If you have a USB ethernet compatible device, you can set up your internet connection to a USB device with a few simple steps. Mainly you need to map your USB device MAC address as a network interface with udev, reboot or run some specific udev commands to make the change effective, and that's it. You can then use your USB device like any other network interface (like eth0 or wlan0). The Slackware Kernel comes with the necessary modules to make this work in most cases, but if you have some exotic device, you might need to add some relevant modules. The relevant search term is “cdc”.

Summary:

lsusb
lsusb -v -s 001
nano /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
udevadm control --reload-rules && udevadm trigger
(or reboot)
ip link list
ifconfig usb0 up
dhcpcd usb0

If your USB device is connected, you should be able to find it using the command lsusb. Simply type the command, find your device and note down the device number, like for example 001.

lsusb

To check if the device is ethernet compatible, study lsusb -v output or run something like this (with the correct device number).

lsusb -v -s 001 | grep -i ethernet

If you get some output about ethernet, provided you used the correct device number, you are good to go, if not your device is probably not ethernet compatible!

To get the mac address, find it under lsusb -v or run something like this:

lsusb -v -s 001 | grep -i mac

You should find the correct MAC address for your USB ethernet device. You can note it down or pipe and append it into the file by adding “» file” to the command above.

You need to add an entry into /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules to map your USB device as a USB ethernet network device. This file already contains an entry as part of Slackware, the best idea is to follow this example and make a similar entry.

nano /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="xx:yy:zz:xx:yy:zz", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="usb0"
ctrl+x (and save the file)

Once this file is changed, you need to make the changes effective. There are two simple ways of doing that, you can reboot your computer or you can use the following command to update the state of udev:

udevadm control --reload-rules && udevadm trigger

Once this is done, your USB device should be mapped as usb0 and you can proceed to do any of the normal network setups with this device.

Check available devices (hopefully it's there as usb0)

ip link show

Bring the device up

ifconfig usb0 up

Set up dhcp

dhcpcd usb0

The relevant Kernel modules for this is usbnet, cdc_ether, mii and other device specific drivers, they can be found here:

Location:                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
-> Device Drivers    
   -> Network device support (NETDEVICES [=y])
      -> USB Network Adapters (USB_NET_DRIVERS [=y])

and …

Location: 
-> Device Drivers
   -> Network device support (NETDEVICES [=y])
      -> USB Network Adapters (USB_NET_DRIVERS [=y])
        -> Multi-purpose USB Networking Framework (USB_USBNET [=m])

* Originally written by zeebra