Linux PCMCIA HOWTO
David Hinds, dhinds@hyper.stanford.edu
v1.97, 24 April 1997
This document describes how to install and use PCMCIA Card Services
for Linux, and answers some frequently asked questions. The latest
version of this document can always be found at hyper.stanford.edu in
/pub/pcmcia/doc. An HTML version is at
http://hyper.stanford.edu/HyperNews/get/pcmcia/home.html
1. General information and hardware requirements
1.1. Introduction
Card Services for Linux is a complete PCMCIA support package. It
includes a set of loadable kernel modules that implement a version of
the PCMCIA Card Services applications program interface, a set of
client drivers for specific cards, and a card manager daemon that can
respond to card insertion and removal events, loading and unloading
drivers on demand. It supports ``hot swapping'' of PCMCIA cards, so
cards can be inserted and ejected at any time.
This software is still under development. It probably contains bugs,
and should be used with caution. I'll do my best to fix problems that
are reported to me, but if you don't tell me, I may never know. If
you use this code, I hope you will send me your experiences, good or
bad!
If you have any suggestions for how this document could be improved,
please let me know (dhinds@hyper.stanford.edu).
1.2. Copyright notice and disclaimer
Copyright (c) 1996, 1997 David A. Hinds
This document may be reproduced or distributed in any form without my
prior permission. Modified versions of this document, including
translations into other languages, may be freely distributed, provided
that they are clearly identified as such, and this copyright is
included intact.
This document may be included in commercial distributions without my
prior consent. While it is not required, I would like to be informed
of such usage. If you intend to incorporate this document in a
published work, please contact me to make sure you have the latest
available version.
This document is provided ``as is'', with no explicit or implied
warranties. Use the information in this document at your own risk.
1.3. What is the latest version, and where can I get it?
The current major release of Card Services is version 2.9, and minor
updates or bug fixes are numbered 2.9.1, 2.9.2, and so on.
Source code for the latest version is available from
hyper.stanford.edu in the /pub/pcmcia directory, as pcmcia-
cs-2.9.?.tar.gz. There will usually be several versions here. I
generally only keep the latest minor release for a given major
release. New major releases may contain relatively untested code, so
I also keep the latest version of the previous major release as a
relatively stable fallback; the current fallback is 2.8.23. It is up
to you to decide which version is more appropriate, but the CHANGES
file will summarize the most important differences.
hyper.stanford.edu is mirrored at sunsite.unc.edu in
/pub/Linux/kernel/pcmcia. I'll also try to upload major releases to
tsx-11.mit.edu under /pub/linux/packages/laptops/pcmcia now and then.
If you do not feel up to compiling the PCMCIA drivers from scratch,
pre-compiled drivers are included with current releases of most of the
major Linux distributions, including Slackware, Red Hat, Caldera, and
Yggdrasil, among others.
1.4. What systems are supported?
This code should run on almost any Linux-capable laptop. All common
PCMCIA controllers are supported, including Intel, Cirrus, Vadem,
VLSI, Ricoh, and Databook chips. Custom controllers used in IBM and
Toshiba laptops are also supported. PCMCIA card docks for desktop
systems should work as long as they are the type that plugs directly
into the ISA bus, rather than SCSI-to-PCMCIA or IDE-to-PCMCIA
adapters.
The Motorola 6AHC05GA controller used in some Hyundai laptops is not
supported. The custom PCMCIA controller in the HP Omnibook 600 is
unsupported. PCI to CardBus bridge controllers (from SMC, Ricoh,
Cirrus, and TI) are currently supported only in legacy 16-bit mode,
and this support is still somewhat experimental.
1.5. What PCMCIA cards are supported?
The current release includes drivers for a variety of ethernet cards,
a driver for modem and serial port cards, several SCSI adapter
drivers, a driver for ATA/IDE drive cards, and memory card drivers
that should support most SRAM cards and some flash cards. The
SUPPORTED.CARDS file included with each release of Card Services lists
all cards that are known to work in at least one actual system.
The likelihood that a card not on the supported list will work depends
on the type of card. Essentially all modems should work with the
supplied driver. Some network cards may work if they are OEM versions
of supported cards. Other types of IO cards (frame buffers, sound
cards, etc) will not work until someone writes the appropriate
drivers.
1.6. When will my new card be supported?
Unfortunately, they usually don't pay me to write device drivers, so
if you would like to have a driver for your favorite card, you are
probably going to have to do at least some of the work. Ideally, I'd
like to work towards a model like the Linux kernel, where I would be
responsible mainly for the ``core'' PCMCIA code and other authors
would contribute and maintain drivers for specific cards. The
SUPPORTED.CARDS file mentions some cards for which driver work is
currently in progress. I will try to help where I can, but be warned
that debugging kernel device drivers by email is not particularly
effective.
Manufacturers interested in helping provide Linux support for their
products can contact me about consulting arrangements.
1.7. Mailing lists
I used to maintain a database and mailing list of Linux PCMCIA users.
More recently, I've turned my web page for Linux PCMCIA information
into a ``HyperNews'' site, with a set of message lists for Linux
PCMCIA issues. There are lists for installation and configuration
issues, for different types of cards, and for PCMCIA programming and
debugging. The Linux PCMCIA information page is at
http://hyper.stanford.edu/HyperNews/get/pcmcia/home.html. Users can
request email notification of new responses to particular questions,
or notification for all new messages in a given category. I hope that
this will become a useful repository of information, for questions
that go beyond the scope of the HOWTO.
There is a Linux mailing list devoted to laptop issues, the ``linux-
laptop'' list. For more information, send a message containing the
word ``help'' to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu. To subscribe, send a
message containing ``subscribe linux-laptop'' to the same address.
This mailing list might be a good forum for discussion of Linux PCMCIA
issues.
The Linux Laptop Home Page at
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop has links to many
sites that have information about configuring specific types of
laptops for Linux (and PCMCIA). There is also a searchable database
of system configuration information.
2. Compilation, installation, and configuration
2.1. Prerequisites and kernel setup
Before starting, you should think about whether you really need to
compile the PCMCIA package yourself. All common Linux distributions
come with pre-compiled PCMCIA driver packages. Generally, you only
need to install the drivers from scratch if you need a new feature of
the current drivers, or if you've updated and/or reconfigured your
kernel in a way that is incompatible with the drivers included with
your Linux distribution. While compiling the PCMCIA package is not
technically difficult, it does require some general Linux familiarity.
The following things should be installed on your system before you
start installing PCMCIA:
� One of the following kernels: 1.2.8 through 1.2.13, 1.3.30, 1.3.37,
1.3.39 through 1.3.99, 1.99.* (i.e., pre-2.0), 2.0.*, or 2.1.*.
� A current set of module utilities.
� (Optional) the ``Forms'' X11 user interface toolkit.
The latest version requires a kernel version 1.2.8 or higher, or a
development kernel 1.3.30 or higher. 1.3.38 is definitely broken, and
1.3.31 to 1.3.36 are untested. It also requires a relatively recent
set of module utilities. There are no kernel patches specifically for
PCMCIA.
You need to have a complete linux source tree for your kernel, not
just an up-to-date kernel image, to compile the PCMCIA package. The
PCMCIA modules contain some references to kernel source files. While
you may want to build a new kernel to remove unnecessary drivers,
installing PCMCIA does not require you to do so.
Current ``stable'' kernel sources and patches are available from
sunsite.unc.edu in /pub/Linux/kernel/v2.0, or from tsx-11.mit.edu in
/pub/linux/sources/system/v2.0. Current module utilities can be found
in the same place, in modules-2.0.0.tgz. Development kernels can be
found in the corresponding v2.1 subdirectories. Some recent
development kernels and compiler releases interact badly with older
sets of module tools. If you are using a 2.1 kernel, be sure that you
are using the right combination of shared libraries and module tools.
The latest versions of the module utilities, as well as versions for
older kernels, can be found at <http://www.pi.se/blox/modules>.
When configuring your kernel, if you plan on using a PCMCIA ethernet
card, you should turn on networking support but turn off the normal
Linux network card drivers, including the ``pocket and portable
adapters''. The PCMCIA network card drivers are all implemented as
loadable modules. Any drivers compiled into your kernel will only
waste space.
If you want to use SLIP, PPP, or PLIP, you do need to either configure
your kernel with these enabled, or use the loadable module versions of
these drivers. There is an unfortunate deficiency in the kernel
config process in 1.2.X kernels, in that it is not possible to set
configuration options (like SLIP compression) for a loadable module,
so it is probably better to just link SLIP into the kernel if you need
it.
