wwan 3g module Ericsson F3507g on Toshiba laptops not working because rfkill cannot be changed

[Martin Schläffer]

Binary package hint: linux-image-2.6.28-11-generic

The WWAN (3g) module Ericsson F3507g on Toshiba laptops does not work due to a bug (or missing feature) in the kernel module toshiba_acpi on Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty Beta.

The rfkill switch for the wwan module is turned on by default but cannot be changed. Therefore, the device is not working in Linux. The problem has also been reported in german in http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/umts-funzt-nicht/

In this forum, a patch for the toshiba_acpi module has been proposed which allows to turn the rfkill switch on and off (similar to the bluetooth module). Using this patch, the Ericsson F3507g wwan module is work on my Toshiba R600 laptop.

the required patch can be found here:

Toshiba ACPI RFKILL WWAN Patch
http://media.ubuntuusers.de/forum/attachments/1849798/toshiba_acpi_rfkill_wwan_2.6.28.patch

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi Martin,

The kernel is currently frozen for the upcoming Jaunty 9.04 release so if anything this will likely have to wait for Karmic and possibly be considered as a Stable Release Update for Jaunty. However, it is a lot of extra work for the Ubuntu kernel team to maintain out of tree patches, do you know if this patch has been submitted/accepted upstream? The kernel team usually requires this to happen first before they'll consider maintaining locally.

[smarf (smarf)]

On my Toshiba Tecra R10 the wwan module is not working, too: it is detected (three times), it requests the SIM-PIN (correctly), but then gives up with "GPRS disconnected". If this patch would find its way into the jaunty regular repositories, hopefully many Toshiba laptop users will be able to use Ubuntu out of the box.

[Bryan Wu (cooloney)]

Martin and smarf,

This patch changes a lot of toshiba_acpi.c file. Did you send it out for upstream review? We prefer to cherry pick the patch from upstream mainline since it is easier for us to maintain. But if you want us to merge it into Jaunty kernel, please follow some common patch submit policy [1] in kernel community and submit the patch again.

At least I can not find the origin author of this patch and found some coding style issue at least.

As long as this patch is accept into our kernel tree, we may help to submit it to upstream mainline.

-Bryan

[1] in kernel source code tree, Documentation/SubmittingPatches

[smarf (smarf)]

Hi Bryan,

thank you for your reply - unfortunately I couldn't get it run so far, so I can not confirm working of the patch. Maybe some solution appears somewhere. ;-)

Best regards - smarf

[Martin Schläffer (mschlaeffer)]

Hi all,

unfortunately the toshiba_acpi module seems to be orphaned (see http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/3/30/555)... But I have written down some instructions for the 3g module for now, so others can at least use and test it:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/ToshibaPortegeR600

Martin

[Bryan Wu (cooloney)]

Martin:

Thanks a lot for keeping your eyes on this issue. Since the toshipa_acpi driver was set to be orphaned, I will set this issue to invalid. And Johannes Berg is promoting a new rfkill framework, I think you might move your patch to new framework.

-Bryan

[Martin Schläffer (mschlaeffer)]

Hi Bryan,

I just found out that the newest toshset has a 3g switch which indeed works in my case: "toshset -3g on". So this is another reason why the patch is not needed anymore. A package for jaunty is available in my PPA: https://launchpad.net/~sn0ball/+archive/ppa

Thanks,
Martin