Verizon Wireless USB720

[worker201]

I have a Verizon Wireless USB720 that I use for home internet service. It's a small device, like an oversized USB stick, and it has a USB connector. It works on my Mac, and it supposedly works in Windows, though I've never tried it. How can I get it to work in Linux?

I tried Google searching for this, but Google is starting to get useless. 80% of all the hits were blogs/rss sites that just happened to have written articles about both Verizon and Linux at some point over the last 5 years. Another 15% were sites with articles about the Verizon device (apparently the press release was pretty big), and had 'Linux' as some search key just for the hell of it. And 5% were from forums where people had asked the same question I am asking, with no responses. Practically nothing from the development/driver community. I might be SOL here.

So if anyone has any links or thoughts, I'd be glad to listen.

[Tux]

What information does lsusb give you about it?

[Tux]

Ok, done a bit of poking.

This thread seem to think it is Novatel hardware.

The 'USB720' part I assume corresponds to the Novatel Wireless U720 which is supported by the airprime module, which will give you a USB serial device for PPP.

Firstly, try loading airprime and check dmesg - see if anything happens.

[worker201]

Airprime module? Where does one find that? A kernel module? Keep in mind that I am running 2.6.17.13.

I haven't actually put the thing in yet, I was just looking for background information before getting started.

[Tux]

Yeh, a kernel module.

The device IDs for your model were added fairly recently, 2.6.20 maybe.
You need to modify airprime.c and recompile; Look for the device id list and add:

Code: Select all

      { USB_DEVICE(0x1410, 0x2110) }, /* Novatel Wireless U720 CDMA/EV-DO */

after the other entries.

You could change the comment to Verizon if you like, but that's how the current mainline has it.

[worker201]

Can I add this module to my current kernel, or do I need to get a newer kernel? I have been considering updating to a new 21 or 22 kernel...

I forget what the version rules are for kernels. Something about odd and even numbers, but which is the important number? According to kernel.org, 2.6.22.1 is the latest stable. Maybe the rule was that the last number was for releases and that even numbers are testing releases, and odd numbers are stable releases. Or something like that.

Anyway, I have no problem getting and building a newer kernel. This is for my Slackware installation, where it is all about testing and learning.

[Tux]

It used to be that you had X.Y.Z where X was the kernel version, Y the major revision and Z the minor revision. You will remember that even Y were the stable branch and odd Y development.

That has changed now. Essentially there is no significance to the odd/even thing. Feature developments are incorporated into the 2.6 line. In this system the Z number changes when there are additional modules or features added to the kernel, say every few months. To represent minor changes in-between such as bug fixes you have X.Y.Z.W where W is used to indicate these smaller updates.

That is now the official versioning scheme, it has confused some people particularly those that want to know what the 'stable' kernel is currently.

[worker201]

Nice going - 666 posts!

[Tux]

Indeed, haha. Only took 3 and a half years