64bit Linux and Vodafone 3G USB Dongles
After a little bit of work and a strange error, I managed to get one of Vodafone’s Huawei E172 USB 3G dongles working with 64-bit Ubuntu.
I used the 2.0beta3 AMD64 drivers (I’ll be trying the i386 ones on my laptop later), however the device, whilst detected, would never connect - it would always immediately hang up after CHAP authentication.
Digging around it became apparent that if an incorrect APN is used, the connection will either hangup immediately, or bad IP addresses will be delivered.
So, here’s the details needed:
APN: Internet (with a capital “I”)
Using this APN with the provided username, password and dial number, and the 20betas3 Vodafone Mobile Connect software I was up and running pretty much straight away.
Kudos to Vodafone for making the effort to release a Linux version of their connection software.






September 4th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Hi,
I was interested in your post concerning the E172 vodafone USB dongle.
I downloaded the software ( not sure it was the correct on as it keeps refering to E220/E270)
I cannot seem to get this working at all.
Could you possibly give me all the steps you did to get this working. I’ll need a bit more than ” APN: Internet (with a capital “I”)”
Thanks in advance
Wayne
September 6th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I had a lot of problems getting the dongle working under the 32-bit version of Linux (Ubuntu 8.04), and the process involved a lot of fiddling about (including removing software, reinstalling, installing early versions, deleting directories, setuid on a number of files and so on), but no consistent set of steps that can be followed. I also had to remove/reinsert the dongle a few times before it recognised it as the E172 once I got the software installed.
The 64-bit version was, quite literally, ‘Run the beta3 installer, set the APN to Internet, connect’ though.