Stuck on pcmcia - can I have as many answers to this as I did for the "girls" post?

[jenbass]

Yes, 44 replies to this and i may get it working http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif
This pcmcia business is driving me nuts. Did a post a week or so ago, still no further on. Card has (I think) been configured, BUT when I do "init.d/pcmcia restart" whole system hangs on "starting cardmgr modules" . Card gets high beep followed by low beep on startup. Trying to get cardctl working gives error in /var/log/messages "cardmgr[883] get dev info on socket 0 failed - no such device" .
/cardctl/ident shows
socket 0
product info "PC<CIA","10/100 Ethernet Card"," ", " "
manfid 0x8a01 0xc1ab
function: 6 (network)

I can't seem to get my head round what is going on...I've been trawling through all the previous posts and how-to's, nothing seems to click.
Does the above tell anyone anything?
I'm using RH6.2.

Thanks. Jenbass.

[Ripley]

Originally posted by jenbass:
Yes, 44 replies to this and i may get it working http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif

Sorry, can't help. But, hey thats one down, 43 to go, and back to the top :-)

[mdwatts]

This may or may not be any help to you, but I use Caldera's eDesktop 2.4 and I have no problems with PCMCIA being detected and configured. In fact, after the initial install and reboot, I startup Netscape and I'm on the net.

Have you checked all of Redhat's knowledgebase on setting up PCMCIA?

Also search for your laptop here http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/ to see if there's anything special that needs to be done to configure it.

As I probably said in your other post, I use the install and modules diskettes to install eDesktop on my laptop (CD drive not bootable anyways) and the modules disk detects the additional hardware. Don't know if it exists or what it is called in RH.

[FoBoT]

it isn't that we don't want to help

the problem is that people reply to stuff they know

ie just about everybody knows if they are male/female http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/biggrin.gif
but i for one haven't yet loaded linux on a laptop, so have zero experience to help you

i am so sorry http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/frown.gif

[jenbass]

Originally posted by FoBoT:
it isn't that we don't want to help


Oh, I was only joking! I can't expect people to make any sense of my incoherent ramblings about various problems - it helps to post and have an answer even if it doesn't answer your question, just for the moral support. What I've discovered is that with this kind of learning curve you *have* to flounder about making loads of mistakes and not understanding anything before anything starts to mean anything, and during this time it is nice having someone holding your hand, or you can't get up the hill. Know what i mean?
Not that it isn't absolutely brilliant when you get a reply that sends you off in the right direction, that is even better.
Like, I think the linuxlaptop link mdwatts gave has told me why the modem isn't working.

[FoBoT]

http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif

[Sterling]

Ok, first - have you recompiled your kernel before installing the PCMCIA package? And, if so, did you compile the PC card stuff from scratch or just use the RPM?

------------------
-Sterling
"There is no Linuxnewbie.org cabal..."

[jenbass]

Originally posted by Sterling:
Ok, first - have you recompiled your kernel before installing the PCMCIA package? And, if so, did you compile the PC card stuff from scratch or just use the RPM?



Um, no and No. (Blush)
I didn't actually install the pcmcia package, it was just sort of there in RH when i installed. The PC card stuff I've been just trying to edit the correct files. Basically i tried to follow the instructions for linux that came with the card, which involved unzipping the compressed driver tarball, putting correct values in a makefile, configuring the /etc/pcmcia/config file to include the card, and then it should have worked. Cardmgr and cardctl services are running.

[mdwatts]

Copied this from Caldera's website.

Both Ethernet cards and modems are better supported now in PCMCIA format than in the more traditional format of open-soldered, plug-in adapter cards. Even quite obscure cards, including flash cards, are now recognized. However, it is still possible that the cardmgr program will grab the wrong interrupt (if this happens, it is very likely that another piece of hardware—the sound card, for example—will also fail to work correctly).

If you suspect this is happening, find out, either within Windows or by reading the /proc/interrupts file, which IRQs are used by your PC cards, and which are normally reserved for other pieces of hardware. Then edit your /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file, to exclude interrupts belonging to other devices.

The PCMCIA program comes with a useful utility called cardctl. This can be used to identify the inserted PC cards which your computer recognizes, and the resources they are using. Simply type at a command line:

cardctl ident

Hope it helps some...

