LinuxQuestions.org - Problem installing USB wired Ethernet Adapter on Suse Linux 9.2

Hello!

I am trying to get a USB wired ethernet adapter (DLINK DUB-E100) installed onto a closed box industrial PC running Suse Linux 9.2. The onboard ethernet adapter has failed, it has no slots so I can't add a new card, and since it is an older model, the service company has indicated it will take 6+ weeks to order parts and repair. Further, the primary purpose of the PC is running a custom written software package written by a company that is no longer in business (so I have no tech docs and no support). So I dare not upgrade the O/S or modify it extensively - I am being very cautious in how I proceed.

When I installed the USB adapter, the system recognized it and I was able to use Yast to add it as a network device. It is identified as "usb-bus-usb" and if you perform a ifconfig -a it is listed as sit0 (which seems odd to me). But no MAC address is listed and of course I cannot connect use the device as an ethernet adapter. I'm not sure if the usbnet driver is used with Suse 9.2 or not. And I'm not sure how to install it, since it is not listed as an option in the Yast Add/Remove software package manager. The machine is on a closed network (although I could relocate it, but I don't have an ethernet adapter anyway to hook into a repository). So I'll probably have to find it and install from disc.

By the way, I'm sure the adapter is working fine since it took me less than a minute to get it working on a different machine under Fedora 8 (not meant to be a knock against Suse, just tried a newer environment to test it). As I mentioned, I cannot update the operating system to a more current version of Suse.

I'm a newbie at Linux networking, so if anybody could offer some suggestions, I'd be grateful.

Thanks,
Toby