biostar cardreader
 

how to install that (biostar cardreader) on a linnux system -do i need a certain driver (biostar doesn't offer one) - or is it in general installed automatically - if yes - how i can access the card-reader???

HELP!!!

just got rid of ms - what else works?

The good news is that you do not need a special driver.
The bad news is that you may have to poke around your system a little to get the reader working. You will learn a lot about linux, and it might even be fun.

Card readers with multiple slots, for different cards, did NOT work on my stock 2.4.x.y kernel: It has to be recompiled to support "Multiple SCSI LUNs" or "Multiple SCSI IDs" - It is in the SCSI support bit of the kernel options if I remember right. (Found it: When you do make menuconfig, it is under SCSI Support-->"Probe all LUNs on each SCSI device", this needs to be set as built-in and then the kernel recompiled).

My 2.6 kernel came with "Probe all LUNs on each SCSI device" already enabled, but I had to recompile my 2.4 before it would read cards.

Then you need to make sure you have plugged the card into the reader before you plug the reader into the USB port. If you are lucky, you distro will put a USB storage icon on your desktop (Mandriva 2005LE does, 9.1 does not), if you are unlucky, you will have to make a mount point for the card, and work out how to mount it before you can access your files.

If you do not get an icon on your desktop, take a look at dmesg and /or the last few lines of /var/log/messages to see what linux makes of your cardreader. If it is a multicard reader, the slots will (probably) be called /dev/sda1 , /dev/sdb1 , /dev/sdc1 etc. My camera card happens to fit in the slot that is identified as /dev/sdd1. You live & learn, and it took me a while to work this out.

I see you have 8 posts - Welcome to LQ and I hope this has not discouraged you too much. I was terrified of recompiling the kernel the first time I did it, but I just followed the instructions from here (SEARCH this board), and it was not only very straightforward, but interesting as well.

Hope this helps

Use UDEV
 

Udev makes it easier to work with USB Card Readers ( hope that is what you have )

Find the model name of the slot you want by executing "cat /sys/class/scsi_device/x:x:x:x/device/model" where the "x"'s are numbers that identify the LUN ( logical unit number, I think ) of not only your reader, but each slot of your read. For my reader, it created a SCSI device for each slot, but my SD slot's model was "SD PRO-9XP" ( note the "SD" in the name ). So the next step was to conifigure UDEV to give that slot a static device name of "cardreader" ( why not? ).

So I edited " /etc/udev/rules.d/10-wacom.rules" and added this line:
BUS="scsi", SYSFS{model}="SD PRO-9XP", NAME="cardreader", SYMLINK="/dev/cardreader", MODE="0666"

Now every time I connect the cardreader to my computer, it will create a device called "/dev/cardreader"

In "/etc/fstab", I set up the mount point for this device:
/dev/cardreader /mnt/cardreader vfat noauto,rw,uid=joe.smith,gid=users,umask=002,user 0 0

Which tells Linux that anyone can mount this device, and it will be owner by user joe.smith and group users.

Now all I have to do is plug it in and type "/mnt/cardreader" and then the SD card is accessible. You can change this up a bit by making devices/mount points for each slot, I only use SD at the moment, so that was not necessary at all.

Enjoy.

many thanks! for the postings - i first tried fortezza's instructions (appeared not that hard to follow) but even i didn't suceed!!

what i did: (does it matter in which line i put it? or the formatting? i just copied and pasted it to eol)

BUS="scsi", SYSFS{model}="SD PRO-9XP", NAME="cardreader", SYMLINK="/dev/cardreader", MODE="0666"

exchanged: "SD PRO-9XP" with "USB STORAGE-CFC"

/dev/cardreader /mnt/cardreader vfat noauto,rw,uid=joe.smith,gid=users,umask=002,user 0 0

exxhanged uid=undef00

and it didn't work if i wanted to execute /mnt/cardreader it gave an error message - also the short-cut in the /dev appeared to be corrupt

the usb storage device did appear in the computer-folder

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

isn't there an easy way????

Sounds like you are getting closer to success, so do not give up! When you plug in the Card Reader, is Udev making the "/dev/cardreader" device folder for you? If so, make sure it is using the correct device. I practiced with manual mounts ( "mount /dev/cardreader /mnt/cardreader" ) and if I was using the wrong device, it would tell me there was no media available ( I mistakenly used "MS PRO-9XP" instead of "SD PRO-9XP" the first time ), so then I kept doing the 'cat /sys/bus/scsi/devices/<logical unit number(LUN)>/model" until I got the right one.

Here is an example of the devices (LUN's )my card reader creates when connected:
> ls /sys/bus/scsi/devices
11:0:0:0 11:0:0:1 11:0:0:2 11:0:0:3
Then I cat'd each one like this:
cat "/sys/bus/scsi/devices/11:0:0:0/model"
CF PRO-9XP

I think you have gotten this far, so try manually mounting the media (CFC card, in your case ) "mount -t vfat /dev/cardreader /mnt/cardreader" and try doing an "ll /mnt/cardreader" afterwards.



If this does not work, you can experiment with connecting the card reader to your Linux box with the card and without the card. I know my Bluetooth MP3 player headphones require that I put the SD card in, connect the USB cable, and then power turned on the headphones for the SD card to be accessible. Perhaps if you already have the flash card in the reader before you connect it to your computer, it will work.

Good Luck!!!