[Shad]

When you insert the card when the computer is running do you hear a beep? Likely it is already working. I have a 10/100 Linksys card that just works in MDK 7.1-7.2. In fact I spent a week trying to figure out how to configure PCMCIA in Linux, when I found out that it had already been done was now available as eth0. http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/redface.gif

------------------
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life

[ph34r]

You prolly already have pcmcia working, and just need to config your card.

Do a lsmod, and see what is returned - (I've got a Slack laptop at work I can send output to you from to compare).

Also, did you have a card in when you installed? And what kind of laptop and card(s) are you dealing with?

[jenbass]

No, I installed without a card. It's a Buffalo techworks LPC3-TX card, on a Toshiba Satellite 4030CDS.
Mdwatts: I don't actually have a listing for pc card in /proc/interrupts - I told it in the /etc/conf.modules file to use interrupt 5, (I've changed that to 10 to see what happens but nowt does)

lsmod shows:

Module Size Used by
nls_iso8859-1 2240 1 (autoclean)
nls_cp437 3748 1 (autoclean
vfat 9276 1 (autoclean)
fat 30336 1 (autoclean) [vfat]
pcnet_cs 8504 0 (unused)
8390 6136 0 [pcnet_cs]
ds 6696 2 [pcnet_cs]
i82365 29800 2
pcmcia_core 44480 0 [pcnet_cs ds i82365]
autofs 9092 1 (autoclean)
lockd 30344 1 (autoclean)
sunrpc 52132 1 (autoclean) [lockd]
ppp 19500 0 (autoclean) (unused)
slhc 4312 0 (autoclean) [ppp]
maestro 25992 0
soundcore 2628 2 [maestro]

Thanks all - this is highly encouraging.

[ph34r]

You show pcnet_cs 8504 0 (unused) as being loaded, so that is your eth0 driver.

All you prolly need to do is ifconfig the eth0 device and use the proper settings...


ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.0.255


oh... you have Redhat... also try


ifup eth0


Be sure to change to your proper IP info, and let us know if it works.

[jenbass]

ifup eth0 gives
Delaying eth0 initialisation


ifconfig etc etc gives
SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
eth0 unknown interface


Do you think that when the manufacturers put in the pcmcia config type to enter in the script it could have been wrong? Itseems much more likely I'm not doing something, but it's worth a wonder. They said to simply call it a PCMCIA 10/100Mbps card - no manufacturer name details like all the others in there seem to have.

[ph34r]

Does the "manual" ifconfig work?

[jenbass]

If you mean /sbin/ifconfig -a from a command line
then it shows only the loopback.

Thanks for this, btw, much appreciated.

[mdwatts]

You have a resource conflict somewhere. Review all your IRQ and IO address settings.

[mdwatts]

Can you turn off PnP in your BIOS? Would probably help quite a bit.

[jenbass]

Originally posted by mdwatts:
Can you turn off PnP in your BIOS? Would probably help quite a bit.

I've looked thru the BIOS and find no ref to PnP - however it is probably unlikely a laptop allows for addition of any new hardware anyway? What i HAVE found though, is an entry for PC Card. It goes

PC CARD
Controller Mode
Options are "auto-selected" "PCIC compatible" or "Cardbus/16 bit"

It is currently on "auto-selected".
This mean anything? (It doesn't to me, but i feel an aHA! feeling coming over me)

[mdwatts]

I believe mine is set to PCIC.

I'm sure that SIOCSIFADDR means you have a resource conflict though.

[jenbass]

Hullo, MDWatts - still there?
I've had a hunt round the forum here and Google firstly for "resource conflict" and then, leading on from that, I ended up looking at the output from dmesg on the laptop. I wish I understood it!
When the PCMCIA card services start first thing that looks wrong is "ds: no socket drivers loaded!" then it goes on to do an intel PCIC probe, three "cs" lines IO port probes, then comes up with "pcnet_cs:unable to read hardware net address"

This mean anything?

[Peter Rahbek]

I've had a problem with the order of the services startup, meaning, that the NIC is starting up too soon or too late in the boot phase, I don't know if this has something to do with your problem, since I only have been running Linux seriously for about a week, but the problem descibed above was my first problem, and was solved by a dear friend of mine, by changeing some filenames, starting with some numbers, the file, with the smallest value is the file that linux is looking on first and so on.
Regards

[davolfman]

Originally posted by jenbass:
What I've discovered is that with this kind of learning curve you *have* to flounder about making loads of mistakes and not understanding anything before anything starts to mean anything


I used to describe it as more of a steep cliff or a brick wall than a curve.