3G modem dialing problem (B3 missing wvdial) (solved)

[Henri]

Hi

Been an B3 owner for a while, I was planning to dump my old 3G wireless router box and use B3 as 3G modem instead.

There is this excellent guide "Use mobile internet 3G USB dongle as WAN" in the Bubba Wiki.
I was following the guide by the letter until I was instructed to type wvdial in terminal in order to start 3G dialing. Unfortunately terminal gave only an error:

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root@b3:/etc# wvdial
bash: wvdial: command not found

I did a bit digging and it seems that there is no wvdial for Debian squeeze.

Can someone give any advice what is the most simple solution for automating of 3G connection with B3?

[ryz]

wvdial seemse to be in Debian squeeze. Have you tried to install it with

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apt-get install wvdial

If a do a search with apt for wvdial I get three packages that matches where one is wvdial

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:~$ apt-cache search wvdial
gnome-ppp - modem internet connection tool for the GNOME Desktop
wvdial - PPP dialer with built-in intelligence
libwvstreams4.2-extras - C++ network libraries for rapid application development

[Henri]

Thanks ryz.

I have tried to install wvdial but without luck.
Here is what I did.

Just in case I updated repositories first.

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apt-get update

Then try to install wvdial

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apt-get install wvdial
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package wvdial is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'wvdial' has no installation candidate

... and cache search ... finds nothing.

I also tried to install libwvstreams4.2-extras package but Bubba could not find that one either.

So ... Do I need to have some specific sources set up to find wvdial? At the moment my B3 is running on default sources settings.

Linux b3 2.6.35.4 #5 Tue Sep 7 16:06:15 CEST 2010 armv5tel GNU/Linux

[ryz]

Sorry ignore my last post. That was on a Bubba 2 system which runs an powerpc processor on the etch Debian release.

It seems that wvdial is not built for the Arm architecture in Debian squeeze. http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/wvdial So your only option is to either found an other tool or try to build the package your self from the debian source package.

[Henri]

That was what I was afraid of. I haven't done a much compiling programs from source code.
I'll give it a try and see what happens.

[johannes]

Carl has now built a wvdial package for ARM, available in our testing repository ('vincent').

[Henri]

Thanks

I tried couple of times to built wvdial but had to give up because there was some errors that I could not resolve.

[Henri]

I'm happy to report that wvdial got finally installed without problems and 3G modem connection is working quite nicely

[SpeedingGuy]

Hi, I´ve also successfully followed the guide in the wiki and got it working great, but how do I get control over the firewall again from the web interface? right now it just says "These settings are locked (no valid WAN port connection)."

[meta96]

Hi, I ve just two questions for this topic

1) Has somebody the modified script for the web/firewall?
2) My old huawei problem is back, hurra. My Huawei 3G Modem (Auto Reconnect = On) sometimes* start to blink, that means it is connected to the 3G Provider, but my internet is broken (modem is in a twilight status).

a) a reboot solves this problem, but is there another possibility?
b) kill wvdial and start it again automatically?
c) kill usb device and start it again automatically?
d) use b) or/and c) with a cron ping check?
e) something else?

Thanks ...

*) 3G - provider?

[Perl]

I'm happy to report that wvdial got finally installed without problems and 3G modem connection is working quite nicely

Can you share some details on this. This is a big deal and unlocks a lot of applications for use on Rasberry Pi. All I read about on this is the MISSING API for ARM.... what did you do to fix this?

[Perl]

I'm happy to report that wvdial got finally installed without problems and 3G modem connection is working quite nicely

Can you share something about HOW you did this? What was broke and how did you fix it?

[Henri]

Hi Perl.

Sorry about the long delay for answering your question. I don't come so often here...

My problem with missing wvdial was solved by the help from Excito.
Carl @ Excito built wvdial for B3. I did not need to do anything but put the pieces together. Install wvdial from testing repository and then follow instructions from Bubba How-To's in order to setup firewall and wvdial.conf.

Carl has now built a wvdial package for ARM, available in our testing repository ('vincent').

User experiences from Bubba as 3G router
3G connection is not completely reliable and connection occasionally drops out and you need to restart it manually. At best I have had 3G connection working about a week without problem and sometimes you need to restart connection several times a day. I guess that is a life of 3G user
When connection is lost it usually requires disconnecting/reconnecting the 3G modem from Bubba and killing/running wvdial again. Sometimes wvdial has died and connection is re-established by just running wvdial again.
I hardly ever have needed to restart Bubba to get 3G connection back.

Using Bubba as 3G router with this kind of unofficial setup, you unfortunately lose your ability to set WAN settings from GUI including TOR nerwork settings.
It would be nice to have "Bubba as a 3G router" an official selection in Bubba's GUI network settings


- Henri

[meta96]

User experiences from Bubba as 3G router
3G connection is not completely reliable and connection occasionally drops out and you need to restart it manually. At best I have had 3G connection working about a week without problem and sometimes you need to restart connection several times a day. I guess that is a life of 3G user
When connection is lost it usually requires disconnecting/reconnecting the 3G modem from Bubba and killing/running wvdial again. Sometimes wvdial has died and connection is re-established by just running wvdial again.
I hardly ever have needed to restart Bubba to get 3G connection back.

Using Bubba as 3G router with this kind of unofficial setup, you unfortunately lose your ability to set WAN settings from GUI including TOR nerwork settings.
It would be nice to have "Bubba as a 3G router" an official selection in Bubba's GUI network settings

- Henri

Using Bubba as 3G router with this kind of unofficial setup, you also can't setup your firewall from GUI. So i also think, that a wan ppp0 setting should be included

And wvdial & USB_ModeSwitch & USB_ModeSwitch_data should be included in the install-image. I only has a 3G network-connection and i have messed up 1h lifetime, just to get an internet connection (reactivate my old openwrt 3g router) just for downloading this 3 files.

@henry
Do you restart "restart connection" "kill wvdial" with a cron job? Do you know a AT command for restart the modem? Or a restart the usb-subsystem of the bubba?

[Henri]

Using Bubba as 3G router with this kind of unofficial setup, you also can't setup your firewall from GUI. So i also think, that a wan ppp0 setting should be included

I agree with you meta96.
ppp0 as a choice of selectable WAN interfaces, would be nice. And then there is that bridging of unused WAN port with LAN port...to save an extra cost of getting network switch

Lately I have switched my 3G modem from an old 3G phone to a genuine 3G modem. Stability of 3G connection has improved remarkably.

If the 3G connection is cut off, it is usually because the modem has crashed or the wvdial has died.
In case of modem crash I just plug off the modem and then put it back and run wvdial from terminal.
If the 3G connection is lost but modem seems to be working , I check if wvdial process is running with terminal command:

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pidof wvdial

If the command is answered by a number, I know that wvdial is still running and then kill wvdial with command:

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kill <pid number>

wait a few moments and run wvdial to restart connection.

Treatment is finished with Pressing Ctr+z and giving a command: bg
This sends wvdial to a background and now the terminal can be freely closed without disturbing the 3G connection.

I have no cron job scripts watching over 3G connection. That is why connection problems are needed to be solved manually with terminal. I don't know how to make a cron job scripts
Fortunately for now, connection is stable enough that I don't mind doing a manual restart now and then.