Module questions
 

Howdy fellow computer nerds...

I have a worthless old laptop that I would like to use as my iptables machine. I've installed RH9 on the machine (since it doesn't have enough RAM to run FC4), and I can't seem to get the NICs running.

For starters, I don't even know if the PCMCIA bus is working. I don't know how to check whether or not it's working either. Secondly, I don't know how to get the modules for my NICs or how to install them. Can anyone give me a brief explination on what I should be doing to get this up and running?

Thanks in advance. :)

what model is your laptop, post lspci
you could boot with knopix, this detects a lot of hardware automatically and then you can see what it loads and what to do, to configure different things.

I forgot to bring the machine to work with me today, so I'll have to run the lspci when I get home tonight. I didn't know about that command. That's helpful. ;)

This machine is a really old Toshiba laptop (233MHz, 32MB of RAM). I believe it's called a Satellite 2515CDS, but I can't be sure. I'll post that tonight, as well. The NICs are Linksys and Airlink 10/100's.

I'll have to look knopix up. I'm not familiar with it. If I'm not able to find anything about it, I'll probably crawl back on here and cry for help. ;)


Thanks again, Nathanael. :)

Here is the output of lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems 601 (rev a2)
00:04.0 VGA compatible controller: Chips and Technologies F69000 HiQVideo (rev 64)
00:0b.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 02)
00:10.0 IDE interface: Toshiba America Info Systems: Unknown device 0102 (rev 33)
00:11.0 Communication controller: Toshiba America Info Systems FIR Port (rev 23)
00:13.0 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC97 (rev 07)
00:13.1 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC97 (rev 07)

Can you determine, based on this, whether or not my PCMCIA bus is working properly? If so, how?

I'm going to download knoppix now.

I'm not booted on Knoppix. What should I do to see what modules it is using?

Here is the lspci output from Knoppix:

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems 601 (rev a2)
0000:00:04.0 VGA compatible controller: Chips and Technologies F69000 HiQVideo (rev 64)
0000:00:0b.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 02)
0000:00:10.0 IDE interface: Toshiba America Info Systems: Unknown device 0102 (rev 33)
0000:00:11.0 Communication controller: Toshiba America Info Systems FIR Port (rev 23)
0000:00:13.0 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC97 (rev 07)
0000:00:13.1 CardBus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC97 (rev 07)
0000:01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21142/43 (rev 41)
0000:05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)

lsmod

Here's the output:

Module Size Used by
agpgart 30512 0
autofs4 18820 1
af_packet 20104 0
ext3 124552 0
jbd 65060 1 ext3
de4x5 47648 0
parport_pc 38596 0
parport 33480 1 parport_pc
8250 41692 0
serial_core 21120 1 8250
usbhid 42176 0
8139too 25600 0
mii 7808 1 8139too
tulip 50464 0
pcmcia 21776 4
yenta_socket 21896 4
rsrc_nonstatic 12160 1 yenta_socket
pcmcia_core 42272 3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic
video 18308 0
thermal 14984 0
processor 24552 1 thermal
fan 7300 0
container 7296 0
button 9104 0
battery 12420 0
ac 7556 0
rtc 13772 0
unionfs 830612 1
cloop 18848 1
sbp2 24456 0
ohci1394 33028 0
ieee1394 300600 2 sbp2,ohci1394
usb_storage 63296 0
ub 18332 0
ohci_hcd 21896 0
uhci_hcd 31376 0
ehci_hcd 31752 0
usbcore 101496 7 usbhid,usb_storage,ub,ohci_hcd,uhci_hcd,ehci_hcd



Unfortunately, I can't do an ifup eth0, so I don't think it's got a module loaded for either NIC. I see "pcmcia" on there, though, so I assume that bus is working correctly. What should I do at this point? Perhaps you're getting more info out of this output than I am.

you are using the yenta drivers for your pcmcia slots, which sounds quite ok for Toshiba laptops :-)

So, I have to make sure that I'm running the same module on my RH9 installation? Where do I find the modules for the NICs? Are the modules specific to a kernel?

Modules are probably already there you just need to insert them.

Not really if you are using a default kernel that came with the distro. The module names don't change however they may or may not be present depending on your kernel compile (if at all, you have a compiled kernel).

Tux,

How do I determine what module I need to be using? I'm googling right now, but haven't yet found the answer.

Also, if I load the module, how does the kernel associate the module with a particular device? For example, what if I had two of the same NIC. How would it determine which card to use the module on?

how old is the NIC? I had an old Linksys Etherlink16 (it uses an ISA slot, so this next part might not be helpful) and I had to load the ne module to get it to work.

I think ne is used for older NIC, so it might work.

this might help if you've not already come across it.

I'm sure about one of your NIC which uses the tulip module since i have a card with same chipset. I'm not sure about the realtek NIC.

I'm trying to modprobe the yenka_socket module by typing the following command:

modprobe yenka_socket


This is the output it is producing (retyped, so there may be typos):

PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin A of device 00:13:0. Please try using pci=biosirq
PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin B of device 00:13:1. Please try using pci=biosirq
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kenel/drivers/pcmica/yenta_socket.o: init_module: No such device
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.
You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kenel/drivers/pcmica/yenta_socket.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/yenta_socket.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kenel/drivers/pcmica/yenta_socket.o: insmod yenta_socket failed


I took a look at the man page for modprobe and see no way to use the "pci=biosirq" in the command. Should I be doing something else with this?

I did some googling and found that the pci=biosirq is supposed to be used in the boot loader. I added that to the appropriate line in GRUB and rebooted the machine. The output from the "modprobe yenta_socket" command was very similar, but not quite the same. Here it is:

PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin A of device 00:13:0.
PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin B of device 00:13:1.
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kenel/drivers/pcmica/yenta_socket.o: init_module: No such device
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.
You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kenel/drivers/pcmica/yenta_socket.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/yenta_socket.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kenel/drivers/pcmica/yenta_socket.o: insmod yenta_socket failed