Re: USB Host-Host cables

[Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org>]

On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 06:29:33AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> I have purchased a USB Host-Host cable based on the PL-25A1 chipset.
> Where would discussion about using it be *ON TOPIC* ?
> It is recognized by Debian Stretch.
> I have found relevant bits-n-pieces in manpages and package info.
> I'm retired and my avocation is learning about Linux.
> I'm missing background in:
>    USB interfacing
>    networking (in a broad sense)
> TIA


The plusb driver should detect it as a network interface. It's
faster than a 100Mb/s ethernet adapter and slower than a gigabit
ethernet adapter.

Plug it in to both sides and pick an IP range. Let's call it:

A:
192.168.42.1/24

B:
192.168.42.2/24

So to find your adapter name, you say:

ip link show

and eliminate the ones you know about - lo, eth0, wlan0,
whatever - and find the one that's new. Let's pretend it's
called usbnet0.

Assign it an address:

ip address add 192.168.42.1/24 usbnet0
(and on B, use ...42.2 )

You should get a route on each side:
ip 4
....
192.168.42.1/24 dev usbnet0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.42.2
...

and now you can access the other side via ssh and scp and
whatever.

-dsr-