Prolink PHS300 Dongle on Ubuntu

First of all, I must admit that I’m not a geek. I started to use FOSS in 2009 just because I didn’t wanted to use pirated softwares since that would be breaching the second precept of Buddhist Five Precepts.

However, recently I bought a mobile internet connection with a dongle from Etisalat. Before buying the dongle, I couldn’t do some Googling to check if it is working on Ubuntu or not. But I believed Etisalat agent’s word. First I tried it on my brother’s windows PC, it worked fine.

Then I connected it to my lap top which is using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) as the Operating System. I tried to connect internet in usual way with the ‘Network Connections Manager’. Even though Connections Manager is detecting the Dongle, it fails to connect. Then I thought the issue could be solve by unlocking the dongle. So I unlocked it, but still it is not connecting.

Then I did some googling about this dongle and found that there is an issue when using it on Linux. I tried various solutions on internet, but nothing worked for me. Finally I decided to ask for a help. One of my friends on twitter suggested me Irfad. Actually Irfad is the one who solved this and who should write this article.

Now let’s see how to create a connection for Prolink PHS300. In fact This article is not only for PHS300 users, I’m going to write this in a  broad view. You can use this method to create a connection for any Dongle which is not connecting with the ‘Network Connections Manager’.

First of all check your ‘Network Connections Manager’ follow the simple steps and try to connect. If it’s working, no need to worry about things I wrote below.

If it’s not working;

check if ‘Network Connections Manager’ is detecting your dongle.

 Newer versions of Ubuntu are detecting PHS300. If your dongle is detecting, go to PART B straightaway.

If it’s not detecting,

PART A

Open terminal and type

lsusb -v | less

Press ‘Enter’ until it shows your dongle data.

Copy ‘idVendor’ and ‘idProduct’ to somewhere.

Ex : My idVendor is 0x19d2 and idProduct is 0x0151

Then type in a new terminal,

sudo rmmod usbserial ####removes usbserial module####

then,

sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x19d2 product=0x0151

replace your vendor and product IDs.

now type,

sudo cp /etc/modules /etc/modules.bak ####For safety xD####

after that,

sudo echo “usbserial vendor=0x19d2 product=0x0151” /etc/modules

and reboot,

sudo reboot

 Now go back to ‘Network Connections Manager’ and check if it’s detecting your dongle. Then create a connection and try to connect.

If you could connect, congratulations !

 If the dongle is detecting but you can’t connect, don’t worry. I had the same problem.

 PART B

Now, this is what you have to do.

Open a terminal and type

 wget http://darknet.co.za/wiki/uploads/Posts/sakis3g.tar.gz

 then,

tar -xvzf sakis3g.tar.gz

Now become Root by typing

sudo su

give your password

 now enter this line

 cp sakis3g /usr/local/bin/

 Then this line to complete the installation part, give the script a executable permissions

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/sakis3g

 Open a new terminal and type (as non-root user)

sakis3g

That will open the Sakis 3G software.

 Now select,

connect with 3G => USB device => Your Dongle

Then choose your APN if it is there. If not there, select Custom APN and enter your APN. [If you are living in Sri Lanka and you don’t know your APN, just leave a comment stating your service provider.]

Then it’ll ask you a username and password. You can add anything for that.

 Complete the next few steps and reboot.

 Now your dongle must be working 😉

 All credit must go to Irfad for solving this. And thanks to both Irfad and Azker for giving me this opportunity to write.