# PCMCIA cardmgr locks system

## mahdi

I've found a couple postings on this but none of the solutions seems to work for me. I have a Dell 600m and am trying to get the Intel PRO/wireless 2100 card recognized so I can use the Linuxant driverloader (works great normally)

I had everything working before I had an unfortunate re-partitioning accedent (blasted the wrong partition!) so I had to re-load. Odd part is, I'm using the same kernel but maybe I missed some options this time? I've tried all the suggestions from https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=123713&highlight=pcmcia+hangs, which worked for them on a simular laptop.

I am not getting any error messages when I start pcmcia, it only hangs. /var/log/messages does not show any errors from this (but the system is completely locked and requires a hard boot)

I don't get any devices listed under /proc for pci, but can find the cardbus.

Any ideas? I've been stumped on this for days now

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## mahdi

more on this...

I've compiled kernel-2.6.1 with all the PCMICA as modules (I've also tried it without hoping that the pcmica-cs drivers would pick up, nothing) here's what I can see as it dies

# /etc/init.d/pcmcia start

* 'modprobe i82365' failed

* Trying alternative PCIC driver: yenta_socket

*starting pcmcia...

then, toast, nothing, everything is dead.

looking into the failed modprobe and running it manually I get

FATAL: Error inserting i82365 (/lib/modules/2.6.1/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/i82365.ko): No such device

ls /lib/modules/2.6.1/kernel/drivers/pcmcia/i82365.ko

ds.ko i82092.ko i82365.ko pcmcia_core.ko tcic.ko yenta_socket.ko

lsmod shows that the yenta_socket is loaded

I don't know if I really need this though for the wireless to work. The card is a miniPCI so it should be picked up in the pci listings

scanpci seems to see it but doesn't know what it is "Intel Corp. Device unknown"

I'm going to install the gentoo-sources and and see if that works, still nice to have the speedstep support in the 2.6...

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## mahdi

Nope, the 2.4.22-gentoo-r5 did the same thing...so it might not be the kernel (and wow, the 2.4 is much slower then the 2.6)

Any ideas?

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## li1_getoo

see if it works without using pcmcia [ rc-update del pcmcia boot]

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## mahdi

Yes, I've removed it from boot and it boots fine.

But starting the pcmcia manually will cause the hang

I've done some digging around and I'm not very experienced with the 2.6 kernel, but here's something

with the 2.4 kernel I can cat /proc/pci and get a full listing of the wireless card, but with 2.6 it doesn't have the same listings anymore for anything...did this move? If so I have not been able to find it.

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## mahdi

Ah, it has moved...to lspci (RTFM  :Razz: )

Also didn't have the 'make comprehensable' option checked below using the legecy /proc/pci

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## R!tman

Strange problem: Try this. It works for me.

```
<*> Support for Hotpluggable devices

<M> PCMCIA Support

<M> Yenta Support

<*> Wireless LAN (non-hamradio)

<M> Cisco/Aironet... 
```

You will have to change the Aironet part according to your hardware. Leave  i82365 out, the normal PCMCIA cards are all supported by yenta.

I also did 

```
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge pcmcia-cs
```

for my wireless card to work.

Maybe the correct version for 2.6-kernels of pcmcia-cs is not marked anymore. I do not know which version I have, I am not in reach of my notebook at the moment.

Let me know if the problem persists.

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## mahdi

That gave me version 3.2.7 (not sure if that is a different version, but it did grab a new one)

Still didn't help  :Smile: 

Compiled the kernel with the options you stated (minus the aironet change, the PRO/Wireless is not technically usable in Linux right now, only through the NDIS wrappers. Intel is claiming to be close to releasing a binary driver soon...but that's what they said last year)

Still failed with the same message, it really wants to load that i82365 module

I might not need pcmcia for what I want, I'm going to send the diagnostic info to Linuxant and see what they can find. Everything looks right and loads ok, it just can't see the wireless card for some reason

EDIT

Yes, it looks like a problem with the Driverloader and the 2.6 kernel, I have Fedora 2 test on another partition and it has the same problem with loading the device (but the whole pcmica locking problem is still weird)

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## R!tman

Maybe you have i82365 in your modules.autoload. Remove this. 

I hope you did not only "make" your kernel, but also "make modules_install".

You could also do a "modules-update" before rebooting.

One thing I do not unterstand: Do you get the error only when you do 

```
/etc/init.d/pcmcia start
```

with your wireless card inserted?

Or also if the card is not inserted?

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## mahdi

Turns out I really don't need the PCMCIA for the wireless card (it's a miniPCI so it uses a seperate BUS alltogether)

I wasn't able to figure out why the system halts when the cardmgr is activated though.

So to answer your questions R!tman, there is no PCMCIA card inserted when I run "/etc/init.d/pcmcia start"

I never see any errors, the system just halts and no messages are logged about the even.

