Good afternoon Gents!
I recently purchased a like new Getac F110 G4 from eBay, with Win10 and a 256 GB drive. I upgraded the Drive to a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro, and used Getacs factory Image to image the new Drive. Everything went surprisingly well. After all of the updates finished, and I had windows configured the way I wanted it (yes, I still need windows for some things..), I cleaned the drive of any excess junk, checked the Drive for errors, then trimmed. After this, I shrunk the Drive to 50%, in preparation for installing Fedora.
After the Fedora install on the drive, I set about checking things and configuring. Literally everything was detected, and worked, including the Touch Screen, bluetooth, WiFi, Docking Station, the CAC Card Reader, Bar Code Reader, and after a bit of tinkering, the Sierra Wireless EM7455 Cellular Card, with one caveat, the GPS in the EM7455 is captured by ModemManager, and it locks up the /dev/ttyUSBn Ports (all four of them), and doesn’t allow sending ANY AT commands to the Card to configure the GPS, or even turn it on or off.
Researching this, I’ve found that this is a somewhat common problem across every distro with GPS equipped Cellular Cards, since Modem Manager came into existence. Early on, Modem Manager would allow udev Rules to be created to keep MM from touching those Ports, but since then, the MM Dev’s have gotten more aggressive about it, and gotten rid of the different udev and MM Configuration options, now ONLY allowing a Whitelisting option .. so basically, it seems that if you want MM to control the Modem, you whitelist the Card, but don’t get GPS. If you disable MM, the Cellular Card disappears, you can see it in lsusb, but you can’t talk to it.
The Drivers Modem Manager is using are the cdc_mbim and qcserial. being a Qualcomm Chip, the proper drivers should be qmi based. After installing those however, and running a modprobe, MM refuses to give up its grip, or switch to the qmi drivers. Switching to the proper Drivers SHOULD allow the modem portion of the Card to configure, and leave the /dev/ttyUSB Ports able to e used by gpsd or something suitable in Linux to intercept and use the GPS Signals, and control the on/off functions of the GPS half of the card.
Currently, I’m at my wits end with this mess. I’ve been reading every website and page I can for two weeks now to try to resolve this. Unfortunately, ModemManager handles the modem half of the Card well, but they made zero provision for Cards with the GPS in them, and don’t even use the readily available QMI driver framework for the Qualcomm based Chipset.
Below is the output of the mmcli
getac@fedora:~$ sudo mmcli -m 1
General | path: /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Modem/1
| device id: ac33e6f7b58941a9ec67fc847c75351a9d54c419 |
|---|
| Hardware |
| model: Sierra Wireless EM7455 Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ X7 LTE-A |
| firmware revision: SWI9X30C_02.33.03.00 |
| carrier config: default |
| h/w revision: EM7455B |
| supported: gsm-umts, lte |
| current: gsm-umts, lte |
| equipment id: |
System | device: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-5
| physdev: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-5
| drivers: qcserial, cdc_mbim
| plugin: sierra
| primary port: cdc-wdm0
| ports: cdc-wdm0 (mbim), ttyUSB0 (ignored), ttyUSB1 (ignored),
| ttyUSB2 (at), wwp0s20f0u5i12 (net) |
|---|
| Numbers |
Status | lock: sim-pin2
| unlock retries: sim-pin2 (10)
| state: connected
| power state: on
| access tech: lte
| signal quality: 32% (cached) |
|---|
| Modes |
| allowed: 4g; preferred: none |
| allowed: 3g, 4g; preferred: 4g |
| allowed: 3g, 4g; preferred: 3g |
| current: allowed: 3g, 4g; preferred: 4g |
Bands | supported: utran-1, utran-3, utran-4, utran-5, utran-8, utran-2,
| eutran-1, eutran-2, eutran-3, eutran-4, eutran-5, eutran-7, eutran-8,
| eutran-12, eutran-13, eutran-20, eutran-25, eutran-26, eutran-29,
| eutran-41
| current: utran-1, utran-3, utran-4, utran-5, utran-8, utran-2,
| eutran-1, eutran-2, eutran-3, eutran-4, eutran-5, eutran-7, eutran-8,
| eutran-12, eutran-13, eutran-20, eutran-25, eutran-26, eutran-29,
| eutran-41 |
|---|
| IP |
3GPP | imei:
| enabled locks: fixed-dialing
| operator id: 310260
| operator name: T-Mobile
| registration: home
| packet service state: attached |
|---|
| 3GPP EPS |
SIM | primary sim path: /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SIM/1
| sim slot paths: slot 1: /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SIM/1 (active)
| slot 2: none |
|---|
| Bearer |
This is the lsusb
getac@fedora:~$ lsusb -t
/: Bus 001.Port 001: Dev 001, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/12p, 480M
|__ Port 003: Dev 002, If 0, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 12M
|__ Port 003: Dev 002, If 1, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 12M
|__ Port 004: Dev 003, If 0, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 12M
|__ Port 006: Dev 004, If 0, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M
|__ Port 006: Dev 004, If 1, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M
|__ Port 007: Dev 005, If 0, Class=Chip/SmartCard, Driver=usbfs, 12M
|__ Port 008: Dev 006, If 0, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 12M
|__ Port 009: Dev 007, If 0, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M
|__ Port 009: Dev 007, If 1, Class=Video, Driver=uvcvideo, 480M
|__ Port 010: Dev 008, If 0, Class=Wireless, Driver=btusb, 12M
|__ Port 010: Dev 008, If 1, Class=Wireless, Driver=btusb, 12M
/: Bus 002.Port 001: Dev 001, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/6p, 5000M
|__ Port 005: Dev 002, If 0, Class=Vendor Specific Class, Driver=qcserial, 5000M
|__ Port 005: Dev 002, If 2, Class=Vendor Specific Class, Driver=qcserial, 5000M
|__ Port 005: Dev 002, If 3, Class=Vendor Specific Class, Driver=qcserial, 5000M
|__ Port 005: Dev 002, If 12, Class=Communications, Driver=cdc_mbim, 5000M
|__ Port 005: Dev 002, If 13, Class=CDC Data, Driver=cdc_mbim, 5000M
getac@fedora:~$ sudo lsusb
[sudo] password for getac:
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 2baf:0001 Getac Tech. Corp. Getac Keyboard
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0eef:c07a D-WAV Scientific Co., Ltd eGalaxTouch EXC3188-1515-09.00.00
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 05c8:0700 Cheng Uei Precision Industry Co., Ltd (Foxlink) FN80AF-443H
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 058f:9540 Alcor Micro Corp. AU9540 Smartcard Reader
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 2baf:0005 Getac Technology Inc. DIGITIZER
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 05c8:0435 Cheng Uei Precision Industry Co., Ltd (Foxlink) Full HD Camera
Bus 001 Device 008: ID 8087:0a2b Intel Corp. Bluetooth wireless interface
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 1199:9071 Sierra Wireless, Inc. AirPrime MC7455 3G/4G LTE Modem
This Modem and GPS work fine in windows, so I know the Card is good, and all functions work properly. This HAS to be a Driver issue, involving the ModemManager and possibly the Kernel driver configuration. Again, any help rendered would be greatly appreciated!
i don’t want to make this initial Post any longer. If anyone has any ideas, or wants to see an output of anything, please let me know. Thanks in advance for any assistance with this. I appreciate it!