m0n0wall and 3G USB modems
I’ve been running a m0n0wall router for some time now. The build and design of the machine was meant to be documented on the ‘RoutITX’ page of this blog, but I’d never gotten around to finishing it off. I may do this now that I have more time, but I’m not promising anything…
Even so, due to the impressive compatibility of the Sony Ericsson K800i and Linux, and the subsequent lack of the same DHCP/CDC USB Ethernet adapter functionality in the K850i, I thought it’d be quite cool to see if the K800i could be configured as a back-up WAN interface within m0n0wall.
So I fish my K800i (now retired, although I wish it wasn’t) out of its resting place, find a USB cable, and plug it into the back of the m0n0wall machine. No new interface appeared on the ‘assign interfaces’ page, so I restarted it. Still no new interfaces. Upon checking the kernel messages in the log, I found these lines pertaining to the CDC USB Ethernet device:
Jan 4 20:28:06 kernel: device_attach: cdce0 attach returned 6
Jan 4 20:28:06 kernel: cdce0: could not find data bulk in
Jan 4 20:28:06 kernel: cdce0: Sony Ericsson Sony Ericsson K800, rev 2.00/0.00, addr 2
Which, as a Linux geek, confused me somewhat. Google turned up a number of results for ‘cdce0′ problems or ‘attach returned 6′ regarding various other drivers, but only one really addressed the issue in particular, albeit for a much older SE phone. You’ll notice that there haven’t been any replies, either.
A former colleague pointed me in the direction of a patch that was submitted around October 2008 which enables the proper handling of the CDC USB device within the Nokia N80. Hopefully it should help, but it may be some time before the patch filters down to m0n0wall.
This is just one of those times when I wish I’d followed the world of software development a little more.