Device Help

So I am new to Linux. I run Knoppix from my laptop, a Dell Inspiron 1100. The only reason I have a Laptop is for portablility. When I am at school my laptop is more or less a desktop. As a result I have a decent number of USB devices:

• An Optical Mouse
• An External DVD-RW
• An External Harddrive
• A flash drive

All of these drives plug into 2 4 port USB hubs. And I am just wondering if there is a tutorial somewhere that can help me figure out how to get the hardware to show up. Any help is greatly appreciated.

If your running from live cd, then most, if not all your harware should show up and work. If you've installed knoppix to hard disk, all bets are off.

To see what is seen on the usb system, open a shell and type :lsusb. You could also look in kinfocenter, (K->system->kinfocenter.)

Just because a device is seen , it doesn't mean that drivers for the device have been loaded, This is where it get's tricky as you need to know what driver the device needs, and figure out if it is or can be installed. If you know what particular driver should be used , open a shell and type lsmod | more, and see if the driver is in the list of loaded modules. If not try loading it manually using modprobe.

If this all seems more complicated than you want it to be, and if you do want to run a hard drive installed linux, I suggest you take a look at Ubuntu, which has better hardware support.

If you want nitty-gritty linux usb stuff: http://www.linux-usb.org/

Thanks for the advice. I am planning on putting Linux on my hard drive eventually. I am just running Live CD versions of the different main stream cores seeing which on I like the best until I can get my drive partioned. I plan on running dual boot so I can keep the few PC games I have.

Once again thanks, turns out it can see the USB ports but can only see the hubs not what is connected to them.