Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Mon, 15 Sep 2003, Matt Smed wrote:
> 
> As a result of this list and various help files on the Internet, I have
> successfully configured a free laptop that I got from a friend.
> 
> I have one small problem, though.  When initializing any card using
> "rc.pcmcia start" I get some error messages and cannot get the cards to
> work.  The PCIC is Cirrus PD6710.
> 
> I tried several cards in the computer, and none seemed to work.
> 
> Here are the error messages from 3 such cards:
> 
><snip> 
> 
> -2-           3com Etherlink III Lan+33.6 Modem PC Card
> 
>       cardmgr[50]: Socket 0: 3Com 3c562/3c563 Ethernet/Modem
>       cardmgr[50]: executing: 'modprobe 3c589_cs'
>       cardmgr[50]: executing: 'modprobe serial_cs'
>       eth0: 3com 3c562, io 0x200, irq 3, hw_addr 00:60:97:EC:DC:8F
>               8k FIFO split 5:3 Rx:Tx, auto xcvr
>       tty01 at 0x0100 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
>       cardmgr[50]: executing: './network start eth0'
>       cardmgr[50]: + ./network: cat: command not found
>       cardmgr[50]: executing: './serial start ttyS1'
>       cardmgr[50]: + ./serial: cat: command not found 
>       cardmgr[50]: + ./serial: expr: command not found        
>       cardmgr[50]: + ./serial: uname: command not found
> 
><snip> 
> If any one is familiar with configuring pcmcia, please feel free to let
> me know how I should go about getting these cards to work.  I would
> especially like to be able to use the modem, as I have free dial-up
> access, and I want to try out the text-only browsers.
> 
It's a bit of a challenge to get PCMCIA stuff working in BL, partly owing
to the fact that it's a stripped down version using utils that don't have
all the functionality of their fuller counterparts.  Busybox - BL's
counterpart to bash - for example. doesn't have certain commands.  Others
it does have (like cat), but they are located in the busybox dir rather
than the more typical place (/sbin?) in which they're found on fuller
systems.  Part of your problem is precisely this.  You have the "cat"
command on your computer, it's just not in a place where the util that
needs it can find it.  I got around certain such problems by symlinking
(creating a link to the real binary in the spot where the util that needed
it was looking).  Other commands - like, I think, uname and expr are just
not present in busybox.  Try "which cat" to find out where cat is located
- or any other bash command.  If it's not present, you won't be told a
location.  Anyway, to resolve at least some of the missing commands needed
by the pcmcia script, I had to install an additional package - tcpip1.tgz,
I believe.  Installing that package and doing the symlinking to commands
that were really present on my system but could not be found, was what
finally got my pcmcia NIC working (I still had to do ifconfig, supply the
gateway address and so forth too, but all the fucntionality was at least
there after symlinking and installing the tcpip package).  I think one
command still ends up missing, but it is not one critical to networking
performance and functionality.  I hope this gives you enough to make some
progress.  It's actually been a few months since I got pcmcia networking
going on my BL2 laptop, and some of the details have faded.  If you need
more info, I might be able to dredge up some more recollections or maybe
go through my system settings to help clarify.

James

PS It looks like you're closest to getting things working with the 3Com
card - I'd stick with it.