Slow and unreliable detection and connection of USB 3G Modem -- Huawei

[Per Ångström]

Binary package hint: network-manager

Comparing the handling of my Huawei USB 3G modem on Jaunty and Karmic (Alpha 5), I find that Jaunty does it a lot better:
1) On Karmic, the modem is often not detected when plugged in and I have to unplug and replug it a few times to have it show up in nm-applet.
2) On Karmic, sometimes the first connection attempt fails almost immediately.
3) On Karmic, the time to establish a connection is about twice as long as on Jaunty.
4) On Karmic, if I unplug the modem after using it and then replug it, sometimes the modem will not show up again in nm-applet, until I restart the computer.

[Julien Demare (jude)]

I have the same problem here. With a Huawei USB 3G modem too.
I will also add that nm-applet is always taking 30% of the CPU resources and that somehow this applet is always creating hundred of files in the background because my file system is always full. Even if i free up 200MO, 10 seconds latter, these space is taken by nm-applet.

[Julien Demare (jude)]

I might have found out the issue.
I had 6GB with the following files in /var/log :
/var/log/daemon.log
/var/log/daemon.log.1
/var/log/syslog
/var/log/syslog.1

As there was no longer any free space, Network Manager had big trouble to deal with the connection.
Once I've removed all those log files, nm-applet only use less than 1% of the CPU resources.

[Shaved Wookie (shavedwookie)]

Might be useful to take a look at what's in those two logs and see if NM is posting a specific error message repeatedly. That would give us somewhere to start looking for a fix.

[Per Ångström (autark)]

Being dependent on my 3G connection, I have more or less given up on Karmic. I may give it another chance when bug 446146 is solved.

[Per Ångström (autark)]

I am now testing Lucid Lynx (Alpha 1), and I'm happy to see that the handling of the same 3G modem is now much improved compared to Karmic Alpha. It now looks to be on a par with Jaunty.

[Per Ångström (autark)]

Now, I'm no longer so happy with Lucid Lynx. These last few weeks, the handling of my USB modem has gradually deteriorated, and now I cannot count on being able to connect more than at most once between each reboot.

[Tony Espy (awe)]

@Per Ångström

The recent upload to Lucid fixed a lot of issues present in the versions of NM and MM released with Karmic. Lucid is currently in Alpha stage and is not meant for regular usage yet. Alpha versions are released in order get community help with testing, in order to shake out bugs. Hopefully we can get your issue resolved shortly.

[Thomas Hood (jdthood)]

@Per: What is the model number of the modem?

Are the bugs fixed in Ubuntu 12.04?

[Per Ångström (autark)]

> What is the model number of the modem?
E1750. I don't use that anymore, but now that I tried it, it connected fine!

> Are the bugs fixed in Ubuntu 12.04?

This one seems to be fixed, but on the other hand, I now have a 4G Huawei E398, with which I'm not having any luck connecting with under 12.04.

[Thomas Hood (jdthood)]

Have you already filed a bug report about the E398?

[Per Ångström (autark)]

No, I discovered it just now.

By the way, I now remember that the E1750 was not the modem I had when I filed the report. The old modem is no longer in my possession, so I can't say how that works with 12.04.

[Thomas Hood (jdthood)]

Well, about the new bug, you could considet filing it upstream.

    https://bugzilla.gnome.org/browse.cgi?product=NetworkManager