Debian packages, and 3c556 ethernet

[Tobin Fricke <tobin@splorg.org>]

Hello,

I've just installed Debian GNU/Hurd via the "giant tarball" scheme
(originating from a SuSE linux installation) and it *works*!  How
exciting. (-:

I have two questions.  First, my network card is a 3com 3c556 "laptop
tornado" (mini-pci), which doesn't seem to be supported.  But I see that
GNUMach includes 3c59x.c by Donald Becker.  The version of 3c59x.c that
comes with recent Linux kernels supports my network card, so I'm wondering
how hard it would be to bring this support over to GNU Mach so that I can
have network access in Hurd?

The second question is a consequence of the first:  What's the easiest way
to get a development environment set up in Hurd?  I'm not too familiar
with the Debian package system... but can I, from within linux, fetch and
cross-install (via dselect?) the packages needed for development (gcc,
gmake, binutils, etc)?

thanks,
Tobin