I'm able to boot the system without the cardmgr, and everything else runs great. It's difficult to say what could be causing the problem as it happened with the 2.4.22 kernel and the 2.6.1 (it wasn't a problem before I reinstalled though, which is odd)

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## R!tman

Ok, at least you get your wireless working then. 

But I have no idea what is causing the pcmcia lockup. In my opinion it sounds like a kernel issue. 

So, if I were you, I would compile several kernels, where each has other pcmica options. Maybe one of them works...

Have you already considered a hardware damage? Ok, this should not be the case, but it would be a simple reason for the strange lockup.

Maybe it is a BIOS issue. Have you made a BIOS-update between the new and old gentoo installation? Is pcmcia enabled in your BIOS?

Sorry, I am running out of ideas. Post if you got new information.

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## z_kill

There might be address ranges that you need to exclude from PCMCIA's use.  For a Thinkpad 600 there are quite a few.  If you hunt around the web a little you might find some address ranges you need to exclude.  You can set these in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts (Careful! Make a backup of your original file first, it will save you time, this is the voice of experience  :Razz:  )  On thing you might try is to add, exclude irq 4 to the file.  Some laptop systems don't share the serial port interrupt nicely with other resources.  Good Luck!

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## mahdi

R!tman, I've tried many different kernels all with the same results

z_kill, that sounds most likely the problem...knowing how messed up Dell gets with their hardware.

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## li1_getoo

i dont use pcmcia-cs , i bring my card up with   "wireless-tools "

depends on ur card , but that might help ya  :Smile: 

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## R!tman

I did not know that pcmcia-cs was not needed for wireless to run. I will try unmerging it and get my cisco aironet card to work with wireless-tools only.

But I find this rather strange...

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## jpeeters

See: http://holbrooks.org/linux/delli8k/

In the file "/etc/pcmcia/config.opts", change the line "include port 0x100-0x4ff, port 0x800-0x8ff, port 0xc00-0xcff" to "include port 0x100-0x4ff, port 0xc00-0xcff"

this made it work for my dell d600 laptop!

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## dscherger

That change to config.opts also worked for me and I had pretty much the exact same symptoms as you have... it seems to me that my logs or the cardmgr or something showed that it did get to probing just before hanging up.

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## recoco.zhang

 *jpeeters wrote:*   

> See: http://holbrooks.org/linux/delli8k/
> 
> In the file "/etc/pcmcia/config.opts", change the line "include port 0x100-0x4ff, port 0x800-0x8ff, port 0xc00-0xcff" to "include port 0x100-0x4ff, port 0xc00-0xcff"
> 
> this made it work for my dell d600 laptop!

 

to mahdi,it seem that it is a problem of pcmcia.modify your pcmcia config.opst as above.it should work fine.

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## mattspierce

My system is locking hard when a card is inserted.  After building my 2.6.5 kernel, PCMCIA was not working so I started poking around.  It worked with my previous kernel 2.6.3   You can modprobe the yenta-socket module no problem.  The system will load Cardmgr if there is no PCMCIA card inserted, but as soon as a card is inserted it will lock the system.  If a card is already present it will lock up.  I've build the kernel with and without ACPI support and that did not affect the issue.  I tried to update my pcmcia-cs with the commande ACCEPT_KEYWORD="~x86" emerge pcmcia.  Messages get the following error if ACPI is enabled.  "date time machinename spurious 8259a interupt: IRQ7"   I have tried the suggestion about modifying /etc/pcmcia/config.opts, but it did not help.  I wish I could give you more to work with, but after card insertion there is nothing else logged that I know to look for.  Removing the card doesn't fix the problem.  Also after powering down, I get dumped in the bios configuration after powering back up.   I'm useing an HP XE3 GC  BIOS 1.65.  If yall like I can put my kernal config up.  I'm tyring it with APM turned off and ACPI on, just to see if that helps.  Thanks in advance.

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## EfentharWireless

Hi, 

have been having problems with pcmcia-cs myself, similar to those previously described..

I use a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4280, and pcmcia worked fine in other dists..

Now though.. 

If pcmcia is compiled into the kernel, it works, but the system hard-locks if a card is inserted or ejected.

If pcmcia is compiled as a module, the system hard locks on insertion of said module.

the used module is yenta_socket. all is fine on love-sources-livecd with 2.6.7-Redeeman3. 

But the gentoo kernels 2.6.7-r14, 2.6.8, and 2.6.9-r1 all show this problem. I would appreciate it if someone could help, #gentoo has been of no help here...

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## qanuta

I just upgraded to 2.6.10 and had the same cardmgr hang at boot.  I read many of the posts, and tried several things.  The one that seemed to do the trick (I don't remember where I read it) was to recompile the kernel with ISA support.  I don't know why that affects things as this is a PCI system, but it seemed to do the trick!

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