I want my mom to be immediately online when she plugs her Huawei in the USB slot. While the Huawei E220 needs some special treatment, the rest of the procedure more or less works for any USB device providing modem access, especially mobile phones.

Step 1: Getting pppd called on a device connect

Copy the attached file 99-dial.rules to /etc/udev/rules.d

Step 2: Setting up pppd for your service provider

My provider is UAE Etisalat. If you're with them, just copy the files. Otherwise you have to edit them a bit.

Copy the attached usb-datapackage to /etc/ppp/peers/. If you want to rename it you also have to change the last line in 99-dial.rules.

Step 3: Setting up a chat script

Copy datapackage.chat to /etc/ppp/.

There is a way to restrict going online to a particular SIM card for security purposes (i.e. if you have only one SIM card with a flat rate). You have to figure out the IMSI of your SIM card and then follow the instructions in the chat script

If you need to unlock the SIM card with a PIN, this has also to go into the chat script, but normally when you connect to a phone, the SIM card will already be unlocked through the phone.

Attachments:

99-dial.rules	[udev script to dial the connected USB modem with pppd]	0 Kb	09/05/09 02:29
datapackage.chat	[Modem chat script to be put in /etc/ppp]	0 Kb	09/05/09 02:36
usb-datapackage	[Peer definition to be put in /etc/ppp/peers]	0 Kb	09/05/09 02:44