I have a BeagleBone Black that works fine under debian as an AP:

uname -a says: "Linux arm 3.8.13-bone28 #1 Thu Sept 12 23:22:35 UTC 2013 armv71 GNU/Linux"

So I have the inbuilt Ethernet connected to the Internet, and a wireless dongle on the USB connector. All works fine!

But, just to complicate matters, I would like to run a kensington USB hub/Ethernet Dongle to give me another Ethernet port.

I put the Kensington device on the USB port, and connect the wireless dongle to the hub, and as expected, the AP function works as normal. However, I can't get the Ethernet port to run.

With the device connected, I see two new devices in lsusb:

the USB hub has device ID 0409:005a NEC Corp High Speed Hub
the Ethernet has device ID 0b95:772a ASIX Electronics

But the Ethernet adapter doesn't show up in /dev

How do I go about getting the port recognised to the point where I can configure it in /etc/network/interfaces?

Thanks for any help!

(Also posted on the BeagleBone Black Forum

Have you looked at the output of the dmesg command to see if it is recognised? Looks like the device module is asix and should be supported.

Thanks for the response! I had a look at dmesg, did a "tail dmesg" before and after insertion of the USB plug, but there was no change/addition to dmesg. I know the device was inserted correctly, as it showed up on "lsusb" and went away again when removed.

Added comment later (away from the machine so can't test) Just had a thought...the dongle had no Ethernet connection, so the Ethernet port would have not been live...would that make a difference?

Does not matter if it was actually connected. Try loading the module.
modprobe asix

OK, I did that...please excuse my ignorance of low level linux but didn't get any change in dmesg...

Does the output of the command ifconfig -a show the network adapter.

With your help and patience, I'm getting somewhere! "ifconfig" shows all the normal interfaces, no sign of the Ethernet on the Kensington dongle. However, "ifconfig -a" shows the hardware but labeled "rename3".

I'd like it to follow the format and be "Eth1"; can I just declare Eth1 in the /etc/network/interfaces file and have it rename the ifconfig entry?

I ask rather than just trying, not because I'm too lazy to try it myself, but because the only way in to this board is via the Wireless dongle using SSH; if I go ahead and fiddle, I may "saw off the branch I'm sitting on", and permanently disconnect myself from the device, necessitating a significant rebuild, so I'm being careful (yeah alright, I'm being lazy too! )

The rename3 might be caused by removing and reinserting the device multiple times.

You can use udev to always assign it a particular name.
http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/udev.htm

I read http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/udev.htm as suggested and as a result, I created a file called /etc/udev/rules.d/010_netinterfaces.rules with the contents:

KERNEL=="rename*", SYSFS{address}=="00:50:b6:46:dc:a8", NAME="eth1"

which I hoped would rename "rename3" to "eth1". I also created an entry in /etc/network/interfaces for eth1, then rebooted. The file I created didn't appear to work because I still had "rename3" in "ifconfig -a"

At that point I chmod-ed /etc/udev/rules.d/010_netinterfaces.rules to 777 and tried another reboot. That didn't help

So anyway, I renamed the /etc/network/interfaces entry for eth1 so that it referred to the interface called "rename3" and rebooted and it all worked. I put DHCP on the "rename3" port and I could attach a PC and get an address (not much else, the firewall was blocking everything as expected)

So the original problem is solved! Thank You!! .....but I'd be interested to know why /etc/udev/rules.d/010_netinterfaces.rules didn't do what it was expected to do.