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I have a Vodafone K3760 3G dongle I've used on laptops since Squeeze & Wheezy generally using (in preference to Gnome Network Manager's own support for mobile broadband) an application Vodafone used to put out called various things over the years:

  • Vodafone Mobile Connect (vmc)
  • Betavine Connection Manager (bcm)
  • and more recently v-mobile-broadband

Some history here.

Having just upgraded the first of several laptops to Jessie, I tried out the dongle. For the purposes of IP connectivity it works flawlessly with Gnome Network Manager (Wheezy was always a bit temperamental, which is why I stuck with the Vodafone application).

However: the Vodafone utility did also offer the ability to

  • track accumulated network usage
  • send and receive texts (SMS). The ability to receive them is particularly useful/essential abroad, to see what extortionate data rate will be charged. (And I note Vodafone's own instructions for registering for "My Vodafone" - which includes them sending an SMS - includes text to the effect that if you're using "a tablet or mobile internet dongle" you'll need "Vodafone Mobile Connect" software on a laptop).

So I was intending to install whatever Vodafone's latest incarnation for Linux is. Except there doesn't seem to be one. Vodafone have a page for Vodafone Mobile Broadband Software, which does have a "Linux" link (on the "Latest release for Mac..." pulldown, oddly!) but that attempts to take you to the apparently non-existent http://www.betavine.net/bvportal/resources/datacards (and neither www.betavine.net or betavine.net appears to exist). Nor does there seem to be anything useful at http://www.developer.vodafone.com/.

Is Linux support dead or am I just missing something? Are there other, better tools for doing the things Gnome Network Manager doesn't do (ie accessing SMS functionality of the device, and tracking accumulated bandwidth usage)?

I'd even be interested in a copy of the Vodafone app's sources if they're Out There somewhere - although not sure if Vodafone ever released them or it was binary only for the core, which I think was Qt; there were certainly some Python dependencies though.

Community
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timday
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2 Answers2

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It looks like the Linux support is dead. There are tools for tracking network usage like the one on this one. There are also tools for sending and receiving texts like this one called gnokii.

You might also want to use this one called gammu and wamu

If you want to do this you also can use this at the terminal:

The basic syntax to use is as follows, be sure to replace the ########## with your own 10 digit phone number (10 digits = area code + phone number), and then replace the message= text with your own message to send:

curl http://textbelt.com/text -d number=########## -d "message=text goes here"

Source: osxdaily.com about sending texts using Linux/OS X terminal.

TheRealProcyon
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  • Blubphone looked promising at first glance, but on closer inspection it appears to be just remote access to SMS on an android phone, by running an app on the phone. Not much use with a USB dongle. textbelt is interesting... but only for sending; not much use if any replies are inaccessible. (And did you intend to link something else for network tracking? That's linked to blubphone too; guessing it was supposed to point to something different?). – timday May 18 '15 at 13:34
  • Yes it was supposed to link somewhere else – TheRealProcyon May 18 '15 at 13:48
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    Edited there was a wrong number used – TheRealProcyon May 18 '15 at 13:52
  • I removed blubphone and added gnokii – TheRealProcyon May 18 '15 at 13:55
  • vnstat does look pretty good; passes the "current in Debian" test too https://packages.debian.org/jessie/vnstat and the configuration file is flexible enough to support monthly limits which refresh on a specific day etc. – timday May 18 '15 at 13:55
  • Gnokii lists "partial support" for the K3565 at the end of http://wiki.gnokii.org/index.php/Config ; I'm pessimistic: chances are that means the relatively standard modem commands for dialing will probably work, but vendor-specific protocols for extras like SMS won't. Looks worth a try though (but probably not for a few days). – timday May 18 '15 at 14:04
  • What about gammu and wamu – TheRealProcyon May 18 '15 at 14:10
  • Oh, sorry, didn't notice that line added too. Searching their nice database of supported HW at http://wammu.eu/phones/ finds quite a few entries for K3765 (which might be what I actually have) reporting sms working; that looks like the most promising one yet then. – timday May 18 '15 at 14:42
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Maybe you should try UMTSmon is a tool to control and monitor a wireless mobile network card.

Andreas John
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  • Interesting, although it seems to have died ~2009 (project still on CVS on sourceforge! Oldschool!) and so would even pre-date Vodafone's own tool. But a cursory look at the code suggests that while it can send SMS, there is no support for receiving/retrieving them. – timday May 18 '15 at 13:48