Edison Ethernet Block

This project gives the Intel Edison ethernet capibility in applications where wired connections are necessary or more reliable.

Currently, there are two common Linux distros used on the Intel Edison: Yocto Linux and Ubilinux. The Edison Ethernet project has support for both and is created from forking those distros.

Distro Support

We currently support a Debian based distro, based on Ubilinux, and the Yocto distro. Both are built with the Yocto 3.10 kernel, bitbaked with driver support for the LAN9512/SMSC95xx USB-to-Ethernet chip.

Ubilinux/Debian

Popular for its familiar package manager (apt-get), this build has support for the Edison Ethernet block as well as support for MAC spoofing using a tool called macchanger.

Yocto

This Linux distro is great for lightweight projects as it has a rootfs size of about 500MB. Although it has support for the Edison Ethernet block, it does not currently have easy support for MAC spoofing through macchanger.

Installation and Setup

To start using the Edison Ethernet block, there are four options, increasing in time/difficulty:

1. Download the binary release of the smsc95xx.ko driver and add it to your kernel modules.
2. Download pre-packaged images of this project ready to flash with the smsc95xx.ko module baked in.
3. Clone the Edison-Ethernet git project to avoid using bitbake, but still allowing you flexibility to add/remove files from the rootfs. Build the debian or yocto image and then flash using ./flashall.sh such as illustrated at the end of the guide here
4. Build from source using bitbake and menuconfig and flash your device using ./flashall.sh.

Option 1 - Binary Release

Download the release corresponding to your board. Extract the files.

Inside the release, there is a directory called modules. You'll find different kernel versions inside. To know which kernel module to install on your Edison, run uname -r and pick the corresponding directory inside the release. If your kernel version is not available, create an issue and we will release one for that version. You can also make your own by following these instructions.

Once you know which kernel version to use, follow these instructions to copy and install on your Edison.

Option 2 - Pre-packed Images

Download the release corresponding to your board. Extract the files.

Inside the release, there is a directory called images. You'll find two tarballs: yocto.tar.gz and debian.tar.gz. Extract your choice of distro and use sudo ./flashall.sh as normal.

Option 3 - Leverage This Project

See Contributing to this Project below.

Option 4 - Build from Source

Follow these instructions. Be aware that this will take at least 5+ hours.

Contributing to this Project

We use Git Submodules in our repo, if you've never used that tool before, make sure to read about it here.

Development Environment

All developent must be on a Linux machine. Because of the naming convention of files in the decompressed rootfs of Linux, Mac OS and Windows will groan about invalid file names. We use Ubuntu 14.04.02 for our host environment.

Getting the Source

Source code / files can be cloned as follows:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/LGSInnovations/Edison-Ethernet.git # The '--recursive' flag will also clone the submodules 

Packaging Your Changes

After you have changed things to your liking, use the package.sh script in Edison-Ethernet/src/ to package your edison-image-edison.ext4 rootfs so you can run sudo ./flashall.sh. Make sure that you have pulled in the latest changes in the edison-debain-image and/or edison-yocto-image submodules.