pcmcia on linux mandrake 9.1 not installed
 

Hi, I've just installed linux mandrake 9.1 on my laptop (P IV, 2.4 Ghz with 512 Mb DDR memory and Ati Radeon 9000 Mobility 64 Mb DDR (tv out) CD writer and reader, 60 Gb hard disk, usb / usb 2 / firewire / lan / pcmcia). It's a beautifull machine and everything seems to work smoothely with mandrake 9.1 exept for the pcmcia slot. Either it's the pcmcia slot which isn't recognized or it's the Xircom network card. I just can't figure out. I just installed "pcmcia-cs-3.2.3" and "pcmcia-cs-X11-3.2.3" packages but never saw the utility of those because they just don't change a damned thing about the pcmcia slot. I ran "gpccard" (saw it was an utility from the packages) and it said that there is no pcmcia driver in /proc/devices. Anyone knows how to get a pcmcia driver in this ? I really need help on this...

Oh yeah, another sad point is that tv-out just doesn't work with the mobility radeon. Someone wrote a tv-out tool, but it doesn't work with newer cards than ati radeon 7500 :(. Some things are so sad in life, you just can't imagine. lol.

you will need to recompile the kernel adding support for pcmcia :)

huh ?
 

This seems great, but, can you explain how to do it without crashing my system ? :p

I'm not very good at this stuff to be honest.

heh yeah, i'll probably be a bit vague here as i'm at work and doing all this from memory :o), hope fully you will have the kernel source already on your system, normally under /usr/src/linux* where * might be the distribution number.

First off copy the current vmlinuz to vmlinuz2 in /boot then edit /etc/lilo.conf and copy whats in there already again underneath but chaning the second vmlinuz to vmlinuz 2 (this will alllow you to have a bootable system if the new kernel starts breaking things :))

jump in to this dir and type make menuconfig. (note these instructions are all done under the console so quit xwindows first if you boot straight into that)

The command will throw out loads of crp whilst it compiles the program then will stick a nice blue menu in your screen. Then move down to general setup hit enter and then move down to pcmcia/cardbus support and select everything here, probably somebody would moan about me saying that stick everything as * not M but i prefer that these are compiled straight into the kernel. (i'm saying select everything because i don't know your setup) Then press escape twice so your back at the main menu then move down to network device support. Then down to pcmcia network device support and if you know your card make stick it as an M here.

Then exit it all and save the configuration when it asks you. Then type make dep ; make bzImage ; make modules ; make modules_install ; cp System.map /boot ; cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz ; lilo ; reboot (this last command should all be on one line) then you can disappear for 30 odd mins while it all compiles and installs for you (there shouldnt be any problems)

Well, thanks a lot. Thanks to you I can recompile my kernel. I managed for the first time in my life to compile a kernel and it worked ! But at all stories, there's a bad point. In this story of mine, the bad point is that even with the recompiled kernel with pcmcia options and network devices options activated (I've set everything on "*" instead of "M" because it was already set on "M"), it just won't work. The odd thing of this is that I installed RH 9 with a much older kernel on it (no pre relase) and there, it worked fine. I got the Xircom network card activated and running without having to do anything, just at installation of RH. Now, I'm wondering what could possibly mess up the network card on Mdk 9.1. Damned, it's such a fine distro compared to RH, but that network card not functionning is crucial to my using it. I'm having bad luck I guess. Does anyone got another fine idee for me ? I really need that network card to run. Somone proposed me to recompile (again... ) the RH 9 kernel on my Mdk 9.1 distribution. But I'm afraid it would just mess up the whole system. I just don't know what to do anymore.

mnadrake 9.1 supports Xircom, its module is tulip and is a very generic one which is available in all the major distros. i run mandy9.1 and i have no problems using my Xircom ethernet card. was your inserted when you were installing mandrake? if it was then mandrake would have easily identified it and would have asked you to configure it. if it was not then maybe your PCMCIA service was not running when you tried to insert it and configure it.

I believe I've found what's the problem. When I started harddrake2 under kde, it saw the following : Unknown CardBus Bridge
My guess is that it's the pcmcia controller and that it ain't known by madrake 9.1. Funny is that RH 9 could use it. Does someone has a clue on how to fix this ?

I've installed the pcmcia-cs-3.2... and pcmcia-cs-X11-3.2... packages. But when I try to run the gpccard utility it returns there's no pcmcia driver in /proc/... What can I do to install a pcmcia driver ? I guess I'll have to recompile my kernel again... but how and with what drivers and where can I get those drivers... or how else ? Thanks in forehand.

http://archives.mandrakelinux.com/ex...5/msg01711.php

Try this it hopefully the reply worked for the other guy, i dunno though :)

**update**
Actually this might not work, but its worth a try

Thanx a lot but at work they obliged me to return to redhat. I won't be able to try out now. It's a pitty, maybe another time :) but still, thanks a lot for the information.

pcmcia woes
 

being a :newbie: myself, I tried red hat and mandrake 9 and couldnt ever get it right so i downloaded an older distro (mandrake 7.x) and everything worked fine. it seems that the new kernel version has some issues with pcmcia. if i knew how to correct and submit it, i would. still learning here........

dave

Thanxs !
 

Even if you're a newbie, I believe you found the solution. Indeed, I'm gonna try Mandrake 9.0 instead of 9.1 on my computer and I guess the pcmcia controler will be recognized and fully operationnal. It seems to me it's the unsteable kernel used in mandrake 9.1 that is the trouble maker in our case. Thanx a lot for your solution :) and I mean it.

For all people in here who're still looking for the thruth out there, here is the ultimate explanation on how to get your pcmcia slot and every single pcmcia card in it to work under Mandrake 9.1 and tutti quanti. In fact it's no kernel version problem, even not a weird distro prob. The fact is it is some configuration problem at installation. Not your fault cause you ain't given the possibility to correct this bug at installation. Now here is the procedure to follow to get it done :

0) install Mandrake 9.1 (if it ain't done yet)
1) go to your package manager and install the following packages by typing "pcmcia" in the search area : "pcmcia-cs" and "pcmcia-X11-cs"
2) then, edit the following file /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia (you have to
be root to do this operation ( $ su root ) for the noobs out there
according to me, this file should only contain one single line before
you edit it : PCMCIA=no
odd, isn't it ? so, here we go, and let's rectify this by replacing "no" by "yes" and adding a little other line which will make everything run smooth :). The file will look like this :

PCMCIA=yes
PCIC=probe

3) finally, you just have to start the pcmcia service by typing the following line :
$./etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia start
while being root... or for the noobs out there (no offense, I'm a linux noob myself even if I'm getting better at it :p) just reboot the machine.

Man, this procedure was entirely created by me with no help... exept of the wall on which I could hit my head several times, that felt so good !

Please, give me your comments about this one, because I really need to know what you think of this :) I worked a pretty long time on this to find this out so... a little thanks would be appreciated :)

Cya !

You are a genius!!! I've been trying to get my Xircom PCMCIA card to work for a month on Mandrake 9.1. It works fine with RH 9 and SuSE 8.2. Thanks for finally solving my problem.

Greg

Thanks for the compliment :D