How do I install a driver provided as source code?

Question

I have a USB-to-LAN converter, and downloaded the its drivers. The driver folder consists of a Makefile file, a .c file and a .h file.

How do I install such a driver?

Solution

• Open a terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T

• Install the build-essential package with:

  sudo apt-get install build-essential

• Change the directory to the extracted driver folder; suppose it's under your home directory as Downloads/driversource, with:

  cd ~/Downloads/driversource

• Type make && sudo make install

This should build and install the driver. You will probably need to reboot to activate the installed driver.

Comments

[Dr.jacky]

I want to compile this github.com/Stane1983/kernel-amlogic-mx/tree/master/drivers/… , but it says "make: *** No targets. Stop."