[NCLUG] USB Support Recap

[Rich Young]

Another victory: with the help of those at the Hacking Society mtg Tuesday -- 
well, ok, Matt "helped" for a while and then he took the reigns and just 
fixed it, with lotsa collaborative input from the others.  Anyway, my USB 
support works now, complete with hotplug!  Here's what we did:
1) The docs at www.linux-usb.org/USB-guide/c122.html were critical -- because 
of them, I was able to come to the meeting knowing some critical things, like 
the fact that my motherboard requires the OHCI USB module.  
2) We played with modprobe and lsmod a bunch, used Evelyn's USB mouse a lot, 
that sort of thing.  Looked at a lot of config files, modified some of them, 
restarted X a few times.....
3) Then Matt figured out that the problem was one line missing from 
/etc/modules.conf:
alias usb-controller usb-ohci
That did it.  I think this line means that the kernel was all set except that 
it needed to be told which type of controller I had.  This line, I think, 
does that, and putting it in enables the rest of the USB support stuff to 
come to life and do what it's supposed to.

So anyway, between having USB working and the stuff I was doing before this 
to try to get my HP 810C printer functional, it Just Worked when I got the 
machine together again at home.  Scanner's next -- I haven't had time to dink 
with it yet.  Then we'll go after the USB-cradled Visor and see if it'll talk 
to KPilot.

Thanks to all of you who posted suggestions and especially the folks present 
Tuesday night.  It's nice to have more than just a monitor for output again.

--Rich