Debian and 2.5 kernels, laptop

[Christopher Swingley <cswingle@iarc.uaf.edu>]

Greetings!

I'm struggling to get Linux 2.5.67 to work correctly on a laptop with a 
PCMCIA network card.  The 2.4.17-bf2.4 kernel that successfully boots 
the system uses the 'tulip_cb' PCMCIA driver.

I've built the new module-init-tools stuff necessary to handle module 
loading and unloading with 2.5, and this stuff works.  Most of the 
kernel also works (it boots, keyboard, sound, etc.), but the PCMCIA 
network card doesn't.

I've tried 7 (so far) different kernel configurations, and I'm starting 
to think that there's something important I'm missing.  I'm guessing it 
has something to do with the new way that the kernel handles modules, or 
how 2.5 kernels handle PCMCIA that may be incompatible with Debian's 
pcmcia-cs package.

Out of the 7 kernels I've built, all of them boot (except the one where 
I had ELF and IDE as modules. . .), but they all hang when the network 
card is plugged into the slot.  Removing S13pcmcia from /etc/rc2.d fixes 
the boot hang but there's no PCMCIA modules loaded.

If the card is out of the slot, the kernel boots and loads 'ds', 
'yenta_socket', and 'pcmcia_core'.  After inserting various network 
cards, 'lspci' shows:

    00:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1225 (rev 01)
    00:04.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1225 (rev 01)
    06:00.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3C575 [Magahertz] 
        10/100 LAN CardBus (rev 01)
or
    06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 
        21142/43 (rev 41)
or
    06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. 
        RTL-8139/8139C8139C+ (rev 10)

But no modules get loaded.  If I attempt to load them manually with 
'modprobe', some of them load but 'ifconfig' doesn't show an eth0 
afterwords, and 'ifconfig eth0 up' fails.

I've got all the tulip, 3Com, and PCMCIA network drivers compiled in as 
modules.  The last card won't work because I didn't build the 8139 
drivers, but I'm going to try that now (well, in half an hour when the 
kernel is built. . .)

Help!  Has anyone figured out the trick to PCMCIA support with Debian 
sid and a 2.5.xx kernel of recent vintage (2.5.67 is what I'm trying)?  
I've got pcmcia-cs 3.2.2-1.1.

Thanks for listening. . .

Chris
-- 
Christopher S. Swingley           email: cswingle@iarc.uaf.edu
IARC -- Frontier Program          Please use encryption.  GPG key at:
University of Alaska Fairbanks    www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle