[PLUG] How to make my laptop look like a USB charger?

[Eric House]

I have a Dell laptop running Ubuntu and a Virgin Mobile "MiFi"
cellular wifi hotspot.  The MiFi is great but for one bug: when you
plug its USB cable into the laptop to charge it stops being a hotspot,
so you have to carry a separate USB wallwart to charge it.

I'm pretty sure this is unnecessary -- that if I could get my laptop
to pretend to be a mere USB wallwart I could prevent the loss of wifi.
Googling on the subject turns up instructions for fixing this by
disabling USB Mass Storage mode on windows thus:

# KB823732 explains how you can disable USB device support by changing
# the Start value of
# HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor to 4

The closest I could think to try on GNU/Linux was to prevent the
usb_storage module from loading, but this didn't work.  The MiFi still
shuts down, meaning it's been signalled in some way by the laptop.

Can anybody suggest how to do this, or where to read or ask for
further information?  I'm happy to hack the drivers if that's what
it's going to take.  It's apparently possible to fix this by removing
the two inner contacts from a USB cable end, but I don't want to carry
a second cable either -- if I can avoid it.

Thanks,

--Eric
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