If you want to use a PCMCIA token ring adapter, your kernel needs to
be configured with ``Token Ring driver support'' (CONFIG_TR) enabled,
though you should leave CONFIG_IBMTR off.
If you want to use a PCMCIA IDE adapter, your kernel should be
configured with CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE_PCMCIA enabled, for 1.3.72 through
2.1.7 kernels. Older kernels do not support removeable IDE devices;
newer kernels do not require a special configuration setting.
If you will be using a PCMCIA SCSI adapter, you should enable
CONFIG_SCSI when configuring your kernel. Also, enable any top level
drivers (SCSI disk, tape, cdrom, generic) that you expect to use. All
low-level drivers for particular host adapters should be disabled, as
they will just take up space.
If you want to modularize a driver that is needed for a PCMCIA device,
you must modify /etc/pcmcia/config to specify what modules need to be
loaded for what card types. For example, if the serial driver is
modularized, then you could change the serial device definition to:
device "serial_cs"
class "serial" module "misc/serial", "serial_cs"
If your kernel is compiled with CONFIG_MODVERSIONS enabled, for kernel
symbol version checking, the configure script will check for the
existence of /usr/include/linux/modversions.h, the symbol version
database. This is created by running ``make dep'' in the kernel
source tree.
This package includes an X-based card status utility called cardinfo.
This utility is based on a freely distributed user interface toolkit
called the Forms Library, which you will need to install before
building cardinfo. A binary distribution is on hyper.stanford.edu in
/pub/pcmcia/extras: there are both a.out and ELF versions of the
library. You will also need to have all the normal X header files and
libraries installed.
2.2. Installation
Here is a synopsis of the installation process:
� Unpack pcmcia-cs-2.9.?.tar.gz in /usr/src.
� Run ``make config'' in the new pcmcia-cs-2.9.? directory.
� Run ``make all'', then ``make install''.
� Customize the PCMCIA startup script and the option files in
/etc/pcmcia for your site.
Running ``make config'' prompts for a few configuration options, and
checks out your system to verify that it satisfies all prerequisites
for installing PCMCIA support. In most cases, you'll be able to just
accept all the default configuration options. Be sure to carefully
check the output of this command in case there are problems.
If you are compiling the PCMCIA stuff for installation on another
machine, specify an alternate target directory when prompted by the
configure script. This should be an absolute path. All the PCMCIA
tools will be installed relative to this directory. You will then be
able to tar this directory tree and copy to your target machine, and
unpack relative to its root directory to install everything in the
proper places.
If you are cross compiling on another machine, you may want to specify
alternate names for the compiler and linker. This may also be helpful
on mixed a.out and ELF systems. The script will also prompt for
additional compiler flags for debugging.
Some of the support utilities (cardctl and cardinfo) can be compiled
either in ``safe'' or ``trusting'' forms. The ``safe'' forms prevent
non-root users from modifying card configurations. The ``trusting''
forms permit ordinary users to issue commands to suspend and resume
cards, reset cards, and change the current configuration scheme. The
configuration script will ask if you want the utilities compiled as
safe or trusting: the default is to be safe.
There are a few kernel configuration options that affect the PCMCIA
tools. The configuration script can deduce these from the running
kernel (the most common case). Alternatively, if you are compiling
for installation on another machine, it can read the configuration
from a kernel source tree, or each option can be set interactively.
Running ``make all'' followed by ``make install'' will build and then
install the kernel modules and utility programs. Kernel modules are
installed under /lib/modules/<version>/pcmcia. The cardmgr and
cardctl programs are installed in /sbin. If cardinfo is built, it is
installed in /usr/bin/X11.
Configuration files will be installed in the /etc/pcmcia directory.
If you are installing over an older version, your old config scripts
will be backed up before being replaced. The saved scripts will be
given extensions like *.~1~, *.~2~, and so on.
If you don't know what kind of PCMCIA controller chip you have, you
can use the probe utility in the cardmgr/ subdirectory to determine
this. There are two major types: the Databook TCIC-2 type and the
Intel i82365SL-compatible type.
A user-level daemon processes card insertion and removal events. This
is called cardmgr. It is similar in function to Barry Jaspan's
pcmciad in earlier PCMCIA releases. Cardmgr reads a configuration
file describing known PCMCIA cards from /etc/pcmcia/config. This file
also specifies what resources can be allocated for use by PCMCIA
devices, and may need to be customized for your system. See the
pcmcia man page for more information about this file.
2.3. Post-installation for systems using BSD init scripts
Some Linux distributions, including Slackware, use a BSD arrangement
for system startup scripts. If /etc/rc.d/rc.M exists, your system is
in this group. The script rc.pcmcia, installed in /etc/rc.d, controls
starting up and shutting down the PCMCIA system. ``make install''
will use the probe command to determine your controller type and
modify rc.pcmcia appropriately. You should add a line to your system
startup file /etc/rc.d/rc.M to invoke the PCMCIA startup script, like:
/etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia start
It does not really matter where you insert this line, as long as the
PCMCIA drivers are started after syslogd.
2.4. Post-installation for systems using System V init scripts
Red Hat, Caldera, and Debian Linux have a System V-ish arrangement for
system startup files. If you have a directory called /etc/init.d or
/etc/rc.d/init.d, then your system is in this group. The rc.pcmcia
script will be installed as /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia, or
/etc/init.d/pcmcia, as appropriate. There is no need to edit any of
the startup scripts to enable PCMCIA: it will happen automatically.
If the /etc/sysconfig directory exists, then a separate configuration
file, /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia, will be created for startup options. If
you need to change any module options (like the PCIC= or PCIC_OPTS=
settings), edit this config file rather than the actual PCMCIA startup
script. This file will not be overwritten by subsequent installs.
Some systems may come with a sysconfig script that disables PCMCIA by
default, so be sure to check the contents of this file after
installing.
Some previous releases used the /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia-scripts
directory in place of /etc/pcmcia on these platforms. The current
release instead uses /etc/pcmcia for all systems, and will move an
existing /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia-scripts to /etc/pcmcia.
2.5. Site-specific configuration options
Card Services should automatically avoid allocating IO ports and
interrupts already in use by other standard devices. It will also
attempt to detect conflicts with unknown devices, but this is not
completely reliable. In some cases, you may need to explicitly
exclude resources for a device in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts.
Here are some resource settings for specific laptop types.
� On the AMS SoundPro, exclude irq 10.
� On some AMS TravelPro 5300 models, use memory 0xc8000-0xcffff.
� On the BMX 486DX2-66, exclude irq 5, irq 9.
� On the Chicony NB5, use memory 0xda000-0xdffff.
� On the Compaq Presario 1020, exclude port 0x2f8-0x2ff, irq 3, irq
5.
� On the HP Omnibook 4000C, exclude port 0x300-0x30f.
� On the Micron Millenia Transport, exclude irq 5, irq 9.
� On the NEC Versa M, exclude irq 9, port 0x2e0-2ff.
� On the NEC Versa P/75, exclude irq 5, irq 9.
� On the NEC Versa S, exclude irq 9, irq 12.
� On the NEC Versa 6000 series, exclude port 0x300-0x33f, irq 9, irq
10.
� On the ProStar 9200, Altima Virage, and Acquiline Hurricane
DX4-100, exclude irq 5, port 0x330-0x35f. Maybe use memory
0xd8000-0xdffff.
� On the Siemens Nixdorf SIMATIC PG 720C, use memory 0xc0000-0xcffff,
port 0x300-0x3bf.
� On the TI TravelMate 5000, use memory 0xd4000-0xdffff.
� On the Toshiba T4900 CT, exclude irq 5, port 0x2e0-0x2e8, port
0x330-0x338.
� On the Twinhead 5100, HP 4000, Sharp PC-8700 and PC-8900, exclude
irq 9 (sound), irq 12.
� On an MPC 800 Series, exclude irq 5, port 0x300-0x30f for the CD-
ROM.
Some PCMCIA controllers have optional features that may or may not be
implemented in a particular system. It is generally impossible for a
socket driver to detect if these features are implemented. Check the
man page for your driver to see what optional features may be enabled.
In a few cases, the probe command will be unable to determine your
controller type automatically. If you have a Halikan NBD 486 system,
it has a TCIC-2 controller at an unusual location: you'll need to edit
rc.pcmcia to load the tcic module, as well as setting the PCIC_OPTS
parameter to ``tcic_base=0x02c0''.
