Well, I've been getting comfortable with Linux and it has been so nice to me lately, that I let my guard down.

I just bought a PNY Technologies USB SmartCard Reader so that I could transfer pictures from my camera's smart card to the Linux box. I was hoping--against hope--that the device would magically appear on the desktop... it didn't.

I've googled and found a page listing a bunch of USB smart card reader drivers listed, but none for PNY. Have I purchased the wrong thing or is there something else that needs to be done with any configuration of fstab, etc?

I must say this is the first USB device I have tried on this box.

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards,
Thomas

The PNY is supported, but not in RH's year old kernel! If you d/l and compile 2.4.19 or 2.4.20 its right there, but its not in 2.4.18. Its not really worth trying to patch compile the 2.4.18 source either as its a lot of changes to the entire USB subsystem.

Cheers,

Finegan

Finegan,
Thank you. Looks like it's time for me to compile a kernel. Actually, I think I have done this somewhere along the way and didn't even realize what I was doing, because a choice of three different kernels have been coming up during startup for the last month or so--it used to only be one.

I guess I need to start reading up on compiling kernels. Any tips? (I don't even know what "d/l" means in your post.--yet!)

Kind regards,
TAH

d/l = download, damn the internet has played hob with my typing.

Grab the kernel source from www.kernel.org, or a mirror that is close by, the whole kernel source, compressed, is about 30Mb.

Make certain you have a compiler installed, RedHat doesn't like to give you one unless you chose "developer" or "everything". Weenies. To find out:

gcc -v

That should tell you the version of the Gnu C Compiler you have, or return "command not found". Whatever GUI package manager you've got should be able to handle the 2-3 dependency RPMs it has.

As for a how-to, the Linux documentation project. Its pretty much the end all be all of kernel how-tos:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/doc...O/Kernel-HOWTO

Cheers,

Finegan

Cheers, Finnegan!

I'll give it a go this evening and will hopefully have some good news to report tomorrow.

Thanks again.

Kind regards,
Thomas

Finegan,

I have contacted RH in the hopes that they will hold my hand through a kernel upgrade/compile.

The HowTo you mentioned assumes a lot of knowledge that I fear I do not yet have. I did download the 2.4.20 from kernel.org and I did bunzip it. But I found myself overwhelmed by the further instructions in the HowTo regarding the options and commands. Mainly because nothing on my system seemed like what was being referred to in the HowTo. ??

Kind regards,
Thomas