PCMCIA card reader and CF memory cards

afshin · 01-08-2003, 02:36 AM

Hello,

I have desktop machine with an Intel 82365SL compatible PCMCIA card reader/writer. Under SuSE 8.0, I was able to successfully modify /etc/pcmcia/ide.opts so that CompactFlash memory cards would automatically mount when inserted (device: /dev/hde1, mount point:
/media/cf1). After I installed Suse 8.1 and copied my olde ide.opts file over, the CF memory card no longer mounts. Using Cardinfo, I can see the card is properly detected as an ATA/IDE Fixed Disk. When I try to manually mount it with the following command:

mount -v -t vfat /dev/hde1 /media/cf1

I get an error: "mount: /dev/hde1 is not a valid block device"

Here is the full contents of my /etc/pcmica/ide.opts:

# ATA/IDE drive adapter configuration
#
# The address format is "scheme,socket,serial_no[,part]".
#
# For multi-partition devices, first return list of partitions in
# $PARTS. Then, we'll get called for each partition.
#
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,*,*,1)
#INFO="Sample IDE setup"
DO_FSTAB="y" ; DO_FSCK="y" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
FSTYPE="vfat"
OPTS=""
MOUNTPT="/media/cf1"
;;
*,*,*)
PARTS="1"
# Card eject policy options
NO_CHECK=n
NO_FUSER=n
;;
esac

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Afshin

born4linux · 01-08-2003, 04:45 AM

check your dmesg file for the right partition or device block assignment.

also, try running this:

fdisk -l

or

sfdisk -l

and look for the enry for your flash card

afshin · 01-08-2003, 08:46 PM

The following is the output of "fdisk -l" with the card inserted:

josephus:/home/afshin # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 240 heads, 63 sectors, 7943 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 7 52888+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 8 146 1050840 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda3 147 7943 58945320 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hdb: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 7476 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 7476 60050938+ 83 Linux

The card is not being assigned a device. This is pretty strange since cardinfo recognizes the card properly.

Any ideas?

thanks

afshin · 01-13-2003, 01:56 AM

I have some more diagnostic info on this problem:

The card reader uses interrupts 9 and 11 (I presume 9 for slot 0 and 11 for slot 1).
Interrupt 9 is shared with acpi and usb-uhci
Interrupt 11 is shared with usb-uhci

Could this have something to do with the problem? If so, then why is cardinfo able to detect the card properly?

I tried disabling the USB controller just for kicks using the BIOS settings, but that didn't seem to actually disable it. Am I barking up the wrong tree? I've run out of ideas and really need your help.

Thanks.

-Afshin

cassens · 01-16-2003, 02:51 PM

Eventually, the card reader is not the problem, but the PCMCIA subsystem itself. It may be you ran into an odd bug that was discussed on a SuSE mailing list a while ago, see e.g.: http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-l...-Oct/2511.html

Quote:

To answer my own question: I got to looking around at pcmcia
information and remembered the external (non-kernel) pcmcia project on
source forge (http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net) and was prepared to
recompile the kernel to use that version. (Actually I did try to
recompile and got an odd error message, but that's for another time...)
Anyway, there is a message on the above page about pcmcia and the 2.4
kernel. Among other things it mentions that
"o Someone changed the name of the "ide_cs" driver in the 2.4 tree to
"ide-cs". To deal with this annoyance, edit /etc/pcmcia/config and
change every instance of "ide_cs" to "ide-cs". Yes this means that
the same config file won't work for 2.2 kernels. No you cannot just
rename the module or add an alias to /etc/modules.conf; the string
is also embedded in the module."

Worked for my CF/PC-Card adapter.

afshin · 01-17-2003, 02:25 AM

Thanks Cassens - that did it!

However, I now have a different problem: when I insert the CF card, the device automatically mounts, however normal users cannot access it. The perms on the mount point change such that only root can access it. I even tried adding OPTS="user" to my /etc/pcmcia/ide.opts, but it made no difference. Here's my system info:

/etc/pcmcia/ide.opts:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,*,*,1)
#INFO="Sample IDE setup"
DO_FSTAB="y" ; DO_FSCK="y" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
FSTYPE="vfat"
OPTS="user"
MOUNTPT="/media/cf1"
;;
*,*,*)
PARTS="1"
# Card eject policy options
NO_CHECK=n
NO_FUSER=n
;;
esac

Relevant entry in mtab with card inserted:
/dev/hde1 /media/cf2 vfat rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0

Relevant entry in fstab with card inserted:
/dev/hde1 /media/cf2 vfat user 0 0

output of "dmesg | grep hde":
hde: SanDisk SDCFH-256, ATA DISK drive
hde: failed write cache flush, disabling ordered write support
hde: 501760 sectors (257 MB) w/1KiB Cache, CHS=980/16/32
hde: hde1
ide_cs: hde: Vcc = 3.3, Vpp = 0.0
hde: hde1
hde: hde1
hde: SanDisk SDCFH-256, ATA DISK drive
hde: failed write cache flush, disabling ordered write support
hde: 501760 sectors (257 MB) w/1KiB Cache, CHS=980/16/32
hde: hde1
ide_cs: hde: Vcc = 3.3, Vpp = 0.0
hde: hde1
hde: hde1

Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Afshin