Topic: PCMCIA support

[Don Ferris]

I'm trying to install SME Server on an old notebook. I've read "http://www.e-smith.org/docs/howto/contrib/e-smith-pcmcia-howto-0.1-01.txt" which explains that I need to install a PCMCIA RPM to make this work.

I know that e-smith 5.6 is based on RH 7.3, but there was no kernel-pcmcia*.rpm file listed for 7.3... The most recent one I could find was from 7.0, so I downloaded that one ( kernel-pcmcia-cs-2.2.24-7.0.3.i386.rpm ). Could someone please confirm that it should work?
 
Needless to say, without PCMCIA support, I have no NIC, and without a NIC, I have to get the RPM to the machine (notebook) running e-smith via floppy disk. The thing is, how do I use it???

The text file says to execute
rpm -Uvh kernel-pcmcia-cs-2.2.24-7.0.3.i386.rpm
but when I do, I get "no such file or directory"

I'm a complete newbie to Linux, so I apologize. I tried
rpm -Uvh a:/kernel-pcmcia-cs-2.2.24-7.0.3.i386.rpm
but that didn't work either ("no such file or directory")

I tried switching to the a: drive (to execute the command from there) but can't.
Can someone please help a clueless noob out?

Thanks!

[Kelvin]

Hi Don,

>I tried switching to the a: drive (to execute the command from there) but can't.

The term "a:" drive does not exist in Linux. You need to dump some DOS / Windows ideas / concepts and relearn their Linux equivalents.

To get SME / Linux to recognise your disk in "drive a:", you need to issue the command :-

mount /mnt/floppy

(the disk must be in there before you issue the command).

The contents of the disk then appears under the directory (called a mount point) called /mnt/floppy

So, to install that rpm of yours, you then execute :-

rpm -Uvh /mnt/floppy/kernel-pcmcia-cs-2.2.24-7.0.3.i386.rpm

(after you have mounted the floppy !).

Cheers !

Kelvin

[Don Ferris]

Thanks! Being able to use the floppy is going to help A LOT!

Cheers!

[Don Ferris]

OK... now what?!

I'm having trouble using any command that will let me read a long file (PCMCIA-HOWTO), so I mounted the floppy and...

cp PCMCIA-HOWTO /mnt/floppy

then...

cd /mnt/floppy

then...

ls -al

and the file was there. I ejected the floppy and took it over to my windows machine to read it in a text editor - but the file is not there.  What gives???

[Kelvin]

Don,

Ho ! Ho !

Sorry, I'm not laughing at you. You're sounding just like me when I first started .... .

Linux caches writes to floppys as well as hdds. When you ejected the disk, you did not unmount it, so the changes in cache were not written to the disk.

You actually need to type :-

umount /mnt/floppy

to unmount it first (note : the command is umount and NOT unmount).

Kelvin

[Kelvin]

By the way, Don,

Let me introduce you to :-

mc

Midnight commander. A bit like norton commander / xtree pro of the DOS days.

and

pico

A full screen text editor. No fumbling about with hidden keys etc (a-la vi ).

Kelvin

[Don Ferris]

Cool! These are built in to Red Hat? or e-smith?

Thanks again, Kelvin!

[Kelvin]

Hi Don,

I don't use stock RedHat much (I plan to soon though - there's huge amounts of GPL software out there, especially graphical based ones, that does not work with SME).

Therefore, I could not tell you if mc is part of a stock RH distro or not. Pico certainly isn't as I had to download and install it myself into someone's RH 8 box the other day.

Kelvin

[Don Ferris]

Kelvin-

If I want to create batch files (shell scripts) to do common things like un/mounting a floppy, where should I put them?

(BTW- both pico and mc are there - must be an e-smith thing - I've tried them both and I think my life just got a lot easier! Thanks a bunch for those!!!)

Cheers!

[Kelvin]

Hi Don,

If you want to be able to access it from anywhere, you could put it into /bin or /sbin.

If you don't mind manually telling the system where to find them each time you run something, you can plonk them into any directory you create.

eg. create a directory called /myscripts and put all your script files in there.

To manually run them, you need to type /myscripts/scripname

Otherwise, you can edit /root/.bash_profile and add /myscripts to the path.

>both pico and mc are there

Oops, I forgot to mention that I was referring to SME when I introduced those utils to you.

Kelvin

[Charlie Brady]

Kelvin wrote:

> If you want to be able to access it from anywhere, you could
> put it into /bin or /sbin.

No, in /usr/local/bin or /usr/local/sbin. /bin is for system installed software, and specifically for software which is needed before all file systems are mounted.

Charlie

[Joao Bento]

I installed this week-end SME 5.6 in a Toshiba Portege 3010 notebook and everything is there. Just had to make PCMCIA run at boot to get the network. For that, i've made a link:

# ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia /etc/rc.d/rc7.d/S45pcmcia

rebooted, and all is done
João

[Larry]

Perfect!

"I love it when a plan comes together"

It work exactly as you said on a dell Latitude CP with 2 identical 3Com pcmcia after creating the link in rc7.d

SME, really is fantastic.....
Thanks

[pat]

just curious...

anyone of a way to have the boot floppy load a PCMCIA driver to load a PCMCIA NIC?

My laptop has no CD-ROM drive.



Cheers

pat