Bug 485182 - Data cards like Huawei EC121 does not work with RHEL5
Summary: Data cards like Huawei EC121 does not work with RHEL5
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED ERRATA
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
Classification: Red Hat
Component: kernel
Version: 5.3
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
medium
Target Milestone: rc
: ---
Assignee: Pete Zaitcev
QA Contact: Red Hat Kernel QE team
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2009-02-12 06:01 UTC by Huzaifa S. Sidhpurwala
Modified: 2009-09-02 09:03 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2009-09-02 09:03:09 UTC
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
patch to make huawei cards work (12.14 KB, patch)
2009-04-09 07:30 UTC, Huzaifa S. Sidhpurwala
no flags Details | Diff
Test patch - re-indented, ID tables merged (11.15 KB, patch)
2009-04-29 00:45 UTC, Pete Zaitcev
no flags Details | Diff


Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
Red Hat Product Errata RHSA-2009:1243 0 normal SHIPPED_LIVE Important: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 kernel security and bug fix update 2009-09-01 08:53:34 UTC

Description Huzaifa S. Sidhpurwala 2009-02-12 06:01:09 UTC
Description of problem:
Modern day datacards like the above have a small flash chip which contain windoze drivers. You need to toggle the device to get the kernel to recognize GSM modem.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
latest RHEL 5.3 with all errata etc

How reproducible:
Insert device, kernel shows USB CDROM,
no GSM model even when using usb_modeswitch

Note:
Works out of box in F9 and above.

Comment 1 Dan Williams 2009-02-15 14:03:26 UTC
I've been working on a cleaner method to do this in udev-extras.  There are a few problems with usb_modeswitch; it's pretty nasty code, and basically gives users carte-blanche (if you can edit the config file) to send whatever strings they like to the USB device.  The ideal case (and what I've been doing in udev-extras) is to classify the "CD-ROM Kill" method and use that in the udev rules instead of having a huge config file for every modem like usb_modeswitch.

Huawei also posted unusual-devs patches that kill their driver CD a few months ago.

Comment 2 Pete Zaitcev 2009-03-09 14:02:52 UTC
WOuld someone please attach /proc/bus/usb/devices from the problem device?
I have no idea what you guys are talking about.

Comment 3 Dan Williams 2009-03-09 20:37:43 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> WOuld someone please attach /proc/bus/usb/devices from the problem device?
> I have no idea what you guys are talking about.  

First problem is that the device IDs are most likely not present in drivers/usb/serial/option.c.

The second issue is the patch that the Huawei people sent to automatically kill their "driver CD" device and bring the modem up in multi-port mode:

1460e5e44cc5ecad7704f63b10dcb3a59d0e008b
aad8a278f37e748bfe310a1366f2aa7e0dbaf365
d853d872c14b9adc4adad29e56cd378b291f86e0

Comment 5 Huzaifa S. Sidhpurwala 2009-04-09 07:30:22 UTC
Created attachment 338871 [details]
patch to make huawei cards work

Comment 6 Huzaifa S. Sidhpurwala 2009-04-09 07:31:19 UTC
Attached patch on 2.6.18-128 kernel makes the huawei cards work well.

Comment 8 Huzaifa S. Sidhpurwala 2009-04-15 16:15:12 UTC
Can some one look at my patch and let me know if they are ok?

Comment 10 Dan Williams 2009-04-22 17:16:00 UTC
See also https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=496426 for the NM side of the EC121.  I would like to harm the Huawei firmware engineers quite painfully.

Comment 12 Huzaifa S. Sidhpurwala 2009-04-27 04:05:34 UTC
Yes, i have the available hardware to test it for 5.4 beta.

Comment 13 Pete Zaitcev 2009-04-28 14:31:36 UTC
The patch looks good to me. I'm going to merge the ID tables since the
driver does not have separate subdrivers.

By the way, this patch should be sufficient to work without usb_switch.
Please let me know if this is not the case (if you still need that awful
program with the patch applied).

See bug 253096 for minimum necessary firmware revisions.

Comment 14 Pete Zaitcev 2009-04-29 00:45:07 UTC
Created attachment 341678 [details]
Test patch - re-indented, ID tables merged

Comment 15 Pete Zaitcev 2009-04-29 00:47:01 UTC
Huzaifa, please test the kernel 2.6.18-141.el5.bz485182.1 from here:
 http://people.redhat.com/zaitcev/ftp/485182/
With quick turnaround we may be able to make the beta.

Comment 17 Huzaifa S. Sidhpurwala 2009-04-29 03:35:54 UTC
After testing:
After connecting to the usb, i see the connect/disconnect dance as mentioned in 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=253096

My solution for this is to do a rmmod usb-storage a couple of times and it works.

Since the soln is to upgrade the device firmware and has nothing to do with the kernel, i guess the kernel is fine.

I will call this test a pass :)

Comment 19 Don Zickus 2009-05-12 17:41:16 UTC
in kernel-2.6.18-146.el5
You can download this test kernel from http://people.redhat.com/dzickus/el5

Please do NOT transition this bugzilla state to VERIFIED until our QE team
has sent specific instructions indicating when to do so.  However feel free
to provide a comment indicating that this fix has been verified.

Comment 22 errata-xmlrpc 2009-09-02 09:03:09 UTC
An advisory has been issued which should help the problem
described in this bug report. This report is therefore being
closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on therefore solution and/or where to find the updated files,
please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report
if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2009-1243.html


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