The low level socket drivers, tcic and i82365, have numerous bus
timing parameters that may need to be adjusted for systems with
particularly fast processors. Symptoms of timing problems include
card recognition problems, lock-ups under heavy loads, high error
rates, or poor device performance. Check the corresponding man pages
for more details, but here is a brief summary:
� Cirrus controllers have numerous configurable timing parameters.
The most important seems to be the cmd_time flag, which determines
the length of PCMCIA bus cycles. Fast 486 systems (i.e., DX4-100)
seem to often benefit from increasing this from 6 (the default) to
12 or 16.
� The Cirrus PD6729 PCI controller has the fast_pci flag, which
should be set if the PCI bus speed is greater than 25 MHz.
� For Vadem VG-468 controllers and Databook TCIC-2 controllers, the
async_clock flag changes the relative clocking of PCMCIA bus and
host bus cycles. Setting this flag adds extra wait states to some
operations. However, I have yet to hear of a laptop that needs
this.
� The pcmcia_core module has the cis_speed parameter for changing the
memory speed used for accessing a card's Card Information Structure
(CIS). On some systems with fast bus clocks, increasing this
parameter (i.e., slowing down card accesses) may be beneficial for
card recognition problems.
� This isn't a timing issue, but if you have more than one PCMCIA
controller in your system or extra sockets in a docking station,
the i82365 module should be loaded with the extra_sockets parameter
set to 1.
All these options should be configured by modifying the top of
/etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia. For example:
# Should be either i82365 or tcic
PCIC=i82365
# Put socket driver timing parameters here
PCIC_OPTS="cmd_time=12"
# Put pcmcia_core options here
CORE_OPTS="cis_speed=500"
Here are some timing settings for specific systems:
� On the ARM Pentium-90 or Midwest Micro Soundbook Plus, use
``freq_bypass=1 cmd_time=8''.
� On a Midwest Micro Soundbook Elite, use ``cmd_time=12''.
� On a Gateway Liberty, try ``cmd_time=16''.
On some systems using Cirrus controllers, including the NEC Versa M,
the BIOS puts the controller in a special suspended state at system
startup time. On these systems, the probe command will fail to find
any known PCMCIA controller. If this happens, edit
/etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia by hand as follows:
# Should be either i82365 or tcic
PCIC=i82365
# Put socket driver timing parameters here
PCIC_OPTS="wakeup=1"
2.6. Problems loading kernel modules
The configure script will normally ensure that the PCMCIA modules are
compatible with your kernel. So, module loading problems generally
indicate that the user has interfered with the normal installation
process in some way. Some module loading errors are sent directly to
the Linux console. Other errors are recorded in the system log file,
normally /usr/adm/messages or /var/log/messages. Depending on your
syslogd configuration, some messages may be written to other files,
but they will usually still be under /usr/adm or /var/log. To track
down a problem, be sure to check both locations, to pin down which
module is actually causing trouble.
Some of the PCMCIA modules require kernel services that may or may not
be present, depending on kernel configuration. For instance, the SCSI
card drivers require that the kernel be configured with SCSI support,
and the network drivers require a networking kernel. If a kernel
lacks a necessary feature, insmod may report undefined symbols and
refuse to load a module.
If insmod reports ``wrong version'' errors, it means that the module
was compiled for a different kernel version than your system is
actually running. This might occur if modules compiled on one machine
are copied to another machine with a different configuration, or if
the kernel is reconfigured after PCMCIA is installed.
Another source of module loading errors is when the modules and kernel
were compiled with different settings of CONFIG_MODVERSIONS. If a
module with version checking is loaded against a kernel without
version checking, insmod will complain about undefined symbols.
Finally, relatively recent binutils releases are incompatible with
older versions of the module utilities, and can cause module version
incompatibilities to be reported. The most common symptom is
complaints about ``gcc_compiled'' being undefined. If you get these
errors, upgrade to the latest module utilities, available from
<http://www.pi.se/blox/modules>.
2.7. Problems with the card status change interrupt
In most cases, the socket driver (i82365 or tcic) will automatically
probe and select an appropriate interrupt to signal card status
changes. The automatic interrupt probe doesn't work on some Intel-
compatible controllers, including Cirrus chips and the chips used in
some IBM ThinkPads. If a device is inactive at probe time, its
interrupt may also appear to be available. In these cases, the socket
driver may pick an interrupt that is used by another device.
With the i82365 and tcic drivers, the irq_mask option can be used to
limit the interrupts that will be tested. This mask limits the set of
interrupts that can be used by PCMCIA cards as well as for monitoring
card status changes. The cs_irq option can also be used to explicitly
set the interrupt to be used for monitoring card status changes.
If you can't find an interrupt number that works, there is also a
polled status mode: both i82365 and tcic will accept a
poll_interval=100 option, to poll for card status changes once per
second. This option should also be used if your system has a shortage
of interrupts available for use by PCMCIA cards. Especially for
systems with more than one PCMCIA controller, there is little point in
dedicating interrupts for monitoring card status changes.
All these options should be set in the PCIC_OPTS= line in either
/etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia or /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia, depending on your site
setup.
2.8. Memory window configuration problems
By default, the PCMCIA drivers use the address region 0xd0000-0xdffff
to access PCMCIA devices. This memory window is specified in
/etc/pcmcia/config.opts. If this address region is used by other
devices in your system, cards may not be identified correctly. With
chipsets that support it, conflicts can also result from memory
shadowing in this region. If you find that all your cards are always
misidentified as memory cards, verify that shadowing is disabled in
your system's hardware setup. As there is no reliable way to
automatically identify memory window conflicts, finding a good window
may require some experimentation. Some alternative windows to try are
0xd8000-0xdffff, 0xc0000-0xcffff, and 0xc8000-0xcffff.
If you have DOS PCMCIA drivers, you may be able to deduce what memory
region those drivers use. Note that DOS memory addresses are often
specified in ``segment'' form, which leaves off the final hex digit
(so an absolute address of 0xd0000 would be given as 0xd000). Be sure
to add the extra digit back when making changes to
/etc/pcmcia/config.opts.
2.9. Why don't you distribute PCMCIA binaries?
For me, distributing binaries is a significant hassle. It is
complicated because some features can only be selected at compile
time, and because the PCMCIA modules are somewhat dependent on having
the ``right'' kernel configuration. So, I would probably need to
distribute precompiled modules along with matching kernels. Beyond
this, the greatest need for precompiled modules is when installing
Linux on a clean system. This typically requires setting up PCMCIA so
that it can be used in the installation process for a particular Linux
distribution. Each Linux distribution has its own procedures, and it
is not feasible for me to provide boot and root disks for even just
the common combinations of drivers and distributions.
PCMCIA is now a part of many of the major Linux distributions,
including Red Hat, Caldera, Slackware, Yggdrasil, Craftworks, and
Nascent Technology.
2.10. Why is the PCMCIA package so darned big?
Well, first of all, it isn't actually that large. All the driver
modules together take up about 200K of disk space. The utility
programs add up to about 70K, and the stuff in /etc/pcmcia is about
30K. When running, the core PCMCIA modules take up 48K of system
memory. The cardmgr daemon will generally be swapped out except when
cards are inserted or removed. The total package size is not much
different from DOS Card Services implementations.
Compared to DOS ``point enablers'', this may still seem like a lot of
overhead, especially for people that don't plan on using many of the
features of PCMCIA, such as power management or hot swapping. Point
enablers can be tiny because they generally support only one or a
small set of cards, and also generally support a restricted set of
PCMCIA controllers. If someone were to write a genuinely ``generic''
modem enabler, it would end up incorporating much of the functionality
of Card Services, to handle cards from different vendors and the full
range of PCMCIA controller variants.
3. Usage and features
3.1. Tools for monitoring PCMCIA devices
The cardmgr daemon normally beeps when a card is inserted, and the
tone of the beeps indicates the status of the newly inserted card.
Two high beeps indicate the card was identified and configured
successfully. A high beep followed by a lower beep indicates that the
card was identified, but could not be configured for some reason. One
low beep indicates that the card could not be identified.
