The Qualcomm Gobi chipset built into my HP EliteBook 8530w finally works with GNU/Debian Unstable.

It requires a 2.6.31 Kernel and a separate firmware loader plus the appropriate firmware.

ATTENTION: The qcserial driver is currently broken in Linux 2.6.32 and later! Follow my advices only if you are using a Linux kernel version of 2.6.31! You can check your currently running kernel with:

uname -a

I've packaged the loader (gobi_loader-0.4) for Debian/Unstable amd64 and i386 (untested) architecture and it's available at my private repository:

http://debian.fladi.at/

For direct access to the .deb files:

Install the package according to you architecture and make sure there was no error.

Now for the firmware: Sadly, I'm not allowed to distribute the firmware files due to copyright issues but they can be downloaded from HP:

Qualcomm Mobile Broadband Drivers - Gobi1000 (aka un2400)

Download the "sp45888.exe" file there and extract it to e.g. /tmp/un2400 with cabextract:

mkdir /tmp/un2400
cabextract -d /tmp/un2400 sp45888.exe

You can now find both firmware files at /tmp/un2400/Qualcomm/QCImages/Source/Packages/0/:

  • amss.mbn
  • apps.mbn

Copy both of them to /lib/firmware/gobi:

cp /tmp/un2400/Qualcomm/QCImages/Source/Packages/0/*.mbn /lib/firmware/gobi/

That's it, now reboot and once your system is back up take a look at your USB devices with lsusb. You should see the un2400 device there. NetworkManager picked it up automatically as a modem and I was able to configure my 3G connection with a nice and fancy GUI :-)