PCMCIA packages cause X problems and emacs problems

[Mark Phillips <mark@ist.flinders.edu.au>]

Hi,

I have recently installed Debian on a friend's laptop.  To get his PCMCIA
cards to work I had to create my own pcmcia-modules package using the
pcmcia-source package (because the ones supplied with bo don't work).  I
did this and everything seemed to work.  (I used the 2.9.6 version of
PCMCIA and compiled with kernel 2.0.30)

However my friend has since had problems.  He tried to startx and found
that although the X background came up, he had no mouse or window manager.
Upon exiting, he typed emacs at the prompt which simply hung - no
response.  He tried emacs at a different virtual console and got the same
thing.  Neither control^C, nor control^Z could get out of it.  When he did
a ps at another console, the emacs process didn't even show up.

My friend then deinstalled the pcmcia packages and everything worked fine
again.  (Except he then could no longer use his ethernet or pcmcia cards
obviously.)

These problems sound very strange.  My friend is new to Debian.  I hope he
isn't getting a bad impression of Debian as a result of these troubles
he's having.

Any ideas, or things I can tell him to try?

Thanks,

Mark.



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Mark Phillips                                      mark@maths.flinders.edu.au
           "They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"
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