I have edited 40-usb_modeswitch.rules and added the device. When I plug it in, Ubuntu automatically connects it sometimes. However, it doesn't do anything other times. Restarting, reconnecting, etc. only seems to help once out of so many tries.
When it connects, it shows as wired connection 1. However, there is just no way to invoke Connect manually in the UI. What command do I run to manually start the connecting process after plugging in the device? (i.e. when it does nothing automatically). The connection thing is never a given when you plug in the device or even when you restart. Enabling/Disabling Networking doesn't make a lot of difference. Is there a script I could run or a command I could invoke after plugging in the device to try connecting it? Any help appreciated.
To clarify more: The device is sometimes recognized and connected automatically. Most of the time however, it just blinks there and Ubuntu doesn't connect it automatically. It's listed under lsusb however. As a result, the temptation is strong to never disconnect it once it has successfully connected after plugging, unplugging, restarting etc.. Because you never know when it's going to connect again. Surely there must be a better way. Even if it is a set of steps that included restarting that always works.
1 Answer
So that this can help others going through the same thing, here's how I solved it. When it connected, it was almost always connected in Mass Storage mode. lsusb listed it as Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. E353/E3131 (Mass storage mode). After upgrading to the latest ubuntu, it actually started listing the files in the mass storage mode. It has linux installation files which you can use. Switch to root using sudo -i and run the installer shell script. If you're on a 64 bit machine, you will get get the error libusb-0.1.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory. You can solve that by doing apt-get install libusb-0.1-4:i386. This is all you need to get it working consistently.