If the modules are all loaded correctly, the output of the lsmod
command should look like the following, with no cards inserted:
Module: #pages: Used by:
ds 2
i82365 3
pcmcia_core 7 [ds i82365]
All the PCMCIA modules and the cardmgr daemon send status messages to
the system log. This will usually be /var/log/messages or
/usr/adm/messages. This file should be the first place to look when
tracking down a problem. When submitting a bug report, always include
the contents of this file. If you are having trouble finding your
system messages, check /etc/syslogd.conf to see how different classes
of messages are handled.
Cardmgr also records some current device information for each socket
in /var/run/stab. Here is a sample /var/run/stab listing:
Socket 0: Adaptec APA-1460 SlimSCSI
0 scsi aha152x_cs 0 sda 8 0
0 scsi aha152x_cs 1 scd0 11 0
Socket 1: Serial or Modem Card
1 serial serial_cs 0 ttyS1 5 65
For the lines describing devices, the first field is the socket, the
second is the device class, the third is the driver name, the fourth
is used to number multiple devices associated with the same driver,
the fifth is the device name, and the final two fields are the major
and minor device numbers for this device (if applicable).
The cardctl command can be used to check the status of a socket, or to
see how it is configured. Here is an example of the output of the
``cardctl config'' command:
Socket 0:
Socket 1:
Vcc = 5.0, Vpp1 = 0.0, Vpp2 = 0.0
Card type is memory and I/O
IRQ 3 is dynamic shared, level mode, enabled
Speaker output is enabled
Function 0:
Config register base = 0x0800
Option = 0x63, status = 0x08
I/O window 1: 0x0280 to 0x02bf, auto sized
I/O window 2: 0x02f8 to 0x02ff, 8 bit
If you are running X, the cardinfo utility produces a graphical
display showing the current status of all PCMCIA sockets, similar in
content to ``cardctl config''.
3.2. Overview of the PCMCIA configuration scripts
Each PCMCIA device has an associated ``class'' that describes how it
should be configured and managed. Classes are associated with device
drivers in /etc/pcmcia/config. There are currently five IO device
classes (network, SCSI, cdrom, fixed disk, and serial) and three
memory device classes (FTL, memory, and pcmem). For each class, there
are two scripts in /etc/pcmcia/config: a main configuration script
(i.e., /etc/pcmcia/scsi for SCSI devices), and an options script
(i.e., /etc/pcmcia/scsi.opts). The main script for a device will be
invoked to configure that device when a card is inserted, and to shut
down the device when the card is removed. For cards with several
associated devices, the script will be invoked for each device.
The config scripts start by extracting some information about a device
from /var/run/stab. Each script constructs a ``device address'', that
uniquely describes the device it has been asked to configure, in the
ADDRESS variable. This is passed to the *.opts script, which should
return information about how a device at this address should be
configured. For some devices, the device address is just the socket
number. For others, it includes extra information that may be useful
in deciding how to configure the device. For example, network devices
pass their hardware ethernet address as part of the device address, so
the network.opts script could use this to select from several
different configurations.
The first part of all device addresses is the current PCMCIA
``scheme''. This parameter is used to support multiple sets of device
configurations based on a single external user-specified variable.
One use of schemes would be to have a ``home'' scheme, and a ``work''
scheme, which would include different sets of network configuration
parameters. The current scheme is selected using the cardctl command.
The default if no scheme is set is ``default''.
As a general rule, when configuring Linux for a laptop, PCMCIA devices
should only be configured from the PCMCIA device scripts. Do not try
to configure a PCMCIA device the same way you would configure a
permanently attached device.
3.3. PCMCIA network adapters
Linux ethernet-type network interfaces normally have names like eth0,
eth1, and so on. Token-ring adapters are handled similarly, however
they are named tr0, tr1, and so on. The ifconfig command is used to
view or modify the state of a network interface. A peculiarity of
Linux is that network interfaces do not have corresponding device
files under /dev, so don't be surprised when you can't find them.
When a PCMCIA ethernet card is detected, it will be assigned the first
free interface name, which will probably be eth0. Cardmgr will run
the /etc/pcmcia/network script to configure the interface.
Do not configure your PCMCIA ethernet card in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1,
since the card may not be present when this script is executed.
Comment out everything except the loopback stuff in rc.inet1. If your
system has an automatic network configuration procedure, you should
generally indicate that you do not have a network card installed.
Instead, edit the /etc/pcmcia/network.opts file to match your local
network setup. The network and network.opts scripts will be executed
only when your ethernet card is actually present.
The device address passed to network.opts consists of three comma-
separated fields: the scheme, the socket number, the device instance,
and the card's hardware ethernet address. The device instance is used
to number devices for cards that have several network interfaces, so
it will usually be 0. If you have several network cards used for
different purposes, one option would be to configure the cards based
on socket position, as in:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,0,*,*)
# definitions for network card in socket 0
;;
*,1,*,*)
# definitions for network card in socket 1
;;
esac
Alternatively, they could be configured using their hardware
addresses, as in:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,*,*,00:80:C8:76:00:B1)
# definitions for a D-Link card
;;
*,*,*,08:00:5A:44:80:01)
# definitions for an IBM card
esac
To automatically mount and unmount NFS filesystems, first add all
these filesystems to /etc/fstab, but include noauto in the mount
options. In network.opts, list the filesystem mount points in the
MOUNTS variable. It is especially important to use either cardctl or
cardinfo to shut down a network card when NFS mounts are configured
this way. It is not possible to cleanly unmount NFS filesystems if a
network card is simply ejected without warning.
In addition to the usual network configuration parameters, the
network.opts script can specify extra actions to be taken after an
interface is configured, or before an interface is shut down. If
network.opts defines a shell function called start_fn, it will be
invoked by the network script after the interface is configured, and
the interface name will be passed to the function as its first (and
only) argument. Similarly, if it is defined, stop_fn will be invoked
before shutting down an interface.
3.3.1. Transceiver selection
The transceiver type can be selected in network.opts using the IF_PORT
setting. This can either be a numeric value as in previous PCMCIA
releases, or a keyword identifying the transceiver type. All the
network drivers default to either autodetect the interface if
possible, or 10baseT otherwise. The ifport command can be used to
check or set the current transceiver type. For example:
# ifport eth0 10base2
#
# ifport eth0
eth0 2 (10base2)
Current releases of the 3c589 driver attempt to autodetect the network
connection, but this doesn't seem to be completely functional yet.
For autodetection to work, the network cable should be connected to
the card when the card is configured. Alternatively, once the network
is connected, you can force the driver to check the connection with:
ifconfig eth0 down up
3.3.2. Comments about specific cards
� With IBM CCAE and Socket EA cards, you need to pick the transceiver
type (10base2, 10baseT, AUI) when the network device is configured.
Make sure that the transceiver type reported in the system log
matches your connection.
� The drivers for SMC, Megahertz, Ositech, and 3Com cards should
autodetect the attached network type (10base2 or 10baseT). Setting
the transceiver type when the driver is loaded serves to define the
card's ``first guess''.
� The Farallon EtherWave is actually based on the 3Com 3c589, with a
special transceiver. Though the EtherWave uses 10baseT-style
connections, its transceiver requires that the 3c589 be configured
in 10base2 mode.
� If you have trouble with an IBM CCAE, NE4100, Thomas Conrad, or
Kingston adapter, try increasing the memory access time with the
mem_speed=# option to the pcnet_cs module. An example of how to do
this is given in the standard config.opts file. Try speeds of up
to 1000 (in nanoseconds).
� For the New Media Ethernet adapter, on some systems, it may be
necessary to increase the IO port access time with the io_speed=#
option when the pcmcia_core module is loaded. Edit CORE_OPTS in
the startup script to set this option.
� The multicast support in the New Media Ethernet driver is
incomplete. The latest driver will function with multicast
kernels, but will ignore multicast packets. Promiscuous mode
should work properly.
� The driver used by the IBM and 3Com token ring adapters seems to
behave very badly if the cards are not connected to a ring when
they get initialized. Always connect these cards to the net before
they are powered up.
� Newer Linksys and D-Link cards have a unique way of selecting the
transceiver type that isn't handled by the Linux drivers. Until I
can get some documentation from Linksys, the only workaround is to
boot DOS and use the vendor-supplied utility to set the
transceiver, then warm boot Linux.
3.3.3. Diagnosing problems with network adapters
� Is your card recognized as an ethernet card? Check the system log
and make sure that cardmgr identifies the card correctly and starts
up one of the network drivers. If it doesn't, your card might
still be usable if it is compatible with a supported card. This
will be most easily done if the card claims to be ``NE2000
compatible''.
