Recently I upgraded to a new phone, and while I was at it I bought one of those mobile broadband cards for my laptop. I had seen enough blogs and e-mail posts on various mailing lists to know that it would probably work. My carrier is Sprint, so I naturally received an EVDO card from them.
Upon my purchase, I noticed from Sprint's own instructions for Linux that you couldn't activate the card on Linux. That could only be done from a Mac or Windows based PC. Well, I happen to have Macs in my house along with my Linux systems, so I went to a Mac, and activated the card. It was very simple, as it automatically ran a Mac version of some software built into the card, and it activated, and connected without issue. So, then I wanted to get it configured to work on my Linux laptop. That's where the fun began.
I'm running Fedora 9, but its also a 64-bit AMD system, and I am running the x86_64 version of Fedora on it. When I plugged in the card, I could see that it was recognized by the OS, and the USB product id and vendor id would display. So, that was promising. I wanted to do this the easiest way possible, so I thought I would just go into the Edit Connections... menu item in the Network Manager applet, and configure from there. So, I did that, and I selected the broadband tab, and clicked on Add. Well, nothing happened. Nothing at all. After a while of digging around, I decided to run the same connection application from the command-line. Sometimes applications will spew out errors to standard error that never are displayed in the GUI, so I thought that I might learn something.
So, I ran nm-connection-editor from the command-line, instead of from the Network Manager applet, and what do you know, an error message spews out when I try to add a broadband connection. Here it is:
So, after getting the appropriate link to where these packages where, I decided to install them and try it out. Well, I must say I couldn't be happier. It worked flawlessly, and it detected the correct type of card, and filled in all the information for it, and I didn't change anything other than the default connection name that the wizard had filled in. At first, I thought no one has ever documented adding a mobile broadband card through the Network Manager interface, so I would do that. After thinking about it though, it was so easy, that there really isn't any value in documenting it.
This is truly the way things should be. Plug in your device, right-click and select Edit Connections..., then select the Mobile Broadband tab, click Add, and click OK! It couldn't get much easier than that! Whoops, I guess I just documented it!
So, if you haven't used the Network Manager for doing this, its certainly a lot easier than setting up PPP scripts that I have seen documented by many people. Give it a try, you'll like it.
Upon my purchase, I noticed from Sprint's own instructions for Linux that you couldn't activate the card on Linux. That could only be done from a Mac or Windows based PC. Well, I happen to have Macs in my house along with my Linux systems, so I went to a Mac, and activated the card. It was very simple, as it automatically ran a Mac version of some software built into the card, and it activated, and connected without issue. So, then I wanted to get it configured to work on my Linux laptop. That's where the fun began.
I'm running Fedora 9, but its also a 64-bit AMD system, and I am running the x86_64 version of Fedora on it. When I plugged in the card, I could see that it was recognized by the OS, and the USB product id and vendor id would display. So, that was promising. I wanted to do this the easiest way possible, so I thought I would just go into the Edit Connections... menu item in the Network Manager applet, and configure from there. So, I did that, and I selected the broadband tab, and clicked on Add. Well, nothing happened. Nothing at all. After a while of digging around, I decided to run the same connection application from the command-line. Sometimes applications will spew out errors to standard error that never are displayed in the GUI, so I thought that I might learn something.
So, I ran nm-connection-editor from the command-line, instead of from the Network Manager applet, and what do you know, an error message spews out when I try to add a broadband connection. Here it is:
** (nm-connection-editor:4208): WARNING **: create_new_connection_for_type:After some searching, I found out that the x86_64 version of Network Manager actually didn't have the broadband code implemented in the version that was in Fedora 9. So, I opened a bugzilla on it, and I ended up getting a response saying it was fixed in a version that was in Fedora 9 updates testing.
unhandled connection type 'NMSettingCdma'
** (nm-connection-editor:4208): WARNING **: Can't add new connection of type
'cdma'
So, after getting the appropriate link to where these packages where, I decided to install them and try it out. Well, I must say I couldn't be happier. It worked flawlessly, and it detected the correct type of card, and filled in all the information for it, and I didn't change anything other than the default connection name that the wizard had filled in. At first, I thought no one has ever documented adding a mobile broadband card through the Network Manager interface, so I would do that. After thinking about it though, it was so easy, that there really isn't any value in documenting it.
This is truly the way things should be. Plug in your device, right-click and select Edit Connections..., then select the Mobile Broadband tab, click Add, and click OK! It couldn't get much easier than that! Whoops, I guess I just documented it!
So, if you haven't used the Network Manager for doing this, its certainly a lot easier than setting up PPP scripts that I have seen documented by many people. Give it a try, you'll like it.
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