Alright, I've searched far and wide and I have no clue what to do, so here goes a seemingly simple problem.

I have a Westell C90-6100 series DSL modem/router with both an ethernet and USB conection. I've just installed a Debian/Etch setup onto a Toshiba Satellite 2065CDS (an AMD K6-2 processor IIRC) and am trying to get a connection going through the sole USB port that it has, no ethernet card. The system recognizes the port, even identifies the Westell properly with 'lsusb'. All the lights are on in all the right places.

No net connection.

I've been working for 2 days and searched almost every nook and cranny and nothing seems to help properly. More than likely a case of just not looking in the right place, but does anyone have an idea how to get a net connection through that USB? Without an ethernet adapter, I'm kinda stuck. I know the port can do it as it worked on the Windows XP installation that used to be on it. It has the USB connection running on eth0, but anytime I try to find a net server (such as ftp.debain.org) there's nothing, saying it's not found.

Any help you can give, thanks in advance!

What does ifconfig say? Are you at least getting an IP? If so, maybe it's a DNS issue. You can ping -c 3 66.102.7.104 and see if you get a reply. If you get a reply, then it's probably a DNS issue and you need to put a nameserver into /etc/resolv.conf.

ifconfig says:
lo Link:endcap: Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:24 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:24 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1744 (1.7 KiB) TX bytes:1744 (1.7 KiB)

Some other info just to see if it'll help: I noticed that there no eth0 being reported, yet when I unplug the USB connection from the modem/router, I get:
eth0: unregister 'rndis_host' usb-000:00:0b.0-1, RNDIS device

When I plug it in, it reports:
usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using ochi_hcd and address 3
eth0: register 'rndis_host' at usb-000:00:0b.0-1, RNDIS device, 00:0f:db:1f:08:f5

Anytime I try pinign something, I get a response of:
ping: unknown host <address>

If I try pinging the modem at 192.168.1.254 (where my other computer gets a DHCP response from), it tells me:
connect: Network is unreachable

I checked /etc, but there is no resolv.conf file at all.

Thanks ^^

Did you ever get this sorted out? I seem to have the same problem when I try to use my HTC Touch Pro for tethering, rndis0 gets an IP, but I have the same problems when I try to ping, so I can't reach the net (under windows, no prob )

I'm running Debian Lenny (2.6.26-2-amd64)

TIA

Sorry, I never did. The laptop died just a couple weeks after.