� Is the card configured properly? If you are using a supported
card, and it was recognized by cardmgr, but still doesn't work,
there might be an interrupt or port conflict with another device.
Find out what resources the card is using (from the system log),
and try excluding these in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts to force the
card to use something different.
� If your card seems to be configured properly, but sometimes locks
up, particularly under high load, you may need to try changing your
socket driver timing parameters. See section ``2.3'' for more
information.
� If you get messages like ``network unreachable'' when you try to
access the network, then you have probably set up
/etc/pcmcia/network.opts incorrectly. On the other hand, mis-
configured cards will usually fail silently.
� To diagnose problems in /etc/pcmcia/network.opts, start by trying
to ping other systems on the same subnet using their IP addresses.
Then try to ping your gateway, and then machines on other subnets.
Ping machines by name only after trying these simpler tests.
� Make sure your problem is really a PCMCIA one. It may help to see
see if the card works under DOS with the vendor's drivers. Double
check your modifications to the /etc/pcmcia/network.opts script.
Make sure your drop cable, ``T'' jack, terminator, etc are working.
3.4. PCMCIA serial and modem devices
Linux serial devices are accessed via the /dev/cua* and /dev/ttyS*
special device files. The ttyS* devices are for incoming connections,
such as directly connected terminals. The cua* devices are for
outgoing connections, such as modems. Each physical serial port has
both a ttyS and a cua device file: it is up to you to pick the
appropriate device for your application. The configuration of a
serial device can be examined and modified with the setserial command.
When a PCMCIA serial or modem card is detected, it will be assigned to
the first available serial device slot. This will usually be
/dev/ttyS1 (cua1) or /dev/ttyS2 (cua2), depending on the number of
built-in serial ports. The ttyS* device is the one reported in
/var/run/stab. The default serial device option script,
/etc/pcmcia/serial.opts, will link the corresponding cua* device file
to /dev/modem as a convenience.
Do not try to use /etc/rc.d/rc.serial to configure a PCMCIA modem.
This script should only be used to configure non-removable devices.
Modify /etc/pcmcia/serial.opts if you want to do anything special to
set up your modem. Also, do not try to change the IO port and
interrupt settings of a PCMCIA serial device using setserial. This
would tell the serial driver to look for the device in a different
place, but would not change how the card hardware is actually
configured.
The device address passed to serial.opts has three comma-separated
fields: the first is the scheme, the second is the socket number, and
the third is the device instance. The device instance may take
several values for cards that support multiple serial ports, but for
single-port cards, it will always be 0. If you commonly use more than
one PCMCIA modem, you may want to specify different settings based on
socket position, as in:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,0,*)
# Options for modem in socket 0
;;
*,1,*)
# Options for modem in socket 1
;;
esac
If a PCMCIA modem is already configured when Linux boots, it may be
incorrectly identified as an ordinary built-in serial port. This is
harmless, however, when the PCMCIA drivers take control of the modem,
it will be assigned a different device slot. It is best to either
parse /var/run/stab or use /dev/modem, rather than expecting a PCMCIA
modem to always have the same device assignment.
If you configure your kernel to load the basic Linux serial port
driver as a module, you must edit /etc/pcmcia/config to indicate that
this module must be loaded. Edit the serial device entry to read:
device "serial_cs"
class "serial" module "char/serial", "serial_cs"
3.4.1. Diagnosing problems with serial devices
� Is your card recognized as a modem? Check the system log and make
sure that cardmgr identifies the card correctly and starts up the
serial_cs driver. If it doesn't, you may need to add a new entry
to your /etc/pcmcia/config file so that it will be identified
properly. See section ``3.6'' for details.
� Is the modem configured successfully by serial_cs? Again, check
the system log and look for messages from the serial_cs driver. If
you see ``register_serial() failed'', you may have an I/O port
conflict with another device. Another tip-off of a conflict is if
the device is reported to be an 8250; most modern PCMCIA modems
should be identified as 16550A UART's. If you think you're seeing
a port conflict, edit /etc/pcmcia/config.opts and exclude the port
range that was allocated for the modem.
� Is there an interrupt conflict? If the system log looks good, but
the modem just doesn't seem to work, try using setserial to change
the irq to 0, and see if the modem works. This causes the serial
driver to use a slower polled mode instead of using interrupts. If
this seems to fix the problem, it is likely that some other device
in your system is using the interrupt selected by serial_cs. You
should add a line to /etc/pcmcia/config.opts to exclude this
interrupt.
� If the modem seems to work only really, really slowly, this is an
almost certain indicator of an interrupt conflict.
� Make sure your problem is really a PCMCIA one. It may help to see
if the card works under DOS with the vendor's drivers. Also, don't
test the card with something complex like SLIP until you are sure
you can make simple connections. If simple things work but SLIP
does not, your problem is most likely with SLIP, not with PCMCIA.
3.5. PCMCIA SCSI adapters
All the currently supported PCMCIA SCSI cards are work-alikes of one
of the following ISA bus cards: the Qlogic, the Adaptec AHA-152X, or
the Future Domain TMC-16x0. The PCMCIA drivers are built by linking
some PCMCIA-specific code (in qlogic_cs.c, toaster_cs.c, or
fdomain_cs.c) with the normal Linux SCSI driver.
When a new SCSI host adapter is detected, the SCSI drivers will probe
for devices. Check the system log to make sure your devices are
detected properly. New SCSI devices will be assigned to the first
available SCSI device files. The first SCSI disk will be /dev/sda,
the first SCSI tape will be /dev/st0, and the first CD-ROM will be
/dev/scd0.
With 1.3.X kernels, the PCMCIA core drivers are able to find out from
the kernel which SCSI devices are connected to a card. They will be
listed in /var/run/stab, and the SCSI configuration script,
/etc/pcmcia/scsi, will be called once for each attached device, to
either configure or shut down that device. The default script does
not take any actions to configure SCSI devices, but will properly
unmount filesystems on SCSI devices when a card is removed.
With 1.2.X kernels, the PCMCIA drivers cannot automatically deduce
which devices are associated with a particular SCSI adapter. Instead,
if you have one normal SCSI device configuration, you may list these
devices in /etc/pcmcia/scsi.opts. For example, if you normally have a
SCSI disk and a CD-ROM, you would use:
# For 1.2 kernels: list of attached devices
SCSI_DEVICES="sda scd0"
The device addresses passed to scsi.opts are complicated, because of
the variety of things that can be attached to a SCSI adapter.
Addresses consist of either six or seven comma-separated fields: the
current scheme, the device type, the socket number, the SCSI channel,
ID, and logical unit number, and optionally, the partition number.
The device type will be ``sd'' for disks, ``st'' for tapes, ``sr'' for
CD-ROM devices, and ``sg'' for generic SCSI devices. For most setups,
the SCSI channel and logical unit number will be 0. For disk devices
with several partitions, scsi.opts will first be called for the whole
device, with a five-field address. The script should set the PARTS
variable to a list of partitions. Then, scsi.opts will be called for
each partition, with the longer seven-field addresses. For example,
here is a script for configuring a disk device at SCSI ID 3, with two
partitions, and a CD-ROM at SCSI ID 6:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,sd,*,0,3,0)
# This device has two partitions...
PARTS="1 2"
;;
*,sd,*,0,3,0,1)
# Options for partition 1:
# update /etc/fstab, and mount an ext2 fs on /usr1
DO_FSTAB="y" ; DO_FSCK="y" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
FSTYPE="ext2"
OPTS=""
MOUNTPT="/usr1"
;;
*,sd,*,0,3,0,2)
# Options for partition 2:
# update /etc/fstab, and mount an MS-DOS fs on /usr2
DO_FSTAB="y" ; DO_FSCK="y" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
FSTYPE="msdos"
OPTS=""
MOUNTPT="/usr2"
;;
*,sr,*,0,6,0)
# Options for CD-ROM at SCSI ID 6
PARTS=""
DO_FSTAB="y" ; DO_FSCK="n" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
FSTYPE="iso9660"
OPTS="ro"
MOUNTPT="/cdrom"
;;
esac
If your kernel does not have a top-level driver (disk, tape, etc) for
a particular SCSI device, then the device will not be configured by
the PCMCIA drivers. As a side effect, the device's name in
/var/run/stab will be something like ``sd#nnnn'' where ``nnnn'' is a
four-digit hex number. This happens when cardmgr is unable to
translate a SCSI device ID into a corresponding Linux device name.
