Setting up Reliance/TataIndicom Wireless Internet in Ubuntu

It is very easy to setup a wireless internet connection using your Reliance or Tata Indicom DataCard on your Ubuntu running PC. I’ve myself faced a lot of problems and finally here I am with a well-researched solution. I’ll try to simplify it as much as I can but it is not an easy job. Its going to be a little scary, but don’t lose hope and try finishing steps 1 to 6. Now start following the steps :

Step 1 : (Optional) I’ll strongly recommend you to upgrade your Ubuntu to latest Ubuntu 9.10. If you have not done it yet, I assure you that this will make your life much easier.

Step 2: Download the package ‘wvdial’. If you have an internet connection (may be DSL on ubuntu),  execute the following command :

sudo apt-get install wvdial

However, if you can’t connect your Ubuntu PC to internet for some reason then you’d have to install wvdial manually. This may take some of your time, patience and skill. Refer this article.

After you’ve downloaded and installed wvdial, tighten your seat-belts because its going to be a hell of a ride now!

Step 3 (Don’t Panic!): Now, plug in your Reliance or Tata Indicom data card into one of your USB slots.

TARGET : Determine the name of the port you connected it to. Seems easy, doesn’t it? You’ll see …

There are 3 ways to do that – (a),(b) and (c). Start with (a) and go to the next one only if the previous one fails.

(a) First one is quite easy and it should work. Execute the following command :

wvdialconf

If it says “wvdialconf” not found, then install it by executing the following command :

sudo apt-get install wvdialconf

Now, open your /etc/wvdial.conf file and edit the field Username and Password (Set it to your data card’s phone number – that should be your username and password. If its not, find out from whom you bought it ). You can use gedit to do this :

sudo gedit /etc/wvdial.conf

Now just execute the following command and your internet should be connected :

sudo wvdial

If you’re done, read the last paragraph of this post (just before the toubleshooting). However, If it doesn’t help, Try out the second way :

(b) Unplug your data card and plug it again, don’t connect anything else to any other USB port and type on the terminal :

sudo dmesg

This will take you to the last few lines of the huge list of your computer activities. In those last few lines, you should look for the device name something like /dev/ttyUSB0 . It may not be always USB0, it can be USB1, USB2, ACM0 etc.. depending on where you plugged the data card. If you see multiple different device names, then pick the one which has your Data Card’s vendor name in its description. Note the device name. If you’re successful, good job! The hardest part is over now . Jump to next step (Step 4) and if it fails, come back here and try out the next method, (c) :

(c) Ok, so if you’re reading this means even the 2nd method failed for you. Poor luck you’ve got I must say. But don’t lose hope, I think I have a solution for it too. There are few models which fail to even get detected by dmesg. So here’s the trick – Open your terminal and execute :

sudo lsusb

This will list all the USB devices connected to your laptop, like your mouse, touchpad, pendrive, etc. And you should look for some “unusual” device name (like ZTW, Huawai, etc ) , this should most probably be your modem. The unusual name of the device depends on the vendor who supplied it, and it is NOT Reliance as  Reliance only imports it from China,Korea,etc. All these modems are actually made outside India. So if you find that “unusual” name in some line, that entire line should look something like the following :

Bus 005 Device 009: ID 12d1:140b Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

Note the numbers “12d1″ and “140b”. These are your vendor’s id and product id respectively.

NOTE : These numbers WILL NOT be exactly same for you. The above is just a sample. Note whatever numbers are there in your case and use your numbers in the following command inplace of the sample numbers. Now execute the following :

sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0×12d1 product=0×140b

Don’t forget to replace the “12d1″ and “140b” with whatever you got when you did “lsusb”, as I mentioned above.

Now, just repeat Step 3 (a). If it works, CONGRATS (and skip to the last paragraph of this post) )! If it doesn’t, keep reading ….

So agreed, yours is really a disaster case. Now this is the last weapon I’ve got, If even this one fails, then may your Ubuntu Wireless Internet dreams R.I.P. !

