mPCIe modem: have to reboot after connection is lost

sbourdeaud

Using pfSense 2.4.5-RELEASE-p1 on a dedicated hardware box (Protectli fw2b) with the following mPCIe 4G LTE modem:
Manufacturer: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
Model: ME909s-120 V2
Revision: 11.617.24.00.00

Works fine most of the time, but every now and then the connection drops, after which it fails to reconnect saying the device does not respond to AT commands. I can't cu into cua0.0 or cua0.2 and ls /dev/cua* only shows cua0, as if the modem had suddenly disappeared.

A reboot fixes everything.

I'm wondering how to force a usb re-detect (similar to what would happen at boot time I suppose) in order to prevent having to reboot each time, and also what I could look at (logs) to start troubleshooting this issue.

stephenw10

I assume you mean cuaU0.0 etc? The upper case U there denotes a USB connected port. The onboard serial uarts appear as cuau0/1.

If the devices have disappeared entirely it's more likely the modem crashed I would think. Rebooting pfSense also reboots the modem, in that board at least.

Try running usbconfig to find out which device your modem is. Then try usbconfig -d ugen0.2 reset or whatever device your modem shows as. The will reenumerate it, you should see that in the system logs.

If that doesn't work you could try usbconfig -d ugen0.2 power_off then usbconfig -d ugen0.2 power_on. But that doesn't actually remove power from the device, at least on my test box here.

Steve

sbourdeaud

@stephenw10 thank you for your reply. Yes, I meant cuaU devices, correct.
Ok, I'll try using usbconfig with reset, power_off and power_on next time it happens and I'll post results back here. FYI, that modem in that box is currently on ugen0.3.

sbourdeaud

FYI, this has not re-occurred yet so I am going to assume this was a one off.