It is possible to modularize the top-level SCSI drivers so that they
are only loaded when a PCMCIA SCSI adapter is detected. To do so, you
need to edit /etc/pcmcia/config to tell cardmgr which extra modules
need to be loaded when your adapter is configured. For example:
device "aha152x_cs"
class "scsi" module "scsi/scsi_mod", "scsi/sd_mod", "aha152x_cs"
would say to load the core SCSI module and the top-level disk driver
module before loading the regular PCMCIA driver module. The PCMCIA
Configure script will not automatically detect modularized SCSI
modules, so you will need use the manual configure option to enable
SCSI support.
Always turn on SCSI devices before powering up your laptop, or before
inserting the adapter card, so that the SCSI bus is properly
terminated when the adapter is configured. Also be very careful about
ejecting a SCSI adapter. Be sure that all associated SCSI devices are
unmounted and closed before ejecting the card. The best way to ensure
this is to use either cardctl or cardinfo to request card removal
before physically ejecting the card. For now, all SCSI devices should
be powered up before plugging in a SCSI adapter, and should stay
connected until after you unplug the adapter and/or power down your
laptop.
There is a potential complication when using these cards that does not
arise with ordinary ISA bus adapters. The SCSI bus carries a
``termination power'' signal that is necessary for proper operation of
ordinary passive SCSI terminators. PCMCIA SCSI adapters do not supply
termination power, so if it is required, an external device must
supply it. Some external SCSI devices may be configured to supply
termination power. Others, such as the Zip Drive and the Syquest EZ-
Drive, use active terminators that do not depend on it. In some
cases, it may be necessary to use a special terminator block such as
the APS SCSI Sentry 2, which has an external power supply. When
configuring your SCSI device chain, be aware of whether or not any of
your devices require or can provide termination power.
The Adaptec APA-460 SlimSCSI adapter is not supported. This card was
originally sold under the Trantor name, and when Adaptec merged with
Trantor, they continued to sell the Trantor card with an Adaptec
label. The APA-460 is not compatible with any existing Linux driver.
I'm not sure how hard it would be to write a driver; I don't think
anyone has been able to obtain the technical information from Adaptec.
The (unsupported) Trantor SlimSCSI can be identified by the following:
Trantor / Adaptec APA-460 SlimSCSI
FCC ID: IE8T460
Shipped with SCSIworks! driver software
The (supported) Adaptec SlimSCSI can be identified by the following:
Adaptec APA-1460 SlimSCSI
FCC ID: FGT1460
P/N: 900100
Shipped with EZ-SCSI driver software
3.6. PCMCIA memory cards
The default memory card startup script will create block and character
devices for accessing each partition on a memory card. There are two
memory card drivers. pcmem_cs, the older driver, works well for simple
static RAM cards. The newer driver, memory_cs, is mostly for direct
access to flash memory cards. Check the man pages for a detailed
description of how devices are named. Both block and character
devices are created. The block device is used for disk-like access
(creating and mounting filesystems, etc). The character device is for
"raw" unbuffered reads and writes at arbitrary locations.
With the FTL and ``new'' memory drivers, the device address passed to
ftl.opts and memory.opts consists of two fields: the socket number,
and the partition number. Common memory partitions are numbered
before attribute memory partitions. Generally, the only interesting
partition is partition 0 (the main common-memory partition, where data
is stored). Here is an example of a script that will automatically
mount flash memory cards based on which socket they are inserted into:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,0,0)
# Mount filesystem, but don't update /etc/fstab
DO_FSTAB="n" ; DO_FSCK="y" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
FSTYPE="ext2" ; OPTS=""
MOUNTPT="/ftl0"
;;
*,1,0)
# Mount filesystem, but don't update /etc/fstab
DO_FSTAB="n" ; DO_FSCK="y" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
FSTYPE="ext2" ; OPTS=""
MOUNTPT="/ftl1"
;;
esac
3.6.1. Using flash memory cards
To use a flash memory card as an ordinary disk-like block device,
first create a ``flash translation layer'' partition on the device
with the ftl_format command:
ftl_format -i /dev/mem0c0c
Note that this command accesses the card through the ``raw'' memory
card interface. Once formatted, the card can be accessed as an
ordinary block device via the ftl_cs driver. For example:
mke2fs /dev/ftl0
mount -t ext2 /dev/ftl0 /mnt
There are two major formats for flash memory cards: the ``flash
translation layer'' style, and the Microsoft Flash File System. The
FTL format is generally more flexible because it allows any ordinary
high-level filesystem (ext2, ms-dos, etc) to be used on a flash card
as if it were an ordinary disk device. The FFS is a complete new
filesystem type. Linux cannot currently handle cards formated with
FFS.
3.7. PCMCIA ATA/IDE card drives
ATA/IDE drive support requires a 1.3.72 or higher kernel. The PCMCIA-
specific part of the driver is fixed_cs. Be sure to use cardctl or
cardinfo to shut down an ATA/IDE card before ejecting it, as the
driver has not been made ``hot-swap-proof''.
The device addresses passed to fixed.opts consist of either three or
four fields: the current scheme, the socket number, the drive's serial
number, and an optional partition number. As with SCSI devices,
fixed.opts is first called for the entire device. If fixed.opts
returns a list of partitions in the PARTS variable, the script will
then be called for each partition.
Here is an example fixed.opts file to mount the first partition of any
ATA/IDE card on /mnt.
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,*,*)
PARTS="1"
;;
*,*,*,1)
DO_FSTAB="y" ; DO_FSCK="y" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
FSTYPE="msdos"
OPTS=""
MOUNTPT="/mnt"
;;
esac
Note that the default fixed.opts file has these lines but they are
commented out. If you wish, you can have separate configurations for
specific cards based on their serial numbers. To find out a drive's
serial number, use the ide_info utility. Then, part of fixed.opts
might look like:
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,*,Z4J60542)
# This is my DOS stuff
PARTS="1"
;;
*,*,Z4J60542,1)
DO_FSTAB="y" ; DO_FSCK="y" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
FSTYPE="msdos"
OPTS=""
MOUNTPT="/mnt"
;;
esac
3.8. Multifunction cards
Starting with the 1.3.73 Linux kernel, a single interrupt can be
shared by several drivers, such as the serial driver and an ethernet
driver. When using a multifunction card under a newer kernel, all
card functions can be used without loading and unloading drivers.
Simultaneous use of two card functions is ``tricky'' and various
hardware vendors have implemented interrupt sharing in their own
incompatible (and sometimes proprietary) ways. The drivers for some
cards (Ositech Jack of Diamonds, 3Com 3c562, Linksys) properly support
simultaneous access, but others (Megahertz in particular) do not.
Earlier kernels do not support interrupt sharing between different
device drivers, so it is not possible for the PCMCIA drivers to
configure this card for simultaneous ethernet and modem access. The
ethernet and serial drivers are both loaded automatically. However,
the ethernet driver ``owns'' the card interrupt by default. To use
the modem, you can unload the ethernet driver and reconfigure the
serial port by doing something like:
ifconfig eth0 down
rmmod 3c589_cs
setserial /dev/modem autoconfig auto_irq
setserial /dev/modem
The second setserial should verify that the port has been configured
to use the interrupt previously used by the ethernet driver.
3.9. When is it safe to insert or eject a PCMCIA card?
In theory, you can insert and remove PCMCIA cards at any time.
However, it is a good idea not to eject a card that is currently being
used by an application program. Kernels older than 1.1.77 would often
lock up when serial/modem cards were ejected, but this should be fixed
now.
3.10. Card Services and Advanced Power Management
Card Services can be compiled with support for APM (Advanced Power
Management) if you've installed this package on your system. APM is
incorporated into 1.3.46 and later kernels. It is currently being
maintained by Rick Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu), and APM tools can be
obtained from ftp.cs.unc.edu in /pub/users/faith/linux. The PCMCIA
modules will automatically be configured for APM if a compatible
version is detected on your system.
Without resorting to APM, you can do ``cardctl suspend'' before
suspending your laptop, and ``cardctl resume'' after resuming, to
properly shut down and restart your PCMCIA cards. This will not work
with a PCMCIA modem that is in use, because the serial driver isn't
able to save and restore the modem operating parameters.
APM seems to be unstable on some systems. If you experience trouble
with APM and PCMCIA on your system, try to narrow down the problem to
one package or the other before reporting a bug.
Some drivers, notably the PCMCIA SCSI drivers, cannot recover from a
suspend/resume cycle. When using a PCMCIA SCSI card, use ``cardctl
eject'' prior to suspending the system.
