Sierra AirCard 880E on Ubuntu

To get your newly purchased Sierra AirCard 880E on your Ubuntu Hardy, you should follow these simple steps:

  1. Make sure you have GCC on your computer: ‘sudo apt-get install gcc
  2. Make sure you have kernel sources installed on your computer: ‘sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.24-19-generic
  3. Download the driver from Sierra Wireless site
  4. Extract and compile (‘make‘, ‘sudo make install‘)
  5. Add to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-modem the line: ‘blacklist ehci_hcd’
  6. Insert the device into the laptop. When everything is OK, you should see that a USB device is registered using ‘dmesg‘ shortly afterwards, or ‘lsusb
  7. Configure /etc/wvdial.conf using the attached config file wvdial.conf
  8. Add to /etc/ppp/peers the file wvdial

Done. To connect, you need to run ‘sudo wvdial &

I will add in the future a nice gksudo with a nice-looking connect/disconnect script

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4 Comments

  1. I’m using Ubuntu 9.04 and Network Manager identifies the modem but dials and auto disconnect (immediately)
    i’ve followed your advise (except the kernel upgrade as it’s not needed) and wvdialer works well, the only problem
    is that now i dont have any web access (it resolve a bad DNS server, so i can PING the ip’s but it wont resolve to domain)
    do you happen to have any bright idea on how to solve this ?!

    1. I never suggested compiling kernel. Only Sierra’s driver for it.

      What happens is that NM abuses your /etc/resolv.conf file – your DNS client configuration.
      It was supposed to be written by pppd, as the directive “usepeerdns” is there (inside the wvdial config file for /etc/ppp/peers), but you can try to add it to /etc/ppp/options also. Just add the line
      usepeerdns
      and attempt a new connection.

      Good luck!
      Ez

    1. I actually called them and faked Windows. Claiming I had some problems, and they weird enough for them to give in and give me what I wanted…

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