandwidth-capped 3G connection.
[1] Install Network Manager 0.7 and reboot
[2] Install USB modeswitch if your dongle requires it; not all do the helpful-for-Windows-users virtual-CD-of-drivers thing
[3] In network connection properties, enter the connection settings including your ISP's APN
[4] If there's no connection option just before the list of wireless networks, remove & reconnect dongle until NetMan recognises it
[5] Try connecting. If it won't log in, see if the ISP requires a username. You may also need to enter a random password such as "password".
[6] If the dummy credentials don't work, try just disabling authentication altogether
Someone who had fewer issues than I did has documented it here, which you may find helpful.
ignatzz's little sister Sarah. She chose this as her sole PC, as she like the idea of Linux. It's bigger than your average "netbook" - a really good 12" 1280*800 screen, but very thin and light. It's nearly as svelte as a Macbook Air, but a grand cheaper. Keyboard's not great - the punctuation keys like comma and full-stop are half width and it has a mere 40G hard disk, rather than either a shockproof SSD or a capacious HD - but it's very slim, very light, almost silent in operation and feels and looks smart and professional. I was quite taken with it. Fitted in her handbag alongside PSU and dongle, too. Very neat.Snag is, she doesn't have broadband, so bought a Virgin Mobile 3G USB dongle - actually a Huawei E160, which on Windows also appears as a CD-ROM drive containing the software. No damned use on Linux, this functionality - you can't even mount the volume; it merely complicates the issue.
3G dongles allegedly work like a dream on Ubuntu 8.10, but the Mini 12 comes with 8.04 - the LTS edition, which seems a better choice to me than upgrades every 6mth. I've done them and they are far from foolproof.
My gods, though, getting it working was an uphill battle! It took roughly from 7:30pm to 11:30pm. Getting the NetworkManager 0.7 installed wasn't too bad. Then I needed to add USB modeswitch, in order to flip the dongle from virtual-CD mode to modem mode.
The new network manager needed 2 reboots to come to life. First reboot, nothing. I got no network icon in the notification area, so no way to connect to a wireless network at all. Happily, I had a cabled connection available. Then I installed modeswitch and tried again. Now the familiar little network icon appeared and seemed to detect the dongle, and I could add the connection info - but there was no option to go online. Spent hours fiddling with this; Google was no help. It's as if nobody else has encountered the problem, which I find unlikely. Eventually, I tried the Vodafone data-card dialler tool, and it told me no supported modem was connected. I removed and reconnected the dongle, and lo, it appeared and the Vodafone tool saw it.
And so did the Network Manager - even though all sources claim the dongle needs to be plugged in before you boot up - and finally I got a "connect" option. Some wrangling with the right APN - found via the invaluable table on FileSaveAs.com - and it tried but failed to authenticate. (An APN is an Access Point Name and it varies from one ISP to another. GPRS connections don't need a phone number, username or password - they know who you are from your SIM's EMEI number - but the machine needs to know the APN to get a working Internet connection. "Internet" is common, but Virgin uses "goto.virginmobile.uk", which one is unlikely to find by guesswork.)
Next stumbling block: the dialler kept asking for a password, but password had she none. Disabled authentication on the PPP tab and it finally worked.
As the very grateful Sarah said as she disappeared into the night, "I could never have got that working! I'd have just returned the dongle and the notebook as non-working."
A bit more work is required in this area, methinks. A backport of the network manager to the current LTS edition, perhaps, and a well-written HOWTO. I scoured dozens of websites and forums to find the info, and naturally, much of it is mutually contradictory. The bulk of reports tell you to install a modem dialler such as wvdial or gnome-ppp - or the Vodafone thing - which is rather counterproductive. Firstly, the new Network Manager includes GPRS support (and CMDA for Americans) for 3G, including dialling and disconnecting (though sadly no signal strength, speed or traffic meters, which with a 3G monthly cap would be very useful things to have). Secondly, if you use an external dialler, GNOME doesn't "know" it's online, so Firefox and so on start up in offline mode all the time.
So, in summary, to use a 3G Dongle on Ubuntu 8.04:
[0] You absolutely need a working network connection to hand to begin. Ideally, a wired one; at various stages, you might break the Wifi client, so if that's all you had, you'd be stuffed. Get the laptop on a fixed connection and ensure it's fully updated. You don't want to download hundreds of meg of patches over your bandwidth-capped 3G connection.
[1] Install Network Manager 0.7 and reboot
[2] Install USB modeswitch if your dongle requires it; not all do the helpful-for-Windows-users virtual-CD-of-drivers thing
[3] In network connection properties, enter the connection settings including your ISP's APN
[4] If there's no connection option just before the list of wireless networks, remove & reconnect dongle until NetMan recognises it
[5] Try connecting. If it won't log in, see if the ISP requires a username. You may also need to enter a random password such as "password".
[6] If the dummy credentials don't work, try just disabling authentication altogether
Someone who had fewer issues than I did has documented it here, which you may find helpful.