3.11. How do I turn off a PCMCIA card without ejecting it?
Use either the cardctl or cardinfo command. ``cardctl suspend #''
will suspend one socket, and turn off its power. The corresponding
resume command will wake up the card in its previous state.
3.12. How do I unload the PCMCIA drivers?
To unload the entire PCMCIA package, invoke rc.pcmcia with:
/etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia stop
This script will take several seconds to run, to give all client
drivers time to shut down gracefully. If a PCMCIA device is currently
in use, the shutdown will be incomplete, and some kernel modules may
not be unloaded. To avoid this, use ``cardctl eject'' to shut down
all sockets before invoking rc.pcmcia. The exit status of the cardctl
command will indicate if any sockets could not be shut down.
4. Advanced topics
4.1. Resource allocation for PCMCIA devices
In theory, it should not really matter which interrupt is allocated to
which device, as long as two devices are not configured to use the
same interrupt. In /etc/pcmcia/config.opts you'll find a place for
excluding interrupts that are used by non-PCMCIA devices.
Similarly, there is no way to directly specify the I/O addresses for a
PCMCIA card to use. The /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file allows you to
specify ranges of ports available for use by all PCMCIA devices, or to
exclude ranges that conflict with other devices.
After modifying /etc/pcmcia/config.opts, you can restart cardmgr with
``kill -HUP''.
The interrupt used to monitor card status changes is chosen by the
low-level socket driver module (i82365 or tcic) before cardmgr parses
/etc/pcmcia/config, so it is not affected by changes to this file. To
set this interrupt, use the cs_irq= option when the socket driver is
loaded, by setting the PCIC_OPTS variable in /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia.
All the client card drivers have a parameter called irq_mask for
specifying which interrupts they may try to allocate. Each bit of
irq_mask corresponds to one irq line: bit 0 is irq 0, bit 1 is irq 1,
and so on. So, a mask of 0x1200 would correspond to irq 9 and irq 12.
To limit a driver to use only one specific interrupt, its irq_mask
should have only one bit set. These driver options should be set in
your /etc/pcmcia/config file. For example:
device "serial_cs"
module "serial_cs" opts "irq_mask=0x1100"
...
would specify that the serial driver should only use irq 8 or irq 12.
Regardless of irq_mask settings, Card Services will never allocate an
interrupt that is already in use by another device, or an interrupt
that is excluded in the config file.
4.2. How can I have separate device setups for home and work?
This is fairly easy using PCMCIA ``scheme'' support. Use two
configuration schemes, called ``home'' and ``work''. Here is an
example of a network.opts script with scheme-specific settings:
case "$ADDRESS" in
work,*,*,*)
# definitions for network card in work scheme
...
;;
home,*,*,*|default,*,*,*)
# definitions for network card in home scheme
...
;;
esac
The first part of a PCMCIA device address is always the configuration
scheme. In this example, the second ``case'' clause will select for
both the ``home'' and ``default'' schemes. So, if the scheme is unset
for any reason, it will default to the ``home'' setup.
Now, to choose between the two sets of settings, run either:
cardctl scheme home
or
cardctl scheme work
The cardctl command does the equivalent of shutting down all your
cards and restarting them. The command can be safely executed whether
or not the PCMCIA system is loaded, but the command may fail if you
are using other PCMCIA devices at the time (even if their
configurations are not explicitly dependant on the scheme setting).
To find out the current PCMCIA scheme setting, run:
cardctl scheme
4.3. Booting from a PCMCIA device
Having the root filesystem on a PCMCIA device is tricky because the
Linux PCMCIA system is not designed to be linked into the kernel. Its
core components, the loadable kernel modules and the user mode cardmgr
daemon, depend on an already running system. The kernel's ``initrd''
facility works around this requirement by allowing Linux to boot using
a temporary ram disk as a minimal root image, load drivers, and then
re-mount a different root filesystem. The temporary root can
configure PCMCIA devices and then re-mount a PCMCIA device as root.
Some Linux distributions will allow installation to a device connected
to a PCMCIA SCSI adapter, as an unintended side-effect of their
support for installs from PCMCIA SCSI CD-ROM devices. However, at
present, no Linux installation tools support configuring an
appropriate ``initrd'' to boot Linux with a PCMCIA root filesystem.
Setting up a system with a PCMCIA root thus requires that you use
another Linux system to create the ``initrd'' image. If another Linux
system is not available, another option would be to temporarily
install a minimal Linux setup on a non-PCMCIA drive, create an initrd
image, and then reinstall to the PCMCIA target.
The Linux Bootdisk-HOWTO has some general information about setting up
boot disks but nothing specific to initrd. The main initrd document
is included with recent kernel source code distributions, in
linux/Documentation/initrd.txt. Before beginning, you should read
this document. A familiarity with lilo is also helpful. Using initrd
also requires that you have a kernel compiled with CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM
and CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD enabled.
4.3.1. The pcinitrd helper script
The pcinitrd script creates a basic initrd image for booting with a
PCMCIA root partition. The image includes a minimal directory
heirarchy, a handful of device files, a few binaries, shared
libraries, and a set of PCMCIA driver modules. When invoking
pcinitrd, you specify the driver modules that you want to be included
in the image. The core PCMCIA components, pcmcia_core and ds, are
automatically included.
As an example, say that your laptop uses an i82365-compatible PCMCIA
host controller, and you want to boot Linux with the root filesystem
on a hard drive attached to an Adaptec SlimSCSI adapter. You could
create an appropriate initrd image with:
pcinitrd -v initrd pcmcia/i82365.o pcmcia/aha152x.o
To customize the initrd startup sequence, you could mount the image
using the ``loopback'' device with a command like:
mount -o loop -t ext2 initrd /mnt
and then edit the linuxrc script. The PCMCIA configuration files will
be installed under /etc in the image, and can also be customized. See
the man page for pcinitrd for more information.
4.3.2. Creating an initrd boot floppy
After creating an image with pcinitrd, you can create a boot floppy by
copying the kernel, the compressed initrd image, and a few support
files for lilo to a clean floppy. In the following example, we assume
that the desired PCMCIA root device is /dev/sda1:
mke2fs /dev/fd0
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/etc /mnt/boot /mnt/dev
cp -a /dev/fd0 /dev/sda1 /mnt/dev
cp [kernel-image] /mnt/vmlinuz
gzip < [initrd-image] > /mnt/initrd
Create /mnt/etc/lilo.conf with the contents:
boot=/dev/fd0
compact
image=/vmlinuz
label=linux
initrd=/initrd
read-only
root=/dev/sda1
Finally, invoke lilo with:
lilo -r /mnt
When lilo is invoked with -r, it performs all actions relative to the
specified alternate root directory. The reason for creating the
device files under /mnt/dev was that lilo will not be able to use the
files in /dev when it is running in this alternate-root mode.
4.3.3. Installing an initrd image on a non-Linux drive
One common use of the initrd facility would be on systems where the
internal hard drive is dedicated to another operating system. The
Linux kernel and initrd image can be placed in a non-Linux partition,
and lilo or LOADLIN can be set up to boot Linux from these images.
Assuming that you have a kernel has been configured for the
appropriate root device, and an initrd image created on another
system, the easiest way to get started is to boot Linux using LOADLIN,
as:
LOADLIN <kernel> initrd=<initrd-image>
Once you can boot Linux on your target machine, you could then install
lilo to allow booting Linux directly. For example, say that /dev/hda1
is the non-Linux target partition and /mnt can be used as a mount
point. First, create a subdirectory on the target for the Linux
files:
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/linux
cp [kernel-image] /mnt/linux/vmlinuz
cp [initrd-image] /mnt/linux/initrd
In this example, say that /dev/sda1 is the desired Linux root
partition, a SCSI hard drive mounted via a PCMCIA SCSI adapter. To
install lilo, create a lilo.conf file with the contents:
boot=/dev/hda
map=/mnt/linux/map
compact
image=/mnt/linux/vmlinuz
label=linux
root=/dev/sda1
initrd=/mnt/linux/initrd
read-only
other=/dev/hda1
table=/dev/hda
label=windows
The boot= line says to install the boot loader in the master boot
record of the specified device. The root= line identifies the desired
root filesystem to be used after loading the initrd image, and may be
unnecessary if the kernel image is already configured this way. The
other= section is used to describe the other operating system
installed on /dev/hda1.
