PCMCIA NIC not initialized

mgushee · 2006-08-04 19:08:48

Okay, I have a Dell Inspiron 3500 running a newly installed Arch system, and an SMC 8040TX ethernet card. The card is supported by pcnet_cs, and I have been using it under Linux with this and other laptops for several years. However, the card is not properly detected at boot time. The relevant modules are loaded: pcmcia_core, pcmcia, yenta_socket, and pcnet_cs, but the card's indicator lights are steadily lit (as opposed to flashing, which would indicate that the network interface is up), and ifconfig shows that there is no eth0 interface.

I have had this problem in the past; what I used to do was

/etc/rc.d/pcmcia restart

That worked about 95% of the time. But anyway, there's no pcmcia daemon any more, so maybe I need to find an actual solution. ;-)

I thought maybe adding adding the pcmcia hook to the mkinitcpio kernel image would help. Nope. I have also tried introducing a delay by loading pcmcia and yenta_socket in rc.conf, but moving pcnet_cs and all network-dependent daemons into rc.local. No dice. Removing and reinserting the card doesn't help either. The only technique I've found that works is to switch to single-user mode (telinit 1), then go back to multiuser (telinit 3). Obviously I would rather not do that every time I boot the machine.

Is it something in the UDev rules, maybe? Or ... ? Suggestions appreciated![/list]

mgushee · 2006-08-19 21:45:12

b0re wrote:

i had the same problem with my intel card.. all I had to do was edit /etc/rc.conf and remove the ! from pcmcia and hotplug. after that everything worked just fine.. hope that helps...

It's nice to get a response--finally. But how long ago was that? See, unless I badly misunderstand something (always possible), there is no pcmcia daemon any more; certainly, there is no /etc/rc.d/pcmcia on my system, and the pcmcia-cs package is no longer in the main Arch repository. So removing that ! won't do anything, will it?

As for hotplug ... I really don't understand what's up with that. I heard that the switch from devfs to udev meant that hotplug would be obsolete ... yet something by that name still seems to exist. So I'll try that at least ... though I think I already have.

forgot.. also had to add acpi=off to my kernel line in grubs menu.lst

Meaning ACPI will be turned off? [SIGH] Two steps forward, one step back.

Well, I'll see if I can make any use of your suggestions. Thanks.

Snowman · 2006-08-21 00:13:22

To clarify, pcmcia-cs and hotplug no longer exist. They have been deprecated by udev. b0re's system is not up-to-date.
Try starting the network daemon as late as you can, i.e. move all the non-network related daemon in front of it. Maybe, when it tries to start the network, the card isn't ready yet. It would explain why the telinit trick works. It's a wild guess as I have no experience with pcmcia.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-08-04 19:08:48

PCMCIA NIC not initialized

#2 2006-08-19 21:45:12

Re: PCMCIA NIC not initialized

#3 2006-08-21 00:13:22

Re: PCMCIA NIC not initialized

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