[Atrix 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Mgamerz:
Question: How do I get USB to Ethernet to work on webtop? I don't have wifi and AT&T's coverage sucks!​

Answer:

Of course AT&T's coverage sucks! We all know this. At my work I don't have wifi, but I do have a USB port (that is linked to my university, not my work network). AT&T doesn't allow IRC over it's network, and my signal sucks (or doesn't work at all) a lot of the time, so I looked into USB-over-ethernet. Contrary to what moto says, it works. I don't know why they don't try to implement it, since it's pretty easy. You just need a bit of terminal skills.

NOTE: THIS SHOULD WORK ON OTHER MOTO-WEBTOP DEVICES AS WELL SINCE THEY ALL SHARE THE SAME LINUX BASE... SORT OF.

DISCLAIMER: IF THIS SOMEHOW BREAKS YOUR DEVICE, LEG, DOG, OR LIBIDO I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE, ALTHOUGH I'M PRETTY SURE IT WONT UNLESS YOU FUBAR IT.

I had help from Luminary(IRC)/Zxo0oxz and AR_(IRC)/ar31791on this cause I'm kind of a linux noob.

So I purchased a USB-to-Ethernet adapter: http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Ethe.../B00484IEJS/ref=pd_cp_e_3/180-6608578-4269610 ($15). It has an ASIX AX88772 chipset in it, ASIX chipsets were the first usb-to-ethernet chipsets and they are nearly universally supported , especially on linux.

I am using the lapdock, no idea if this works with usb-otg, but you can try it if you want, but these directions won't work for you.

This guide assumes you have installed webtopmod or webtop2SD! Cause you need terminal access.

Boot to webtop, let it do it's thing. Open up LXTerminal.

Plug in your usb-toethernet device into one of the USB ports. Have it already connected to the router or whatever you are connecting it to via ethernet.

Run 'dmesg'. You should see somewhere recently a new USB device, most likely ASIX chipset. It should have a name with 'eth' in it, mine happened to be usbeth0.

Substitute DEVICENAME with what you just found it's name to be where it says DEVICENAME below.

If you run ifconfig DEVICENAME, it should print out some network related stuff if it finds your device. If it does, great, if not, well you might need to better guess the name, or it might just not be supported.

If you just run ifconfig, you won't see the device cause it is not yet active. eth0 is the atrix's wireless, if you turn wireless off it'll go away (as you can see in dmesg after you turn it off)

[Note: iwconfig doesn't exist on this distro, or it might just not be in PATH, I didn't both to look]

Assuming you found your device, if you do:

sudo ifconfig DEVICENAME up

the device should come up, and should be viewable under the command ifconfig.

Assuming you are using DHCP as a address provider, now run:

sudo dhclient DEVICENAME

and if it 'bounds' to an address, you're good to go! Turn off wifi and you should still be able to connect without AT&T's restrictions. If you make a script, this will run easily on the desktop!

I tried adding this device to webtop's interfaces file, but it ruined XFCE's bottom bar so I have to manually bring it up otherwise it breaks webtop. Also, not sure if this is related, but the wifi menu won't go away anymore either, but I haven't done too much testing.​

So here's an automagic script you can paste if your configuration works the same as mine (it most likely will):

sudo ifconfig usbeth0 up
sudo dhclient usbeth0

I know it's short, but I'm a noob, and I'm sure many others are noobs too, so I hope this helps.

Your milage may vary, but I hope this helps! If it does, click thanks :) Also be sure to thank the people who helped me!

Additional google tags:

Webtop USB to Ethernet Droid Bionic Photon Atrix lapdock