- 23 May 2011 -

I received a new Nokia CS-17 Internet Stick from my mobile operator Saunalahti today. Naturally I had to start testing it immediately with Ubuntu. First I connected the USB device to my Vaio running Ubuntu 10.10. My hopes were rather high as there is already one Globetrotter 3G module build in this laptop and it work fine. But no. Nothing happened but an error message in dmesg.

Well, next thing I tried, was to connect the same USB Stick to another computer, a HP Probook with Ubuntu 11.04 (note that there is a build in 3G module in this computer also). Now Ubuntu 11.04 seems to recognise Nokia CS-17 right away and one can connect to Internet immediately. However, please note that I didn't do extensive testing with this set up.

** Update 22. June 2011: Yes, Ubuntu 11.04 supports Nokia CS-17 out-of-the-box. The Internet Stick is recognized correctly and can be used normally thru NetworkManager Applet immediately. **

That went nicely and the stick seems to be working so I could go back to Vaio and 10.10. Pretty soon I found the solution for making CS-17 work with Ubuntu 10.10 from Mika Heikkilä's site: http://mheikkila.blogspot.com/2011/04/ubuntu-1010-ja-nokia-cs-17.html  So thank Mika for these advices. Nice work! Here are the how-to steps:

1. Create a file named: 0421:0622 into folder: /etc/usb_modeswitch.d/
To do this, open a terminal window and say
cd /etc/usb_modeswitch.d/
and then
sudo pico 0421:0622
Now you might be asked for your password as this job need more user rights.


2. Cut'n'Paste the following (the text in red) into this new file 0421:0622

########################################################
# Nokia CS-17


DefaultVendor= 0x0421
DefaultProduct=0x0622


TargetVendor=  0x0421
TargetProduct= 0x0623


CheckSuccess=20


MessageContent="5553424312345678000000000000061b000000020000000000000000000000"

Save the file. If you used the above command you can save the file by clicking ctrl+o and hitting enter to the file name question. Finally use ctrl+x to close the editor.


3. Then there is still one other thing to do, you'll have to edit one more file.
In terminal window first say
cd /lib/udev/rules.d/
and after moving to this directory say
sudo pico 40-usb_modeswitch.rules
Again you might be asked for your password.

Now cut'n'paste the red part of the following text to the end of this file. Note that you'll have to leave the last line as it was. Below the text in blue illustrates the existing contents of the file and the red part is the one you'll have to add.

# Franklin Wireless U210
ATTRS{idVendor}=="1fac", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0130", RUN+="usb_modeswitch '%b/%k'"

# Nokia CS-17
ATTRS{idVendor}=="0421", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0622", RUN+="usb_modeswitch '%b/%k'"

LABEL="modeswitch_rules_end"

Now hit ctrl+o to save the edited file and accept the file name with enter. Finally hit ctrl+x to close the editor.


4. Restart the system.
Most likely this is an overkill with Linux and restarting networking or session is probably enough - but after restart my Nokia CS-17 Internet Stick was found normally and all I had to do was to use the network manager to connect to the Internet just the same way as with all other networks.

Well, that's it. That did the trick for me. Hope this helps someone!