Execute the following :

sudo mknod /dev/ttyUSB0 c 188 0
sudo mknod /dev/ttyUSB1 c 188 1

Now goto Step 4 (the next step) and use either /dev/USB0 or /dev/USB1 in the Modem field. Yes, these are the port names you’ve been looking for. It is actually one of them, so try with both of them, one of them should work. If it doesn’t, then I’m unable to help you further.

Step 4: (a) If you have a Reliance modem, copy paste the following code into your wvdial.conf file (Remove all my comments within the brackets (..) ) :

[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Stupid Mode = 1
Modem Type = USB Modem
ISDN = 0
Phone = #777
New PPPD = yes
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0 (Write here the actual device address you found in previous step)
Username = 9xxxxxxxxxx (Your Username, should be your data card’s number aka MDN Number)
Password = 9xxxxxxxxxx (Your password , should be the same as username)
CBaud = 460800

Step 4 : (b) In case you have Tata Indicom, copy paste the following code (Remove all my comments within the brackets (..) ):

[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0 (Write here the actual device address you found in step 4)
Init1 = ATZ
Phone = #777
Username = 9xxxxxxxxxx (Your Username, should be your data card’s number aka MDN Number)
Password = 9xxxxxxxxxx (Your password , should be the same as username)
New PPPD = yes
Stupid Mode = 1

Step 5: Open terminal and execute :

sudo wvdial

You should see a long list of arbit codes followed by some IPs. If you see the IPs then you are connected! Don’t close the terminal, or else you’ll get disconnected. To manually disconnect, just go to the terminal and press Ctrl+C.

I know what most of you are thinking at this stage- “Do I have to do this all over again everytime I want to connect ? “. Answer is “NO”. Next time you want to connect, just directly do the Step 5 i.e. execute “sudo wvdial” and its done!

Note : If you are using firefox, make sure that the “Offline Mode” option in Firefox File’s Menu is not selected. Otherwise, you can’t browse using firefox because firefox will still think you are offline.

Troubleshooting : If during any step, you got any kind of error (or you got nothing at all!), you can always drop by  a comment or an email and I’ll reply as soon as I can. By the way, if you got help from my post, consider subscribing to my blog.

Comic : Donald Knuth

Amazing… Found this here

India disputed in Google Maps!

Recently I found something very shocking in Google Maps. As you all must be aware of, Google Maps Application is not the same for all the countries. There’s a different version of it for USA, for India, for China and for other countries in which Google has a center. By default you’re shown the Google Maps for the country you reside in. But what no one knew till now is that Google is showing different maps specifically of India in different versions of Google Maps!

In case of India, it shows Arunachal Pradesh and full Jammu & Kashmir as states of India, well within the Indian border line. That’s allright. Here’s the link : http://maps.google.co.in. Zoom in and you’ll see something like this :

But in case of USA, it shows the entire J&K and Arunachal Pradesh as Disputed Regions i.e. not belonging to either India or China. Here’s the link : http://maps.google.com. Open the link and search for India and zoom in. What you’ll see is :

Moreover, in case of China, it shows a major part of J&K and the entire Arunachal Pradesh as a part of China, within the border line of China. Now that is something very daring! Goto http://ditu.google.com and Don’t Panic!

I can only say, what the hell is this ? I think it is not safe for Google to play with such politically sensitive issues. I don’t know whether our country politicians are aware of it. I agree there is a political dispute over these regions but there should be a global consensus built upon it to agree to a common conclusion atleast for the time being. Recently, it was in News that China is issuing VISAs differently to citizens of J&K and not like the ones being issued to Indians from other states. Such moves by China are only aggravating the tensions between the two nuclear powers. Although, even India doesn’t hold a clean chit for it allowed Dalai Lama to visit Arunachal Pradesh just before the elections despite strong protest from across the border. If these trends continue, I fear the relationship between India-China will soon become like that of India-Pakistan. China won’t lose much, but India cannot survive with enemity with both of its major neighbours.

