How to investigate PCMCIA driver loading (freeze)

[Peter Stuge]

On Thu, Nov 30, 2006 at 09:46:25AM +0100, Fab G. wrote:
> Er..yes  I meant hostap_cs, but when I load it manually  through
> modprobe it does not do anything (when orinoco[_cs] is blacklisted).

Oh, ok. Then you could try removing the blacklisting and moving away
the orinoco_cs driver, then hostap_cs should be used instead.


> Ok, I will have to go to the source then.
> 
> IIRC from previous experience with modules, I will need to
> recompile the whole kernel and it's going to take some time on this
> machine...

No need to compile on the target. You can compile the kernel on any
other machine and just copy arch/i386/boot/bzImage over to the
Pentium system.


> My question remains, though, how does the kernel choose which
> driver to use when the same card is referenced in both (at least in
> wireless/orinoco_cs.c and wireless/hostap/hostap_cs.c) ? I guess
> this general selection mechanism must be explained somewhere but I
> haven"t been able to find it. I have not fully explored all the
> code though.

I would assume it depends on the order in which drivers register with
the core. My guess is that that depends on the order in which they
are built by the kernel build system. That in turn depends on the
order in which they were added to the build system since most new
additions are simply appended.

I don't believe there is (or should be) any infrastructure for
arbitration between multiple drivers. The user has to control that.


//Peter