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Chapter 2 Installing Drivers and Host Cards
Installing under Linux
This section tells you how to install host cards, software drivers, and utilities under the Linux
operating system and includes the following:
•General Installation Procedure for Linux on page 23
•Installing Drivers onto Your System on page 23
•Creating Devices for the Attached Ports on page 25

General Installation Procedure for Linux

The general procedure for installing and configuring host cards, driver software and
associated utilities for the Linux operating system is as follows:
1. Install any SPEED LE or SPEED LE Express cards you require into your system. See
Installing Host Cards and Cable Accessories on page 27.
2. Install the SPEED LE Linux drivers onto your system using the procedures described in
Installing Drivers onto Your System on page 23.
3. Create devices for the required ports using the procedures detailed in Creating Devices
for the Attached Ports on page 25.
Your system can now use the SPEED LE serial adaptor cards you have installed.

Installing Drivers onto Your System

SPEED LE or SPEED LE Express cards installed on Linux machines use the perle-serial
driver for Linux. The driver supports the Linux kernel versions 2.4 and 2.6. The kernel header
files are needed for kernel and 2.4. For the 2.6 kernel, a configuration kernel source tree and
a set of makefile rules describing how the modules are built is required.
The driver is supplied in both source RPM package format and a compressed tar file. The
procedure for installation of each format is described in the following sections.