# Belkin Network USB Hub - any way to hook up in Linux?

## RandyBurgess

A rather obtuse question: I've got a Belkin Network USB Hub, the F5L009. It has five USB ports for printers, external drives, etc.; you then hook the device to your LAN via your DSL modem or what have you, and Windows or Mac machines on the network can access these devices. Works pretty well. However drivers are required for each computer involved. Belkin makes a Windows driver, which works fine, a Mac driver (not yet updated to Leopard), but no Linux driver. What a surprise!

At any rate, lsusb does seem to detect the hub's presence, as I have no Belkin components onboard except the hub - 

```
grumpy ~ # lsusb | grep Belkin

Bus 002 Device 004: ID 050d:0815 Belkin Components
```

- but beyond that I'm pretty clueless. Anyone have any ideas?

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## Bones McCracker

I would not have expected it to show up as a USB device.  So that's potentially a good sign.

Here are some things that I would explore:

- Are there any devices in /dev that correspond to the USB hub or things attached to it?

- When you do 'ls -l /sys/bus/usb/devices' do you see an entry that seems to correspond to said hub or attached devices?

- Do the answers to the above questions change when there's nothing connected to the hub vs. when something is connected?

- By doing that, can you identify the /sys and or /dev entries for the hub (and or any attached devices)?

If there are relevant entries in /sys but not /dev, you should be able to create udev rule(s) to create /dev nodes for them (so you can use them).  http://reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html

If you're not having any luck using the process above, you might be able to learn something by probing the device's IP address to see what if any ports it is exposing.  If there appear to be a port per attached/attachable USB hardware component, it may be that the communication between the PC and the hub is supposed to occur via TCP or UDP (with the USB signal tunneled, I would imagine).  That would probably indicate you'll really need a driver.  This is way over my head, but it may be theoretically possible to work around it (e.g., creating multiple logical USB devices on the PC and tunneling their communication over TCP or UDP to the appropriate ports at the hub's IP address).  

I have no idea what I'm talking about, but this might at least give you some ideas or maybe trigger better advice from a more knowledgeable person.    :Smile: 

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## inkbm

did you have any joy getting this working, I'm interested in the same thing and am a complete Linux newbie

Thanks for any help

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## WholeSight

 *Quote:*   

> did you have any joy getting this working

 

Alas, no. And in fact I was too embarrassed at the time to respond to BoneKracker - because I realized belatedly that what I was really seeing in lsusb was in fact another Belkin device, not the hub - a game controller I'd forgotten about entirely because I seldom use it.

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## inkbm

thanks for the reply, I did wonder if it was another device as I can't see my f5l009...  :Sad:  oh well it looks like I need a different solution.

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## WholeSight

I got the Belkin hub just to be able to print to the same printer from multiple PCs or Macs on my wireless network - and mostly I use it with my Macbook. These days I only use Linux for special purposes, e.g. managing my MP3 collection (I have an MP3 device that can't run on Mac, and I refuse to use Windows for this.) 

What I found was that I can print from Linux to a printer that is hooked up via the Belkin hub to my Macbook, using IP addressing. So at least I can print from Linux when I want to, without having to run a hard line from a printer to the Linux box. But obviously this "solution" won't be of much use to most folks.

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## inkbm

I'll have to investigate that on windows - all my other pc's are on XP - set it shareable on there and see what I can do via Samba - I just got myself an Acer Aspire One running Linpus and it would be neat to be able to print from there without having to unplug cables or resorting to the old USB stick network. the whole rationale for the Belkin hub is to not have to swich another pc on just to print of course.

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