usb ethernet "dongle"

Forum: Networking
Topic: usb ethernet "dongle"
started by: greenie

Posted by greenie on April 22 2006,10:22

Hi

I'm trying to use dsl-n on a rather old tiny (the manufacturer/retailer) PC. It has no ethernet card, but I have used it sucessfully with a sitecom 10/100 usb ethernet "dongle", for want of a better word. Mepis and 1 or 2 other distros have recognised it, but I want the speed etc of DSL.

Does anyone out there know of a solution.

Thanks
Greenie

Posted by doobit on April 22 2006,13:43

That might be under the category of newer software, so try the DSL-2.1b release to see if it works.That one has a newer kernel. It might fix that problem but break others. The long term solution is going to be to try to figure out what drivers that piece of hardware needs, and build a driver package for it for DSL.

Posted by greenie on April 23 2006,12:57

Thanks. Do you have an url for this? I found a dsl-2.3.iso, dated 28/3. Is this more recent than 2.1b? Also a 2.1b dated 22/3 which I'm also downloading.

I did a bit of googling on the sitecom ethernet adaptor LN-029. It appears that the drivers are in the 2.6 kernel, called usbnet. If this is not compiled into the dsl-n/dsl kernel how would I go about compiling a kernel for dsl which does include it? Is there an instruction page anywhere written for the partialy braindead?

Thanks

Posted by green on April 23 2006,13:42

Please don't accuse me of being an "a-hole" but we have been instructed to keep DSL-N stuff in the DSL-N forrum and DSL stuff in the DSL forum. We are now typing in the DSL forum.
Here is the DSL-N forum: < DSL-N Forum >

Thank you.

Posted by greenie on April 23 2006,19:48

thanks for your very useful, if somewhat anal, reply. I'll look for the forum and type all the stuff in again

Posted by greenie on April 23 2006,19:56

maybe you could give me an url for the forum. it's not obvious where it is.

Posted by doobit on April 23 2006,21:17

I still think dsl-2.1b.iso is the one you want. However, DSL-N is still in Alpha and can be found here:

< http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/dsl-n/ >

Posted by greenie on April 25 2006,07:47

I'm afraid not. I've downloaded and tried it out. Also had a go with kanotex, which does support the usb ethernet converter. This is a shame, as a distro that is great for transforming old and crap machines into something useful I think that this is just the kind of device DSL should support. This PC doesn't even have any pmcia slots, is age circa 1999 and originaly had a 1GB hard drive - cutting edge stuff.

Thanks for your response.

Greenie

Posted by doobit on April 25 2006,12:55

It may be just that particular USB/eth adapter because I've found DSL to support other USB adapters that I really hadn't expected it to. Anyway, the later the kernel, the more modern the devices it's likely to support. Kanotix has a 2.6 kernel. DSL-N, which is in Alpha right now, will also have the 2.6 kernel. DSL is really made to support older equipment. When the 2.4 kernel was developed nobody was making a usb/eth dongle yet. Often the manufacturers have proprietatry rights to the drivers for thier hardware and just don't want to release the code for Linux, so somebody has to rip it apart and reverse engineer it. It's not the fault of the DSL developers.