Fedora 16 - Huawei E17X - udev rule

SMS reception while online

Wanting to be able to use gnokii while I have a connection open with ModemManager, I created the following udev rules in /etc/udev/rules.d/98-pcfe-modem.rules

SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", DRIVERS=="option", ATTRS{bInterfaceNumber}=="00", SYMLINK+="UMTS-connect"
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", DRIVERS=="option", ATTRS{bInterfaceNumber}=="01", ENV{ID_MM_DEVICE_IGNORE}="1", SYMLINK+="UMTS-control"

what it does

This allows gnokii to talk to /dev/UMTS-control because D_MM_DEVICE_IGNORE is set. Thus when my provider sends an SMS telling me I have exceeded my allocated data volume (and am being downgraded to 64kbit/s, wich is how I’d notice something needs taking care of), I can read the SMS with

$ gnokii --showsmsfolderstatus
$ gnokii --getsms MT 0 0

(adjust 0 0 to the SMS(es) you want to retrieve)

Using it

If need be, I can reply to buy another block of data at full speed. All this without taking my UMTS data connection down.

$ gnokii --sendsms +49123456789
GNOKII Version 0.6.30
LOG: xdebug mask is 0x1
Please enter SMS text. End your input with <cr><control-D>:
banana
apple
orange
Send succeeded with reference -1!
$

Vodafone UltraCard

In April 2013 I started using a Vodafone UltraCard , one of the side effects of this is that I have to choose which of my SIM cards receives SMS. The one in the laptop is not the one. So I no longer use the tip above.