Huawei E5377 mobile LTE router on Linux

A short note to all the users that try to find any pieces of information about making that mobile router work on Linux - it is possible to make it communicate not only through WiFi (which doesn't seem to make full use of the connection speed) but also by connecting it through USB port. Simply trying to install (even if it fails to build a driver) Huawei's Linux Mobile Partner software seems to trigger something (perhaps a successful mode switch) that is needed to make the modem work. It seems to work almost out of the box on Fedora 21 - the only thing needed is switching the mode every time you connect the device.

usb_modeswitch -v 12d1 -p 1f02 -M 55534243123456780000000000000a11062000000000000100000000000000

Possibly it could be automated (see https://github.com/enyone/Huawei_E5377_OpenWRT for an example on how to add a new modeswitching rule), but I didn't do it correctly I think.

The device seems to even work out of the box on a bare Arch Linux install, with no X, having NetworkManager and ModemManager installed and running beforehand. You simply connect the router and that's it.

lsusb:

Bus 002 Device 011: ID 12d1:14dc Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

dmesg:

[ 2046.134043] usbserial: USB Serial deregistering driver GSM modem (1-port)
[ 2046.134093] usbcore: deregistering interface driver option
[ 2046.143353] usbcore: registered new interface driver option
[ 2046.143375] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for GSM modem (1-port)
[ 2071.860522] usb 2-1.1: USB disconnect, device number 8
[ 2072.395484] usb 2-1.1: new high-speed USB device number 9 using ehci-pci
[ 2072.481935] usb 2-1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=12d1, idProduct=14dc
[ 2072.481945] usb 2-1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[ 2072.481951] usb 2-1.1: Product: HUAWEI_MOBILE
[ 2072.481955] usb 2-1.1: Manufacturer: HUAWEI_MOBILE
[ 2072.562822] usb-storage 2-1.1:1.2: USB Mass Storage device detected
[ 2072.564108] scsi host11: usb-storage 2-1.1:1.2
[ 2072.682187] cdc_ether 2-1.1:1.0 eth0: register 'cdc_ether' at usb-0000:00:1d.0-1.1, CDC Ethernet Device, 0c:5b:8f:27:9a:64
[ 2072.682440] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_ether
[ 2072.692927] cdc_ether 2-1.1:1.0 enp0s29u1u1: renamed from eth0
[ 2073.569173] scsi 11:0:0:0: Direct-Access     HUAWEI   TF CARD Storage  2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[ 2073.570977] sd 11:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[ 2073.573908] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

Post edited after I found out more about it.