Getting the USB dongle to work after latest updated in Ubunutu 14.10

After updating the Ubuntu 14.10 my BandRich C120 dongle stops working. The network manager couldn't detect the modem. While looking into more i found out that actually the udev fails to switch the dongle into modem mode. It was not a problem with the udev or udev rules, but instead it was something to do with the usb_modeswitch which didn't react to what udev rules passed in when calling it.

But after some time spending playing around with udev and usb_modeswitch, i found a way to write a udev rule which will perform a eject operation against the dongle using usb_modeswitch which will make the dongle to switch into modem mode.

Following is the content of the rule which is copied into
/etc/udev/rules.d/40-bandrich-dongle.rules


SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="1a8d", ATTR{idProduct}=="1000", RUN+="/usr/sbin/usb_modeswitch -v 1a8d -p 1000 -K"

If you facing the same issue and don't own the same type of dongle, just find the vendor and product id and change the rule criteria so that it will work for your dongle as well if its supports switching the mode by performing a eject operation.

Getting rid of startup applications

Recently i needed to get rid of the hp toolkit box system stray app from my KDE box. This was not shown in the start application window as well. But then i looked at the deb package to get some hints, Lucky i came across the following path

/etc/xdg/autostart/hplip-systray.desktop

This was the startup program which is started the hp toolbox system tray. By simply removing this from the folder solved the problem of starting up hp toolbox system tray app.