To install lilo in this case, use:
lilo -C lilo.conf
Note that in this case, the lilo.conf file uses absolute paths that
include /mnt. I did this in the example because the target filesystem
may not support the creation of Linux device files for the boot= and
root= options.
5. Dealing with unsupported cards
5.1. Configuring unrecognized cards
Assuming that your card is supported by an existing driver, all that
needs to be done is to add an entry to /etc/pcmcia/config to tell
cardmgr how to identify the card, and which driver(s) need to be
linked up to this card. Check the man page for pcmcia for more
information about the config file format. If you insert an unknown
card, cardmgr will normally record some identification information in
the system log that can be used to construct the config entry.
Here is an example of how cardmgr will report an unsupported card in
/usr/adm/messages.
cardmgr[460]: unsupported card in socket 1
cardmgr[460]: version info: "MEGAHERTZ", "XJ2288", "V.34 PCMCIA MODEM"
The corresponding entry in /etc/pcmcia/config would be:
card "Megahertz XJ2288 V.34 Fax Modem"
version "MEGAHERTZ", "XJ2288", "V.34 PCMCIA MODEM"
bind "serial_cs"
You can use ``*'' to match strings that don't need to match exactly,
like version numbers. When making new config entries, be careful to
copy the strings exactly, preserving case and blank spaces. Also be
sure that the config entry has the same number of strings as are
reported in the log file.
After editing /etc/pcmcia/config, you can signal cardmgr to reload the
file with:
kill -HUP `cat /var/run/cardmgr.pid`
If you do set up an entry for a new card, please send me a copy so
that I can include it in the standard config file.
5.2. Adding support for an NE2000-compatible ethernet card
First, see if the card is already recognized by cardmgr. Some cards
not listed in SUPPORTED.CARDS are actually OEM versions of cards that
are supported. If you find a card like this, let me know so I can add
it to the list.
If your card is not recognized, follow the instructions in section
``3.6'' to create a config entry for your card, but bind the card to
the memory card driver, pcmem_cs for now. Restart cardmgr to use the
new updated config file.
You will need to know your card's hardware ethernet address. This
address is a series of six two-digit hex numbers, often printed on the
card itself. If it is not printed on the card, you may be able to use
a DOS driver to display the address. In any case, once you know it,
run:
dd if=/dev/pcmem0a count=20 | od -Ax -t x1
and search the output for your address. Record the hex offset of the
first byte of the address. Now, edit modules/pcnet_cs.c and find the
hw_info structure. You'll need to create a new entry for your card.
The first field is a descriptive name. The next field is the offset
multiplied by two. The next three fields are the first three bytes of
the hardware address. The final field contains some flags for
specific card features; to start, try setting it to 0.
After editing pcnet_cs.c, compile and install the new module. Edit
/etc/pcmcia/config again, and change the card binding from pcmem_cs to
pcnet_cs. Follow the instructions for reloading the config file, and
you should be all set. Please send me copies of your new hw_info and
config entries.
If you can't find your card's hardware address in the hex dump, as a
method of last resort, it is possible to ``hardwire'' the address when
the pcnet_cs module is initialized. Edit /etc/pcmcia/config and add a
hw_addr= option, like so:
module "pcnet_cs" opts "hw_addr=0x00,0x80,0xc8,0x01,0x02,0x03"
Substitute your own card's hardware address in the appropriate spot,
of course.
5.3. PCMCIA floppy interface cards
The PCMCIA floppy interface used in the Compaq Aero and a few other
laptops is not yet supported by this package. The snag in supporting
the Aero floppy is that the Aero seems to use a customized PCMCIA
controller to support DMA to the floppy. Without knowing exactly how
this is done, there isn't any way to implement support under Linux.
If the floppy adapter card is present when an Aero is booted, the Aero
BIOS will configure the card, and Linux will identify it as a normal
floppy drive. When the Linux PCMCIA drivers are loaded, they will
notice that the card is already configured and attached to a Linux
driver, and this socket will be left alone. So, the drive can be used
if it is present at boot time, but the card is not hot swappable.
5.4. What's up with support for Xircom cards?
For a long time, Xircom cards were not supported because Xircom had a
company policy of not disclosing technical information about their
cards. This has changed, but Xircom ethernet cards are still
unsupported, because no one has written a driver. Here is Xircom's
statement:
______________________________________________________________________
Tracking #269248
There are no drivers currently. There has been a great request for
this type of driver. After many letters, the marketing team has
created a way for freeware users to gain access to the information
needed to create their own drivers. If you are interested in creating
you own driver fax your request for information to Carin DeGorff at
(805)376-9311.
Should you have any further questions, Please don't hesitate to
contact us again.
Please send all correspondences to CS@XIRCOM.COM, all others will be
forwarded resulting in a longer reply time!
______________________________________________________________________
The Xircom CreditCard Ethernet+Modem II card can be used as a modem
under Linux, with no special configuration.
I've set up a HyperNews forum specifically for discussion of Xircom
driver development, at
http://hyper.stanford.edu/HyperNews/get/pcmcia/xircom.html.
6. Debugging tips and programming information
6.1. How can I submit a helpful bug report?
The best way to submit bug reports is to use the HyperNews message
lists on the Linux PCMCIA information site. That way, other people
can see current problems (and fixes or workarounds, if available).
Here are some things that should be included in all bug reports:
� Your system type, and the output of the probe command.
� What PCMCIA cards you are using.
� Your Linux kernel version, and PCMCIA driver version.
� Any changes you've made to the startup files in /etc/pcmcia, or to
the PCMCIA startup script.
� All PCMCIA-related messages in your system log file.
Before submitting a bug report, please check to make sure that you are
using an up-to-date copy of the driver package. While it is somewhat
gratifying to read bug reports for things I've already fixed, it isn't
a particularly constructive use of my time.
If your problem involves a kernel fault, the register dump from the
fault is only useful if you can track down the fault address, EIP. If
it is in the main kernel, look up the address in System.map to
identify the function at fault. If the fault is in a loadable module,
it is a bit harder to trace. With the current module tools, ``ksyms
-m'' will report the base address of each loadable module. Pick the
module that contains the EIP address, and subtract its base address
from EIP to get an offset inside that module. Then, run gdb on that
module, and look up the offset with the list command. This will only
work if you've compiled that module with -g to include debugging
information.
If you do not have web access, bug reports can be sent to me at
dhinds@hyper.stanford.edu. However, I prefer that bug reports be
posted to my web site, so that they can be seen by others.
6.2. Low level PCMCIA debugging aids
The PCMCIA modules contain a lot of conditionally-compiled debugging
code. Most of this code is under control of the PCMCIA_DEBUG
preprocessor define. If this is undefined, debugging code will not be
compiled. If set to 0, the code is compiled but inactive. Larger
numbers specify increasing levels of verbosity. Each module built
with PCMCIA_DEBUG defined will have an integer parameter, pc_debug,
that controls the verbosity of its output. This can be adjusted when
the module is loaded, so output can be controlled on a per-module
basis without recompiling.
There are a few debugging tools in the debug_tools/ subdirectory of
the PCMCIA distribution. The dump_tcic and dump_i365 utilities
generate complete register dumps of the PCMCIA controllers, and decode
a lot of the register information. They are most useful if you have
access to a datasheet for the corresponding controller chip. The
dump_tuples utility lists a card's CIS (Card Information Structure),
and decodes some of the important bits. And the dump_cisreg utility
displays a card's local configuration registers.
The pcmem_cs memory card driver is also sometimes useful for
debugging. It can be bound to any PCMCIA card, and does not interfere
with other drivers. It can be used to directly access any card's
attribute memory or common memory.
6.3. How do I write a Card Services driver for a new card?
The Linux PCMCIA Programmer's Guide is the best documentation for the
Linux PCMCIA interface. The latest version is always available from
hyper.stanford.edu in /pub/pcmcia/doc, or on the web at
http://hyper.stanford.edu/HyperNews/get/pcmcia/home.html.
For devices that are close relatives of normal ISA devices, you'll
probably be able to use parts of existing Linux drivers. In some
cases, the biggest stumbling block will be modifying an existing
driver so that it can handle adding and removing devices after boot
time. Of the current drivers, the memory card driver is the only
``self-contained'' driver that does not depend on other parts of the
Linux kernel to do most of the dirty work.
I've written a skeleton driver with lots of comments that explains a
lot of how a driver communicates with Card Services; you'll find this
in the PCMCIA source distribution in modules/skeleton.c.