Last update: 26 March 2006.
This howto describes in short how to change your system to work with the new pcmciautils instead of the old cardmgr.
Kernels since 2.6.13-rc1 do not require the cardmgr daemon anymore. In those newer kernel the pcmcia bus acts almost as any other bus with full /sbin/hotplug support. Old style cardmgr setups should still work if the kernel is configured correctly. But be aware that the ioctl for PCMCIA will be removed in the near future.
The change to be /sbin/hotplug capable means that the normal /etc/init.d/pcmcia script is not required any more and in fact only hurts as it starts cardmgr. To use the new pcmciautils it is a requirement that cardmgr is not started.
When reading the pcmciautils howto you see that STARTUP option mentioned. What does it do again? It controls the setup of a dynamic resource database needed for some sockets. The resource database tells the PCMCIA layer what IO port and what IO memory are usable for PCMCIA cards. In case the database is dynamic, it needs to be setup before any cards can be used. The /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file contains the neccessary configuration.
In old setups it is cardmgr that parses that file and tells the kernel what resources to use. In case of pcmciautils it's the pcmcia-socket-startup tool which is built and installed when the STARTUP option is set. The tool itself is run from the hotplug script pcmcia_socket.agent whenever a new socket is registered with the pcmcia module. This means that pcmcia-socket-startup does not need to be run manually.
You should have read the pcmciautils howto already. Again in short:
We don't want cardmgr. For setups with a PCI PCMCIA/Cardbus controller the easiest thing to do is to make sure /etc/init.d/pcmcia does nothing. Either make sure it does not start up, or (if you want to use older kernels as well) add the following snippet to the beginning of /etc/init.d/pcmcia (after the #!/bin/sh line of course):
KVERREL=`uname -r`
KVER=${KVERREL%-*}
KVER_MAJOR=${KVER%.*}
KVER_MINOR=${KVER##*.}
if [ "$KVER_MAJOR" == "2.6" ]; then
# kernel 2.6.13-rc1 and higher have pcmcia via /sbin/hotplug
if [ $KVER_MINOR -ge 13 ]; then
# uncomment the following line if the driver for your
# controller is not auto-loaded. or if you want to be
# able to say /etc/init.d/pcmcia stop
#/etc/init.d/pcmcia-new $1
exit 0
fi
fi
This will make sure the init script does nothing for newer kernel and works normally on older kernels.
If you have a socket controller where the module cannot be loaded automatically by hotplug, uncomment the line in the above code snipped and make sure you have the /etc/init.d/pcmcia-new script around which should look like this:
#!/bin/sh
# set this to the driver to use, one of:
# yenta_socket, i82365, i82092, pd6792, tcic, etc.
DRIVER=yenta_socket
DRIVER_OPTS=
case "$1" in
start)
modprobe $DRIVER $DRIVER_OPTS > /dev/null 2>&1
modprobe pcmcia > /dev/null 2>&1 # just in case it's not auto-loaded
;;
stop)
pccardctl eject
MODULES=`lsmod | grep "pcmcia " | awk '{print $4}' | tr , ' '`
for i in $MODULES ; do
rmmod $i > /dev/null 2>&1
done
rmmod pcmcia > /dev/null 2>&1
rmmod $DRIVER > /dev/null 2>&1
rmmod rsrc_nonstatic > /dev/null 2>&1
rmmod pcmcia_core > /dev/null 2>&1
;;
esac
( you can find this script in doc/pcmcia-new.sh in the pcmciautils package)
Make sure you set the DRIVER (and maybe DRIVER_OPTS) variable to the right socket driver. If yenta_socket doesn't work look up the config file from your distro. Look at the PCIC variable and PCIC_OPTS.
If you don't know where to find it, you should look at the init script. Maybe it's even in there directly.
The file system right for the script should be right as well:
chmod 755 /etc/init.d/pcmcia-new
To have support for 16-bit cards you need the pcmcia module loaded. Since the other modules do not depend on this one it is not loaded automatically. To make sure the pcmcia module is loaded right after pcmcia_core, add the following line to /etc/modprobe.conf
install pcmcia_core /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install pcmcia_core; /sbin/modprobe pcmcia
Make sure hotplug works correctly. Most distros have a /etc/init.d/hotplug script which should be loaded at boot time. For most laptops the the socket driver is yenta_socket. If it is not loaded after boot it means that hotplug is not working correctly. Reasons for the driver not loaded include the /etc/hotplug/blacklist file or some other list that prevents the driver being loaded. eg. Conectiva Linux 10 does not load PCI modules per default, but only modules that are listed in /etc/hotplug/pci.whitelist.
If your socket driver can be loaded via hotplug (PCI socket or detected by PnP or whatever) and everything is ok, yenta_socket (or another socket driver), pcmcia, pcmcia_core and rsrc_nonstatic (not for all socket drivers) should be loaded after booting. Modules for inserted pcmcia cards should be loaded as well.