Could someone help me out...I've been trying to get my pcmcia working with redhat 9 on a sotec 3120x. In my efforts i got returned this message, could someone help me with it. thanks in advanced.

[root@localhost /]# /sbin/service pcmcia restart
Shutting down PCMCIA services:.
Starting PCMCIA services:/lib/modules/2.4.20-19.9/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/ds.o: init_module: Operation not permitted
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/2.4.20-19.9/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/ds.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.20-19.9/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/ds.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.20-19.9/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/ds.o: insmod orinoco_cs failed
/lib/modules/2.4.20-19.9/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/ds.o: init_module: Operation not
permitted
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/2.4.20-19.9/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/ds.o: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.20-19.9/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/ds.o failed
/lib/modules/2.4.20-19.9/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/ds.o: insmod ds failed
cardmgr.

As you probably saw, loading the ds.o module failed, did you find any more information in syslog or dmesg as the error message suggests?

I did and there was nothing there that really gave a better explination, or at least that I could see. After posting I played with it futher and actually got the pcmcia service to start on boot, but when I put a card in or look at the services utility in RH9 it says cardmgr stopped, if i start it, it says pcmcia service start successfully, but still there is nothing and no change to the cardmgr. on boot I'm also getting the ds: not socket drivers loaded!

I need a little insight on this :
PCMCIA="yes" <-this is okay

PCIC="i82365" <-this causes a crash, if it's set on yenta_socket or i82365, doesn't crash if on tcic or orinoco_cs, but the pcmcia still doesn't work

PCIC_OPTS= <-nothing here
CORE_OPTS=-m

Also where do I specify that i want PCMCIA to use an IRQ?

thanks for your reply and help.

Ok, you would never want to use the PCIC=orinoco_cs. Orinoco is not a pcic driver. If setting PCIC=tcic allows ds.o to load, then go with that, there is one more to try for very old laptops and that is i82092, it's doubtful you have that pcic though.

Most modules have params that are exposed through a modinfo <module>, some respond to those params being set on the cmd line when they are loaded and some don't seem to care.

for instance:
# modinfo tcic
filename: /lib/modules/2.4.19-16mdk/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/tcic.o.gz
description: "Databook TCIC-2 PCMCIA socket driver"
author: "David Hinds <dhinds@pcmcia.sourceforge.org>"
license: "Dual MPL/GPL"
parm: tcic_base int
parm: ignore int
parm: do_scan int
parm: irq_mask int
parm: irq_list int array (min = 1, max = 16)
parm: cs_irq int
parm: poll_interval int
parm: poll_quick int
parm: cycle_time int

theoretically, you could add a name/value pair to PCIC_OPTS, I say theoretically, because I've not always had success setting params at load-time with various modules, it will take some tinkering.

For spec'ing pcmcia stuff, take a look at /etc/pcmcia/config.opts

One more thing I can think of: there have been a lot of pcmcia problems reported here on LQ on toshiba notebooks, the solution seems to be to go into system bios and try different settings for pcic with "auto" being the one to avoid, maybe even though yours is not a toshiba you should try the bios setup as well.