iMX233 and AX88772B

[TomLS]

Hi all,

Firstly, I'm pretty new to Linux, so bear with me...
I have 2 iMX233-MINI boards (because I need 3 USB's), one running the 'standard' Arch 2.6.3 kernel I was supplied with, pre-compiled on a micro SD. On the other machine, I have installed the Debian release which is listed on the iMX233 product page, which also has a 2.6.35-3 kernel.

My problem is that the eventual aim of the game is to transfer both over to Debian, but before I can do that I need to make sure that all my hardware and python code (that I wrote on the Arch machine) plays nice with Debian. However, I can't seem to get python installed under Debian the easy way (the apt-get way). Although I thought the whole point of the AX88772B ethernet adapter was that it was automatically supported by the 'standard' release of arch, neither arch nor debian can see the damn thing, no lights on it, no nothing. I have managed to find a zip file of the drivers for this kernel of debian, but it talks about building a new karnel - way above my level without a basic step-by-step guide!

I have carried out basic commands found on google, and although on plugging in the adapter, the system picks it up fine:

usb 1-1.1: new high speed USB device using fsl-ehci and address 4
usb 1-1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=0b95, idProduct=772b
usb 1-1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 1-1.1: Product: AX88772B
usb 1-1.1: Manufacturer: ASIX Elec. Corp.
usb 1-1.1: SerialNumber: 000001

However when booting, I get the following:

Configuring network interfaces...cat: /sys/class/net/usb0/address: No such file or directory
run-parts: /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/00-persistent-mac exited with return code 1
cat: /sys/class/net/usb0/address: No such file or directory
run-parts: /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/00-persistent-mac exited with return code 1
SIOCSIFHWADDR: No such device
Failed to bring up usb0.

ls /dev shows the AX* listed simply as "usbdev1.*" the suffix number seems randomly assigned.

Could someone give me some pointers as to how to get the ethernet adapter working with debian? I don't much care for getting it working on ARCH. If it requires me to put a new install of debian on the card, that's no problem, but a link to tell me how is going to be necessary.

Thanks in advance,
Tom.