General tutorial on new devices? (Should we write one?)

teika · Last edited by teika on Mon Oct 17, 2011 9:17 am; edited 1 time in total

Hi. Recently I learned two things during my effort to use a new WiFi adapter.

1. "sysfs new_id": Even if the driver doesn't support your device, you can make it work e.g. by:
echo "0411 0158" > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/rt2870/new_id

The general grammar is:
echo "<vendor-id> <product-id>" > /sys/bus/<bus>/drivers/<driver>/new_id

2. sys-kernel/linux-firmware: This is a big collection of firmwares provided by kernel.org.

I didn't know these tricks. Are there any good things to know when you try a new device? (If there turns out to be plenty, I'll contribute to Gentoo Wiki.)

In fact, I've encountered a case where the above "new_id" method doesn't work, and I had to patch the kernel source:
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/User_talk:Teika#Older_kernels

Regards
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CrankyPenguin · Apprentice Joined: 19 Jun 2003 Posts: 283

Generally with a new device the first place I go is lspci or lsusb. These can at least be fodder for good searches online especially by the pci numbers which can be used to search for appropriate drivers online.
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Jaglover · Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2011 11:19 pm Post subject:

I've had a few cases with missing ID's, I simply edited kernel dirvers (sources) to add them.
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