The current Dell I'm installing and configuring Debian on came with a 16-port Digi ethernet portserver that needed to be set up.
Digi's rpm installation instructions are confusing enough for Red Hat, but for Debian I just couldn't make sense of them. I used the full compile method instead - but that bombed - incompatible with Debian Etch.
Fortunately Debian is one of the four Linux distributions Digi directly supports - and their tech support is an order of magnitude faster than most hardware vendors. They had a new driver in testing at a secret location - but only as an rpm package.
I still couldn't interpret their rpm install instructions, but developed a hybrid of rpm and compile that works fine.
Then I found their documentation included only a GUI config program (wish based) and we have no GUI. Fortunately tech support took only 1/2 hour to respond with where to find a CLI config program.
The config program wouldn't run - needed something called "fuser". Took some time sorting through Internet trash to find out what package that was part of so I could install it.
Finally, set up rc2.d links to the /etc/init.d files and were're done.
Tomorrow I'll attach a terminal to it and see if I can actually log on (after setting up the port in inittab, of course).
Sheeeesh! another day and no dollar.