Not at all. The whole point is to use only already running OpenWrt and a limited amount of search engine fu to avoid having to mess around with another Linux distro.
Here's an excerpt from one of my earlier posts here that shows the action sequence in a particular case.
[Quote]
Now run:
lspci -nn
If there's too much stuff onscreen, limit the output to lines containing the word "Ethernet":
lspci -nn | grep Ethernet
One way or another, you will see something like this:
01:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82574L Gigabit Network Connection [8086:10d3]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82574L Gigabit Network Connection [8086:10d3]
03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82574L Gigabit Network Connection [8086:10d3]
04:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82574L Gigabit Network Connection [8086:10d3]
05:08.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82562ET/EZ/GT/GZ - PRO/100 VE Ethernet Controller [8086:1065] (rev 04)
Note the first four lines are nearly identical and refer to a device whose PCI identifier is [8086:10d3]
. The fifth line is singular, so we can conclude that the four lines refer to the four-port Ethernet card that we need to get working, while the fifth line describes the single-port card that is working already.
Let's take a quick trip to Hardware for Linux:
https://linux-hardware.org/index.php?id=pci:8086-10d3
Note the ending of the URL; it's our PCI identifier with colon replaced by a dash. We are in luck: this is a piece of hardware known in the Linux world. The kernel module for it has been seen in Llinux sources at
drivers/net/ethernet/intel/e1000e/netdev.c
So we should be looking for something named kmod-netdev
or perhaps kmod-e1000e
. Googling OpenWrt kmod-netdev
produces some links, but it doesn't look like they have anything to do with networking. Googling OpenWrt kmod-e1000e
, on the other hand, leads to a direct hit; the package kmod-e1000e
does exist and is described as Kernel modules for Intel(R) PRO/1000 PCIe Ethernet adapters
.
Now that we know which kernel module we are missing, we can install it:
opkg install kmod-e1000e
Once the package installs, you will see a series of messages related to the previously unknown, but now available, ports eth1
, eth2
, eth3
, and eth4
.
[End quote]