[SOLVED] Quectel EC21, Debian Jessie, kernel 4.4 (patched)

[Brendan Simon (eTRIX)]

> Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2018 11:28:47 +0200
> From: Aleksander Morgado <aleksander at aleksander.es>
> Subject: Re: Quectel EC21, Debian Jessie, kernel 4.4 (patched)
>
> On Fri, Aug 31, 2018 at 9:24 AM, Brendan Simon (SEPL)
> <brendan at successful.com.au> wrote:
>> After the patches were applied, the device is recognise on the USB bus and
>> MM also recongises the modem.  However I'm getting a failed status of SIM
>> not found ("sim-missing"), but the SIM is present the dev-kit is known to
>> work using a Windows box (i.e. gets an IP address from the 4G service).
>>
>> In linux, after power up, MM shows the "sim-missing" failure reason.
> I believe that is just because you're using an ancient modemmanager
> version, and the new "UIM" support isn't implemented in MM 1.4.0.
> Could you update to MM 1.8? It will be totally compatible API-wise.
>
>> Interestingly, after I press the reset button on the dev-kit, MM recognises
>> a new modem and shows a "registered" status.
>>
>> I system now recognises the modem (/dev/cdc-wdm0 is registered as well as
>> some /dev/ttyUSB* devices).
>>
>> However, nmcli shows the device as a ttyUSB instead of cdc-wdm0 !!  Looking
>> at mmcli outupt, it seems the "primary port" changes from "cdc-wdm0" to
>> "ttyUSB8".
>>
>> Is this normal?  Can I force it to only use cdc-wdm?
> That may be because the QMI port isn't responding timely after the
> reset. Again, I believe this would be solved with newer MM/libqmi.
>
>
>> Why does the SIM get recognised after pressing the reset button and using
>> the ttyUSB interface, and not recongised after powerup and using the
>> cdc-wdm0 interface?
>>
>> I also tried connecting the dev-kit to a Debian 9 VM, but I couldn't get MM
>> to recognise it at all.  The ttyUSB and cdc-wdm0 interfaces were present,
>> but "mmcli -L" shows nothing ("No modems found")
>>
>> Could this be related or is it a different problem altogether?
>>
>> How can I get MM to recognise the modem in the Debian 9 setup?
>>
>> linux kernel     4.9.65-3
>> modemmanager     1.6.4-1
>> network-manager  1.6.2-3
>>
> This may also be due to timing in the QMI port when it boots, maybe
> we're not waiting enough. I'd suggest you try with the latest MM 1.8
> if possible.

I couldn't get the modem to attach to my VirtualBox system, so I ditched 
that (will try a Live CD at some point).  Instead I created Debian 9 
(Stretch) and Debian 10 (Buster) root filesystems for my embedded device.

Debian 10 (Buster) worked ok and I could get a connection to the 
Internet :)  It uses modemmanager 1.7.990 (if that's a real version 
number?  I assume it's 1.8 or near enough) and network-manager 1.12.2

Debian 9 (Stretch) gave the same symptoms as Debian 8 (Jessie). Debian 9 
uses modemmanager 1.6.4 and Debian 8 uses 1.4.0.

So my problem is solved if I want to migrate to Debian 10 (Buster), 
which is still in development (due for release early/mid 2019), or 
unless I can get a backport to Debian 9 (Stretch).

Thanks, Brendan.