[elrepo] Trying to install Sierra "TRU-Install" patch for 3G air card

[Jeff Phillips]

Hello,

I'm trying to get a Sierra Wireless USB 598 CDMA 3G air card working
under CentOS. The USB device has two modes. On a windows machine it
will initially act as a USB flash drive and autorun the windows driver
setup application stored on the device itself. After the drivers are
installed then Windows will no longer recognize it as being a flash
drive but instead will recognize it as being a modem. This
"TRU-install" feature as they call it causes problems with Linux
recognizing the modem as a worthless flash drive instead of a modem.

The manufacturer provides these instructions:

http://sierrawireless.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/500

I didn't have any problem installing the driver as described, but I'm
not sure what I'm doing with their TRU-Install kernel patch. It says
this kernel patch is required versions prior to 2.6.23. I'm running
2.6.18 so I need the patch. Here it is:

http://www.sierrawireless.com/resources/support/Software/Linux/patch-2-6-18-swoc-unusualdevs.zip

It's only a 705 byte file, but I don't know where to put it or what to
do with it. Their generic instructions are to download & extract the
generic kernel from kernel.org and add then make it with this patch
included. But the CentOS guys say I shouldn't do that, and one of them
referred me to check here.

I tried applying the ElRepo kmod-sierra module. That did something or
other, but I'm not sure what. It still seems to recognize the device
as being a USB flash storage volume rather than a modem, so I am
guessing the kmod-sierra module installed the drivers but not the
TRU-install patch. Is there any way we could perhaps get this
TRU-install patch included with the kmod-sierra module, or another
one?

Thanks,

Jeff Phillips