But I doubt personally that Google did this intentionally. May be even Google is used as a pawn in this complex maze of international political chess, played by USA, China and India. If the Chinese government forces, Google will have no option but to adapt to the maps provided by Chinese government or else face a ban (which google can’t afford in China) and same is the case with Indian Government and US Government. After all, Google is just a profit-minded software company! It certainely has no interest in world politics and It only does whats best in its own interest. If someone is responsible, its the governments.

Dr. Wave of Google

Summary in my own terms : Google Wave is an online collaboration media. Actually, its like a conference chat application, the only difference is that “chats” are now called “waves” and can also have videos,docs,pics,gadgets, etc.. and of course, google wave has the most interactive web-based platform I’ve ever seen.  You can have real time multimedia conferencing using wave, where others will see/hear exactly the same thing as you. Well to be frank, I don’t find something very new in google wave, because other applications do exists for the same purpose (though not web-based, and some are not even free like Cisco’s). Anyways, wave is still under development and I only hope more features are added to it with time.

By the way, I have 8 invites of Wave, anyone wants ???

6 things to know about NIT Trichy

1. NIT Trichy is considered among the top 15 engineering institutes of India, and the best among all the NITs.
As an experienced student of NIT Trichy, I believe the credibility of the above statement depends on how you “judge” the NITs. If your judgement is purely based on placements and packages, then I can assure with no doubt that NIT Trichy is not just the best among all NITs but also better than a few IITs. However, if you also take into account student facilities, mess food, internet access and faculty profiles, then I myself doubt it.

2. Students have a much greater role to play here than any other college.
Its true, students of NIT Trichy are not just mere college-going children, but they are involved in extra and co-curricular works, projects and clubs of far greater significance. While the computing clubs like Delta Force are the sole incharge of the college website & LAN, the enterpreneurship club ECELL have made their presence felt across the globe with their flagship annual event Ventura. Besides these, there are leisure clubs like Karate, Photography, Movie Making, Dance Troupe, Music Troupe, etc. Other technical clubs include GLUG-T (Linux & FOSS) and Sun Club (JAVA & Open Source Apps).

3. An abundant number of events for the students to keep them busy for the entire year.
NIT Trichy can boast of a huge number of quality student events that take place annually. It ranges widely from the fresher’s parties organized by the student clubs to various kinds of campus games and contests, along with the academic classes on java, linux, matlab, c++, web,etc by the technical clubs. Moreover, the college’s main events like Pragyan, Festember and NITT Fest are entirely managed by the students with literally no intervention from the authorities.

4. The prestigious Bachelor of Survival degree (B.Surv).
Every student of NIT Trichy not only gets a B.Tech degree but also a B.Surv degree (though he doesn’t get a certificate for that). By survival in NIT Trichy, I mean surviving the extremities the authorities push the students into. With exams next morning and power being cut-off from your hostels, with horrible quality of mess food, with drinking water problems and just 10 kbps internet access, if you’re still able to complete your B.Tech in 4 years, then you truly are worthy of a B.Surv.

5. NIT Trichy is a haven for Computer Science and VLSI students.
As far as VLSI is concerned, NIT Trichy is considered as the “best” in the country. The faculty of the ECE Department are especially dedicated towards VLSI and have a number of modern laboratories for that purpose. OCTAGON, the largest computing centre is full of high-end computers and its 24×7 availability along with a huge library and elibrary has turned it into a driving factor for the students to get interested in computing.

6. Quality food is abundant, but be ready to empty your pockets.
Forget the mess for one day and you have a number of places as alternatives. I’ve never seen so many food locations in any institute of the country. Inside the campus you have a bakery, a restaurant, an icecream parlour, another bakery-cum-restaurant-cum-icecream parlour, a milk shake shop, a juice corner, 2 nescafes, 1 bru and 1 lipton stalls. Just outside the campus you have 3 dhabas, a proper restaurant and a number of small food stalls.

To be continued … For further readings on NIT Trichy, click here.