Reliance NetConnect on Ubuntu 9.04

Today one of my friend came to me asking for help in connecting to internet with his Reliance Netconnect USB Modem. As I had done this before for BSNL EVDO connections, I knew the steps to follow. But when I tried to load the usbserial module on Ubuntu using modprobe command, I got this

sree@jaunty$ sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0xXXXX product=0xXXXX
FATAL: Module usbserial not found

As this method was working fine with previous Ubuntu versions, I became curious to know why this error has occured. A quick google search gave me the cause. The current versions of Linux kernel has integrated usbserial within the kernel itself. So the loading/unloading technique like above doesn’t work with the new kernel.

So isn’t it possible to use USB Modems in Linux having a new kernel ? Don’t worry, it is possible. All you have to do is, apart from loading the usbserial module using modprobe command you have to edit the kernel boot arguments. To do this first you find the device and vendor id’s of the USB modem. You can find this by using the lsusb command. Make a note of it. Then edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and find the boot line that starts with ‘kernel’. Append the following arguments to the end of that line.

usbserial.vendor=0xXXXX usbserial.product=0xXXXX

Now reboot your system and use wvdial to connect to internet. For that type

sudo wvdialconf create
sudo gedit /etc/wvdial.conf

then change your username and password and save the file. Then use the following command to connect to Internet.

sudo wvdial

Probably you need to add extra information like the following to the wvdial.conf if you experience problems connecting to Internet.

Stupid Mode = yes
Carrier Check = no

Carrier Check:
wvdial checks your modem during the connection process to ensure that it is actually online. If you have a weird modem that insists its carrier line is always down, you can disable the carrier check by setting this option to “no”.

Stupid Mode:
When wvdial is in Stupid Mode, it does not attempt to interpret any prompts from the terminal server. It starts pppd immediately after the modem connects. Apparently there are ISP’s that actually give you a login prompt, but work only if you start PPP, rather than logging in. Go figure. Stupid Mode is (naturally) disabled by default.

You can find information on using BSNL EVDO from this post.