Vaio mobile broadband 3G hardware not recognised by Mint 14

[fewter]

I love Mint and have been running it for several years on a Sony Vaio laptop (VGN-TT21WN_B) which has a built-in 3G modem. (It has a SIM card slot in the battery compartment.) This worked fine for each version of Mint up to Mint 13 Maya 64bit MATE edition, but with Mint 14 64bit MATE the modem isn't recognised, so there is no option to enable Mobile Broadband in the Network Manager.

If I list the USB devices on the laptop from Mint 13 the output includes this:

Code: Select all

lsusb
...
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0af0:7601 Option Globetrotter MO40x 3G Modem (GTM 382)


If I run the same command from Mint 14 there is no mention of the modem.

Is there any cure for this or do I have to revert to version 13? I'd be grateful for any suggestions.

[bmork]

I love Mint and have been running it for several years on a Sony Vaio laptop (VGN-TT21WN_B) which has a built-in 3G modem. (It has a SIM card slot in the battery compartment.) This worked fine for each version of Mint up to Mint 13 Maya 64bit MATE edition, but with Mint 14 64bit MATE the modem isn't recognised, so there is no option to enable Mobile Broadband in the Network Manager.

If I list the USB devices on the laptop from Mint 13 the output includes this:

Code: Select all

lsusb
...
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0af0:7601 Option Globetrotter MO40x 3G Modem (GTM 382)


If I run the same command from Mint 14 there is no mention of the modem.

Is there any cure for this or do I have to revert to version 13? I'd be grateful for any suggestions.

I believe that could be a symptom of this bug: in the sony-laptop driver: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47751 The effect will depend on the installed modem, and totally disappearing from lsusb is a likely outcome for most modems because they will completely power down.

Due to unfortunate circumstances, the fix for this bug was not accepted for v3.8. See the thread starting at https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/1/7/333
This means that the fix cannot go into stable yet either. It most certainly will be acceptable there after the v3.9 merge window opens up. Until then I have no better advice than to patch your kernel yourself or run an older kernel.

You could probably also make it work by blacklisting the sony-laptop driver, but that is likely to have unwanted side effects like missing backlight adjustment etc, so I won't recommend it.


Bjørn

[fewter]

Bjørn, thank you very much for this helpful explanation. It saves me from wasting a lot of time trying to get 3G working on Mint 14. I have re-installed Mint 13 (with the earlier kernel version) and will wait until the issue is resolved. It's so quick and easy to install a Linux operating system or try one with a live DVD, that it isn't a problem to do this. If anyone else is using a Vaio laptop it's worth mentioning that the sound stopped working, too, when I upgraded. I suppose this was the same issue. Anyway, everything is working again now.