Marcin Juszkiewicz - orinoco

CompactFlash card problems - why it is worth to report them

2007-12-31T14:06:00+01:00

Few days ago Ångström distribution was released. Currently machine mentors tests images and release them so their devices will be also supported and ready for users.

Users often have CompactFlash cards which we (developers) do not have. Some of them will be hit by miscellaneous problems. For example their WiFi card which was nicely working with HostAP driver now works only with Orinoco one so they can not connect to WPA encrypted access points.

How to solve that? Such users should report those cards. What report needs to contain:

pccardctl ident output
information does card was working with other distribution (it can be any Linux distribution — I test cards under Debian on my laptop)

What developer has to do then? Creation of patch to in-kernel driver is simple — there is one table per driver in source and few simple macros. Examples can be found in my submissions to kernel tree.

I got Progear 1050HX+ webpad

2006-11-10T09:25:00+01:00

Yesterday I got Progear 1050HX+ webpad from one of OpenZaurus users. It has Transmeta Crusoe CPU (TM3200/400MHz), 2.5” harddisk inside, Orinoco WiFi card (so no WPA for me) and the best part: 1024x768 touchscreen panel. After booting I got very stripped installation of MS Windows 98SE and played a bit. Due to fact that it has USB ports I connected my PS/2 -> USB converter and not used PS/2 keyboard — it’s nice platform for PuTTy or web browser (but this will be slower due to small amount of RAM).

Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000 on left, Progear 1050 HX+ on right

When I will get free time I will install Linux on this thing. First Debian to get it working and then will work on support for progear in OpenEmbedded.

Handling PCMCIA/CF cards in Linux

2006-06-14T07:56:00+02:00

I do not like a way how PCMCIA/CF cards are handled under Linux. For kernels < 2.6.13-rc1 the only choice is pcmcia-cs package with lot of files in /etc/pcmcia/ which are just cardctl ident output edited a bit with added driver name:

root@c7x0:~# cardctl ident
Socket 0:
  product info: "Pretec", "CompactWLAN Card 802.11b", "2.5"
  manfid: 0x0156, 0x0002
  function: 6 (network)
root@c7x0:~# tail -n4 /etc/pcmcia/hostap_cs.conf
card "Pretec WLAN"
  version "Pretec", "CompactWLAN Card 802.11b", "2.5"
  manfid 0x0156, 0x0002
  bind "hostap_cs"
root@c7x0:~#

With newer kernels we have two options:

stick with pcmcia-cs and it’s configs
use new pcmciautils and udev rules

Pcmciautils way is nice — no extra daemon running, cards are handled as hotpluggable — everything looks nice and clear… But there is something other — list of devices handled by driver is in driver itself — so if you get card which is not there then you have to provide patch for it (like I already did for some cards) or try module aliases.

But both methods has one nasty thing — no way to tell ‘this card HAS to use THIS driver NOT that’ ;( This situation is common for Prism2 based WiFi cards which can be used with orinoco_cs driver (will appear as eth0) or with hostap_cs driver (appear as wlan0). For example my Pretec card (ident shown above) is handled by both drivers but only HostAP give me possibility to connect to my home network which use WPA-PSK for security (Orinoco does not support WPA at all). And all because some manufacturers was to lazy to change manfid/prodid of card from the one which reference card had…