11 replies to this topic

[H3lMuT]

I have USB ethernet dongle..no work.. help me pleas..

[sqweek]

I'm in a similar boat, the kernels in all of the vega ROMs aren't compiled driver support for the ethernet-to-usb adapter I happen to have. I've been trying to build a custom kernel with the driver enabled, but no luck yet. Will update this post if I get anywhere.

[IanTurner]

Corvus supports some ethernet adapters see this thread. You can't expect it to support all ethernet adapter chipsets though as there's limited space in a vega so more a case of finding a compatible one.

[sqweek]

Thanks Ian, I had a look at the Corvus5 kernel and it doesn't have CONFIG_USB_RTL8150 enabled either so it won't work for my case. However, someone in that thread (or a thread linked from there) suggested just compiling the driver as a module instead of recompiling the whole kernel, I'll have to give that a try.

[IanTurner]

Or just buy this from Amazon for just over £10 as it uses the chipset specified in that thread as working with corvus.
General rule of thumb with the vega and usb devices other than storage is search for them in the forums as odds are against them being supported except for particular devices owned by the developers of the roms.

[sqweek]

I've tried this adapter out and it works with a stock linux kernel using the rtl8150 module. I guess since the vega is running a linux kernel I didn't anticipate any issues just enabling the driver, of course I have much less experience than you. Do you think it's likely some porting/kernel hacking is required to get the adapter working?

[IanTurner]

You have more experience than me in linux I should think as the nearest I get is application development on QNX and I have yet to change the kernel from that created by installing direct to the target system.
Take into consideration that Android is a small footprint embedded version so will have had a fair amount stripped from it. I'm just good at ferreting around for answers. Note in that thread that though one poster suggested you should be able to just add the built in modules to an existing installation of a kernel with a bit of fiddling that another said they were having problems so it all rather depends on how much time you're prepared to spend doing this.
Possibly xda-developers forums might be a better place to post kernel build related questions

[duvee]

the latest honeyice update has this one added:

-Added USB Ethernet support

[sqweek]

Thanks for your wisdom Ian, you made me slow down and verify each step I was taking when trying to deploy a kernel. I'm making some progress... before yesterday all the kernels I built just booted the vega to a black screen, now I've at least built a few that display a loading splash screen. They don't boot past that, but I got one with my driver enabled to get that far

I tried the module based approach, and I built an rtl8150.ko that insmod'd fine on the vega, but the usb stack doesn't detect anything when I plug it in... nothing in dmesg or lsusb.

So, a little progress. My biggest problem now is finding the exact source code required to reproduce the moddedStock kernel. (Tried rebel1's git with eduardo's patches but no luck)

[sqweek]

derp! as I was browsing other posts I just realised I had the vega in USB peripheral mode when I plugged the adapter in... switched to host mode and now it detects the adapter. I'm not getting an interface yet, but there's a dchpd error in dmesg and it looks like the hardware is detected, maybe just some userspace support required from here!

[sqweek]

BAM, it's working
Not perfectly, there's no dhcpcd service set up for eth0 so it doesn't automatically get an IP when I plug the adapter in, I have to manually start dhcpcd.

Also, android doesn't properly detect the network - when I press down the bottom right where the wifi signal strength is displayed it says "No Internet Connection". Browser said the same thing ("Browser cannot work because there is no internet connection"), and then proceeded to work fine

The Market however, won't let me setup my google account... think it is only trying to use wifi...

Edited by sqweek, 05 March 2012 - 04:38 AM.

[sqweek]

Was easy enough to get dhcpd going. I made some modifications to the init ramdisk - firstly I copied my kernel module into it[1], then added an insmod and dhcpcd service to init.harmony.rc. The diff is below (from vegacomb 9n update 3 boot image):


[1] /system/lib/hw is a much more sensible place for kernel modules than / of course, but cbf messing with squashfs and friends


diff -ur vegacomb9n3/init.harmony.rc ramdisk_RTLm/init.harmony.rc
--- vegacomb9n3/init.harmony.rc 2012-03-05 17:27:55.202003631 +0800
+++ ramdisk_RTLm/init.harmony.rc 2012-03-05 15:48:24.888581376 +0800
@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@
     symlink /mnt/sdcard /sdcard
     mkdir /mnt/external1 0000 system system
     mkdir /mnt/external2 0000 system system
+    insmod /rtl8150.ko

on fs
     mount yaffs2 mtd@system /system wait ro
@@ -96,6 +97,10 @@
     disabled
     oneshot

+service dhcpcd_eth0 /system/bin/dhcpcd eth0
+    disabled
+    oneshot
+
# bluetooth
service dhcpcd_bnep0 /system/bin/dhcpcd -ABKL
     disabled