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I think I have finally cracked the issue of my 3G Huawei E169G USB stick not being detected when 'hotplugged'.<br>

After few hours of Google'ing I found few interesting sources, but they all about E220 modem, not E169G. Anyway, it was clear that:
* the modem must be detected as 4 ttyUSB* ports
* usb_storage has to be hold off from loading to allow usbserial to finish its job

Also, it looked that E169G works nicely with Ubuntu 8.04, but why would I want to re-install something that served me well for few years by now?<br>

I run Debian Stable (etch) and it was a bit of pain to see that the USB card is detected as a storage, but not as a ttyUSB*. In fact it was detected, but not 100% so to speak. I could see only /dev/ttyUSB0 created when the modem is plugged in, but it must be 4 ports not 1.<br>

After multiple tries in different combinations I still couldn't get it work and when I thought 'To hell with this!' and wanted to go to bed, but something made me to try again and I booted the laptop with the modem still plugged in and ... IT WORKED!<br>

All ports detected, pon/poff works and gets me connected. Now, why does it work when the modem is plugged in when I power up the laptop and does not when I want to plug it in while it's already booted? It must had something with udev/hotplug. And it did. <br>

The answer came from [[http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=31364&sid=c8521c92a2342363363c91731b84b852 here]]. <br>

So, my solution was this one:

* <tt>sudo apt-get install libusb-dev</tt>
* downloaded <tt>huaweiAktBbo.c</tt> from [[http://www.kanoistika.sk/bobovsky/archiv/umts/ here]] and replaced <tt>'''product = 0x1003;'''</tt> with <tt>'''product = 0x1001;'''</tt> since E169G's ProductId is 1001
* <tt>cc huaweiAktBbo.c -lusb -o huaweiAktBbo</tt>
* <tt>sudo cp huaweiAktBbo /usr/sbin/huaweiAktBbo</tt>
* <tt>sudo cp /etc/udev/rules.d/99-huawei-e220.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/99-huawei-e169.rules</tt> and edited the new copy (see the details below)
* <tt>sudo cp /etc/udev/rules.d/99-sc-huawei-e220.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/99-sc-huawei-e169.rules</tt> and edited the new copy (see the details below)<br>

What's in <tt>/etc/udev/rules.d/99-huawei-e169.rules</tt>:<br>
<tt># From http://www.kanoistika.sk/bobovsky/archiv/umts/
SYSFS{idVendor}=="12d1", SYSFS{idProduct}=="1001", RUN+="/usr/sbin/huaweiAktBbo"</tt>

What's in <tt>/etc/udev/rules.d/99-sc-huawei-e169.rules</tt>:<br>
<tt>SUBSYSTEM=="block", \<br>
ACTION=="add", \<br>
SYSFS{idVendor}=="12d1", \<br>
SYSFS{idProduct}=="1001", \<br>
IMPORT{program}="/sbin/modprobe usbserial vendor=0x12d1 product=0x1001", \<br>
OPTIONS="ignore_device"</tt><br>

And this link helped me to get pon/poff sorted [[http://www.linux.ie/articles/tutorials/threeirelandUSBmodem.php Three Ireland USB Modem HOWTO]]<br>

And here you have it. I'm writing this while logged in with my 3G modem :-).