Verizon Netbook – Gateway LT2016U Ubuntu Netbook Remix with Verizon Wireless Broadband – WORKS!

We got an awesome deal on the Gateway LT2016U netbook from Verizon Wireless recently. $50 for the netbook and reused an existing line that already had mobile broadband, so there were no real additional monthly costs. The netbooks shipped with Windows XP Home pre-installed, which is all well and good for basic usage, but I wanted something better.

First task was getting Linux installed on the netbook. Since there’s no cd-rom, my options were limited to installing from USB, SD Card, Netboot or External Media Drive. I tested out using the USB and SD Cards, but either I’ve got bum cards or there’s other difficulties with these that I’d never encountered. Regardless, speeds reading from these devices to attempt an installation were incredibly slow. Since I’ve got an external dvd-burner, I opted to go with this route just for it’s easiness.

The distro I decided on was the Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 Karmic Koala x86. Available at the time of writing here http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download-netbook

Installation was a breeze. Since the netbook utilizes a hidden partition to restore the machine to it’s original state, I split the Windows XP partition in half, leaving the original system intact and installing Ubuntu to the remaining space. This gives me approximately 80GB on the windows side and about 66GB on the Ubuntu side. Since I have no plans on using this for storing mass amounts of data, this configuration was optimal.

After installation, the netbook remix edition works flawlessly short of no connectivity for the Verizon Wireless Broadband internal adapter. Desktop and menu layouts have been optimized for the small screen size of the netbook and rapid access to common applications.

Now to the good stuff.

Getting the Verizon Wireless Broadband adapter to work is pretty straight forward, though will require a minor amount of command line usage.

The chipset used for the broadband card in my particular model of netbook’s was the Qualcomm 9212. This card will register as a 9211 until it’s firmware is loaded. Firmware only stays resident while power is being applied. So if the netbook is powered off, then booted into linux, the firmware will not be present on the card and as such the card will not be registered in the OS as a valid device for communication. To overcome this, I had to use the Gobi Loader – http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/gobi_loader/

First verify that you are in fact using the 9211 chipset by running ‘lsusb’ from the terminal. You should see a device listed as ‘ID 05c6:9211 Qualcomm, Inc.’
If your chipset differs, these instructions will not work for you.

Download the current version, at the time of this writing it is 0.3 http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/gobi_loader/download/gobi_loader-0.3.tgz

You will need to decompress the archive, run a make and then make install. This will produce a binary file called ‘gobi_loader’. I then moved gobi_loader into /usr/local/bin

You will need the firmware provided on the windows installation to allow the card to run. In my installation, the files on the windows side were under \QUALCOMM\QDLService\Packages\1\  (Your path may be different. There were 10 different sets of firmware included on my windows partition, it took a bit of trial and error to determine which firmware worked and which didn’t. What appears to be the case is the amss.mbn for GSM is roughly 9MB and the amss.mbn for CDMA is roughly 5MB. For Verizon, you want the CDMA file and it’s associated apps.mbn.

The two files amss.mbn and apps.mbn will need to be copied into /lib/firmware/gobi/ If this folder does not exist, you will need to create it.

Once these files have been copied, test the gobi_loader with the following command ‘gobi_loader /dev/ttyUSB0 /lib/firmware/gobi’. Then run ‘lsusb’ and check to see that you now show the QUALCOMM device as ‘ID 05c6:9212 Qualcomm, Inc. ‘

If that is the case, then you are almost done. If that is not the case, something went wrong, repeat the steps above and try again.

All that is left now is to modify rc.local to include our loader, so when we boot from a full power down, the firmware will be loaded the first time. Modify /etc/rc.local and add ‘gobi_loader /dev/ttyUSB0 /lib/firmware/gobi’ anywhere below the comments and above the ‘exit 0’ line Be sure to add a carriage return to the end of your command so that it will execute the exit 0 and properly run at boot.

Save your rc.local, fully turn off the machine. Power the machine on from a powered off state, boot to the OS and login. Bring up a terminal and run ‘lsusb’. You should again see the Qualcomm device listed as ‘ID 05c6:9212 Qualcomm, Inc. ‘

You should now be able to click on the network icon on the menu bar and you should see an item labeled “New Mobile Broadband (CDMA) connection…”

Select this option and begin the wizard to establish the new connection. Selecting Verizon as your wireless provider. Upon completion, you will have a new Verizon Connection option under the network menu bar option, however we need to make a final modification to this connection before we can call this complete. Edit the Verizon Connection and insert the following information: For Username, you will need to enter your mobile broadband tel# @vzw3g.com i.e. 1234567890@vzw3g.com. The password is ‘vzw’. Apply these changes, then click back to the network menu, then select the ‘Verizon Connection’ to establish the connection to the verizon network.

You should show a notification of a connection established and that’s it, you’ve successfully connected to the verizon wireless broadband network. The only other thing you should do now is purchase a stick of 2gb pc2-5300 ram for that netbook to replace the installed 1gb and you’ve got a rockin mobile workstation 🙂