Making a PCMCIA network card work?

[Dominik Brodowski]

> What is confusing is that from user's standpoint, any credit-card-sized 
> gizmo is a PCMCIA card. So, when I try to make it work, I read PCMCIA 
> HOWTO and learn that it is configured by cardmgr. How can I know that it 
> is indeed a CardBus thingy and I need standard PCI drivers for it? No 
> googling helps in this case, since the card ( Lemel LM-N90TX ) appears to 
> be quite obscure. Furthermore, how would I figure out it needs 8139too if 
> not for Knoppix?
> 
> Questions:
> 
> 1) Any chance you could reduce the confusion and have *all* hot-swappable 
> devices be managed by hotplug, thus removing the need for some obscure 
> proggies like cardmgr, cardctl & friends?

That's something currently is worked upon. 2.6.12-rc1-mm4 already has
support for it; however as PCMCIA and CardBus are two different buses (you
can compare them to ISA and PCI) handled by the same slot, there is no
chance not to have some sort of confusion :(

> 2) do I still even need the pcmcia-cs userspace? since hotplug manages 
> things, I shouldn't, right? It is quite important as I am building a 
> system for a severely memory-constrained set-top-box.

For CardBus cards, you do not need pcmcia-cs userspace as long as you use a
recent 2.6. kernel. You do not even need to enable CONFIG_PCMCIA,
CONFIG_PCCARD, CONFIG_CARDBUS and CONFIG_YENTA should be enough.

> 3) do I need the 'pci-hotplug' module at all? Knoppix modprobed it, and it 
> sounds like it might be related to a working CardBus card, so I included 
> it, too...

I doubt that you need it.

> 5) On an unrelated note, LIRC ( infrared control ) does not work with 
> 2.6.12-rc1-mm4:
> 
> utumno:/var/log# modprobe lirc_sir
> WARNING: Error inserting lirc_dev 
> (/lib/modules/2.6.12-rc1-mm4/misc/lirc_dev.ko): Unknown symbol in module, 
> or unknown parameter (see dmesg)
> FATAL: Error inserting lirc_sir 
> (/lib/modules/2.6.12-rc1-mm4/misc/lirc_sir.ko): Unknown symbol in module, 
> or unknown parameter (see dmesg)
> 
> in syslog, we have
> 
> Apr  3 18:48:39 localhost kernel: lirc_dev: Unknown symbol 
> class_simple_device_add
> Apr  3 18:48:39 localhost kernel: lirc_dev: Unknown symbol 
> class_simple_destroy
> Apr  3 18:48:39 localhost kernel: lirc_dev: Unknown symbol 
> class_simple_device_remove
> Apr  3 18:48:39 localhost kernel: lirc_dev: Unknown symbol 
> class_simple_create
> Apr  3 18:48:39 localhost kernel: lirc_sir: Unknown symbol 
> lirc_unregister_plugin
> Apr  3 18:48:39 localhost kernel: lirc_sir: Unknown symbol 
> lirc_register_plugin
> 
> LIRC works flawlessly with 2.6.10 and 2.6.11
> Where do I report this?

Greg Kroah-Hartmann (see MAINTAINERS for his e-mail address). He 
intends to remove the class_simple API.

	Dominik