Huawei E173 not switching in Linux Mint 10

Dirigible · Post by **Dirigible** » 20 Mar 2012, 06:11

Out of curiosity I bought a cheap prepaid (for one month only) usb modem.
It's a Huawei E173 usb wireless modem from Crazy Johns (Australia) prepaid for 30 days.
It indicates the presence of a 3G network by a blue flashing LED but shows up as a CD when plugged in.

My desktop PC has the following installed...
Linux Mint 10
kernel is 2.6.35-22-generic
version #33-Ubuntu SMP Sun Sep 19 20:34:50 UTC 2010
usb-modeswitch 1.1.4-1,
usb-modeswitch-data 20100826-1,
libusb-0.1-4 and
libusb-1.0-0

If anyone can tell me of an Australian service provider who can supply a usb wireless modem which will work with Linux straight out of the box I'd be quite happy to bin this one and buy theirs.
Otherwise, what should I do?

Post by **Josh** » 20 Mar 2012, 09:17

Your distribution is a bit dated. To support newer hardware you might want to think about a general update.

Other than that, I can only suggest to install the latest version of usb_modeswitch and its data package from source.

Dirigible · Post by **Dirigible** » 21 Mar 2012, 12:11

That's a fair call.
I've been happy with what I've got so far but now it's time to move on.
I'll find some time to upgrade and try again.