There are two ways to connect your linux-machine to internet using a huawei E220. One is with the relatively new tool umtsmon, which provides a GUI, allows you to send SMS and change your PIN, has a connect- and disconnect-button but you need to click away a few warnings and cannot be used to start automatically and you need to install a few additional packages before you can use it.

Or you can use good-old ppp directely, which does not have a GUI, but should run on almost any system with a recent kernel.

I have tested both ways sucessfully on a ubuntu 7.10-system. And of course umtsmon uses ppp internally as well.

There are some false rumours and some needed informtion.

1. You dont need to deactivate the PIN-code. umtsmon and ppp can handle it.
2. You can have the modem plugged in when booting. No Problem.
3. let the modem time. It needs time after plugging in, it needs time when problems come up. Wait and try again and it might have healed itself - whatever the problem was. UMTS-devices are not fast but sensible :)
4. the modem offers three virtual usb-connection. Two command-connection and one virtual cd-drive that holds some useless windows-drivers. umtsmon needs to know about both command-connections.
5. the modem needs to be activated to work. Windows-driver does it. And so does the linuxtool huaweiAktBb by Miroslav Bobovsky which can be downloaded at his page or here. You need to compile and run this file to activte and use the modem before you proceed.
   1. download the file
   2. apt-get install libusb-dev libqt3-mt-dev
   3. cc huaweiAktBbo.c -lusb -o huaweiAktBbo
   4. as root : copy the file huaweiAktBbo to /usr/sbin
   5. as root : run the file

Mainly this is a short version of the howto from scorpion2211. Thnx and all regards to him.

I describe all steps for ubuntu 7.10-users. Being root helps with the following steps:

1. did you run huaweiAktBbo?
2. apt-get install qt3-dev-tools and answer Yes to all questions :)
3. download umtsmon-source from umtsmon and
   1. unpack it and change to folder
   2. qmake
   3. make clean all
   4. move the whole umtsmon-folder to /usr/local/ and optionally create a symlink from the umtsmon-file to /usr/bin/ like : ln -s /usr/local/umtsmon-0.7/umtsmon /usr/bin/umtsmon
4. as user : run umtsmon
   1. click ignore on the first two boxes
   2. enter your pin-code. If umtsmon fails with a “unknown-SIM-message” first time after entering again, just start it again and you’ll be fine.
   3. create a new profile with your APN-node. (can be found here for austria/germany/switzerland. For the austrian company YESSS its web.yesss.at and username/password stays empty.
      1. connect and you are in :)
      2. next time you start just click ignore two times and press connect and thats it.

If you want to disconnect press the disconnect-button. If this fails, you can run poff ppp0 as root.

Note the dis- and reconnecting the modem may make umtsmon fail (as ppp) - read the “device not found” - section at the end of this page !!

This is a short from http://linux.frankenberger.at/Huawei_E220.html. Actually there is nothing to add to his howto. Its perfect.

Just be sure to read on the “device not found”-section.
And be sure to know that the long line starting with ABORT BUSY ... actually belongs to the line above (or just delete it) and that the CONNECT \d\c - command at the end of the file had to be deleted in my case as well.

after disconnecting and reconnecting the usb-port may change and all you nice scripts and umtsmon will fail.

umtsmon-error:

Could not write to serial device: No such device
##P1 t=065: *** CRITICAL ERROR: Could not write to device (anymore)

Most likely then the usb-ports are not ttyUSB0 and ttyUSB1 but ttyUSB3 and ttyUSB2.
so then start umtsmon like umtsmon -s /dev/ttyUSB3,/dev/ttyUSB2 or - if using ppp directly - change ttyUSB0 to ttyUSB2 in your configfile. Be sure to change things back next time you start your system or start umtsmon like umtsmon -s /dev/ttyUSB1,/dev/ttyUSB0 next time, cause it remembers the settings.