How to get a 3G modem working on Ubuntu 8.04 and other ubuntu's

In a blog post at tectonic that shows how to access to the internet with a 3G card through vodafone-mobile-connect-card-driver, I left a comment for those people struggling to get a permanent connection...

The instructions are found here

Here's my addition:

1. Plug in the card and restart the computer
2. On a terminal type: dir /dev/ttyUSB* and make sure you get something like this:
/dev/ttyUSB0
/dev/ttyUSB1
I found that the software seems to work perfectly only when /dev/ttyUSB0 and /dev/ttyUSB1 both refer to your 3G card. Other ttyUSB's don't seem to work for me
3. type sudo poff to make sure that all previous connections are closed. I used sudo because the vodafone-mobile-connect-card-driver-for-linux violates many permission rules when run as a normal user (the documentation told me that). Therefore sudo will grant him all the rights he needs.
4. type sudo vodafone-mobile-connect-card-driver-for-linux-debug so that you can see what’s going on. If the program seems to stop printing stuff on the terminal without having printed your contacts list yet, Try closing it and repeat steps 3 and 4.

Enjoy the web!

How to download Ubuntu packages from windows without dependency problems

I've finally managed to download ubuntu packages from windows without worrying about unsatisfied dependencies.

Today I woke up with one aim: download eclipse. But the problem is that eclipse comes with a host of dependencies, so looking over them in Synpatic, I saw this link that says "Generate downlaod script"
1. Mark the required package for installation
2. Generate a download script and remove the first line that says "#!/bin/sh"
3. Download wget for windows from http://users.ugent.be/~bpuype/wget/#download
4. Add the ".bat" extension to the script you generated
5. On a windows machine, double click on the script and watch it as it works its way through the packages.

wget, Linux, Ubuntu, Synaptic, these things are cool!