Vodafone USB Stick K3773
As the issue of having to pay a lot to connect to the Internet during my jetlagged night sessions was bothering me, I bought a 3G device in a nearby Vodafone shop to do the job (at the mere cost of four hours of connection!). It is a Vodafone USB Stick K3773 and I was unsure it would work under Linux (Ubuntu 12.04). When mounting the USB stick, I first saw there was a Linux directory on the stick, with the instruction to run ./install as root. I tried that and it did not work. I then checked the stick was working under windows, which was the case. I could not find helpful advices on the forums (fori!). So I fiddled for a few minutes and came with the idea of installing from my directory rather than from the (read-only) disk. Changed the attributes of the install file to executable. And ran it again. It surprisingly worked! The device is now recognised as a network wired connection (eth1) whenever I start my (Compaq) laptop.
Here are my commands, in case it helps:
xian$ mkdir QuickStart xian$ cp /media/QuickStart\ 3.7/linux_mbb_install/* QuickStart/. xian$ cd QuickStart xian$ chmod +x install xian$ sudo ./install
It is rather slow (20 Kb/s) but this may a good way to manage my time on line!
September 21, 2012 at 2:02 am
Slow? Welcome to Vodaphail :-(
The modem uses CDC Ethernet, there’s a DHCP (Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.1.1-P1) server on the device that shows up as 192.168.1.1 and allocates the IP address that you use as the internet gateway. Nice to be able to connect to the ISP account interface without having to use either Windoof or Mac – just connect to http://192.168.1.1 with your browser. Not perfect (designed for IE 8), but not as terrible as some (eg. ZTE devices).
February 6, 2014 at 11:23 am
I have a K3773 but cannot open it as i do from windows by opening a browser 192.168.1.1. I am using Xubuntu 12.04. I unlocked it from VFAU
February 6, 2014 at 12:14 pm
Do you have a recent version of usb-modeswitch installed? You’ll need it.
Check dmesg for something similar to the following:-
[ 6.748063] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci_hcd
[ 6.881144] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=12d1, idProduct=14bc
[ 6.881229] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=1, SerialNumber=0
[ 6.881305] usb 1-1: Product: Vodafone Mobile Broadband (Huawei)
[ 6.881376] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: Vodafone (Huawei)
[ 7.910203] cdc_ether 1-1:1.0: eth1: register ‘cdc_ether’ at usb-0000:00:02.2-1, CDC Ethernet Device,
58:2c:80:13:92:63
[ 7.910358] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_ether
and (it’s eth1 in this instance):-
$ ip a
1: lo: mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
2: eth0: mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000
link/ether 00:20:ed:8f:ab:fd brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.0.6/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global eth0
3: eth1: mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UNKNOWN qlen 1000
link/ether 58:2c:80:13:92:63 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.1.100/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global eth1
Kind regards
February 9, 2014 at 1:12 am
Hi Scott
Thank you for the detailed reply. Now bear in mind I am a lay person at Linux. I checked software centre and I do have usb-modeswitch installed
when I run dmesg I get many pages of output here are some of what I get
4.880177] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci_hcd
if I do a search on the sring Vodafone on the output I only get:
289.893264] scsi 4:0:0:0: CD-ROM Vodafone Storage(Huawei) 2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[ 289.898295] sr0: scsi-1 drive
If I seach oin usbcore I get:
288.892396] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
if I issue ip a form terminal I get no eth1 [eth0 being my notebooks ethernet int]
February 9, 2014 at 11:14 am
NOTE: I don’t use the software that came with the modem (as the blog post author does – as it’s crippled to slow speeds)
here’s the relevant sections of dmesg for the device, and you can see where usb-modeswitch is “flipping” it from the default fake CD to the modem:-
[23609.242427] usb 1-1: USB disconnect, device number 5
[23609.242606] cdc_ether 1-1:1.0: eth1: unregister ‘cdc_ether’ usb-0000:00:02.2-1, CDC Ethernet Device
[35939.820039] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 7 using ehci_hcd
[35939.953110] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=12d1, idProduct=1f11
[35939.953122] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=1, SerialNumber=0
[35939.953129] usb 1-1: Product: Vodafone Mobile Broadband (Huawei)
[35939.953134] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: Vodafone (Huawei)
[35939.955123] scsi4 : usb-storage 1-1:1.0
[35940.957100] scsi 4:0:0:0: CD-ROM Vodafone Storage(Huawei) 2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[35940.963394] scsi 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 5
[35941.095928] sr0: scsi-1 drive
[35941.095939] cdrom: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
[35941.099080] sr 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0
[35941.432480] usb 1-1: USB disconnect, device number 7
[35943.108080] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 8 using ehci_hcd
[35943.241262] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=12d1, idProduct=14bc
[35943.241273] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=1, SerialNumber=0
[35943.241280] usb 1-1: Product: Vodafone Mobile Broadband (Huawei)
[35943.241285] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: Vodafone (Huawei)
[35943.245804] cdc_ether 1-1:1.0: eth1: register ‘cdc_ether’ at usb-0000:00:02.2-1, CDC Ethernet Device,
It doesn’t sound like your’s being “flipped” (or “ip a” would show the extra eth*). You can check with:-
$ dmesg | grep cdc
You can just create a rule (as root) “nano /etc/usb_modeswitch.d/12d1:1f11″
with the contents:-
/etc/usb_modeswitch.d/12d1:1f11
# Vodafail K3773
DefaultVendor= 0x12d1
DefaultProduct= 0x1f11
TargetVendor= 0x12d1
TargetProduct= 0x14bc
MessageContent=”555342437f0000000002000080000a11062000000000000100000000000000”
Kind regards
July 11, 2012 at 9:12 pm
I wrote this comment (and am writing this reply) in the middle of the night. If it was slow then, it is simply useless during the day. Even using an ssh connection to my Paris-Dauphine account takes too long to be manageable…