tlug: PCMCIA Network trouble (D-Link DE-660)

[Frank Bennett <bennett@example.com>]

Short questions:

  (1) Is the D-Link DE660 PCMCIA Ethernet adapter card a loser
      with version 2.9.12 of the PCMCIA package?

  (2) If the answer to the above is "yes" or "dunno", how can
      I force the egcs compiler that ships with TL to link a
      binary (cardmgr) with libc-5 --- or would someone with
      a libc-5 system be willing to build such a binary for
      me?

  (3) Why am I still at my b***dy office at 9:50pm this evening?


Today I had a little free time, so I thought I would set things
up for backing up my laptop.  It has turned into something of a
nightmare.  I think I'm now up against the last hurdle.  But you
never know.

To do the backup properly, I need to get a filesystem into memory
via LILO, and use that to stream the data to a tape device on our
network.  That much, I think, is pretty standard.  What has made
my life exceptionally entertaining today is that the machine has
no DOS partition, won't boot from floppy, and relies on PCMCIA
for network access.

The rest of this message describes the steps I've gone through,
and the problem I'm up against.  If you are willing to help, but
are only interested in the problem, search for PROBLEM:, below.

I started off by building statically-linked copies of the tools I
would need, but very soon saw that I was going to run past the
4-meg limit for a ramdisk.  Same problem with libraries and
dynamically-linked executables (libc-5 and libc-6 were both
required).

Right.  So I fetched the tomsrtbt stuff, and began sculpting it
to suit my purposes.  I created a Big Empty File with dd,
formatted it, used loopback to mount it and cp --archive'd the
contents of the tomsrtbt disk image into it.

Then I added this entry to my /etc/lilo.conf:

image=/boot/vmlinuz.APM
	label=backup
	initrd=/boot/tomsrtbt.initrd
	root=/dev/hda1
        read-only

The kernel vmlinux.APM is a 2.0.33 kernel, compiled to provide
initrd support.  The initrd starts up just fine, and runs a
"linuxrc" script I have stuck in there.  The "linuxrc" script
does some basic setup operations to give me a working
environment.  I can see from poking around inside the initrd
filesystem that it's got what I'll need to do the backup.

Next, I need network access.  Attempting to start the "cardmgr"
contained in tomsrtbt, I found that it failed for want of /proc.
I arranged for /proc to get mounted.  Next, "cardmgr" failed
claiming that it couldn't find the PCMCIA sockets, and whinged
about a symbol mismatch with the kernel.  This was fair enough,
because my kernel is not the one that ships with tomsrtbt (the
latter has no initrd support).

Soooooo ... I fetched the sources for the pcmcia utilities in the
version used in tomsrtbt, and compiled them for my vmlinuz.APM
kernel.  After a little tweaking here and there to assure that
everything was in place (the linuxrc script is below for
reference -- search for "LOOK HERE" to find the significant
bits), cardmgr is able to load and unload the driver without
complaint.

PROBLEM:

Unfortunately, the card doesn't WORK.  It will accept
configuration data via "ifconfig", but after completing the usual
setup with ifconfig and route, the nameserver is invisible, ping
reports that the network is inaccessible, etc etc.  I do get
green lights on the modem cable's jack ... don't know whether
that's anything at all to do with the driver though.

It occurred to me that the card, a D-Link DE-660, might not have
been supported by the 2.9.12 version of pcmcia that ships with
tomsrtbt; the 3.0.5 version is what I use for normal running, and
it works fine.

Unfortunately, to test this I will need a 3.0.5 version of
"cardmgr", linked against libc-5, since that's the library used
in tomsrtbt.

It wouldn't surprise me if I've just left out some simple piece
of network configuration magic, or misconfigured something.  But
it's been a long, slow learning curve on this, and I have a _bad_
case of brain burn this evening.  If you can consider the account
above, take a look at the file below, and offer some sort of
insight into either (a) network problems or (b) compile options
needed to link dynamically against an alternative library, I
would be most grateful.

The file linuxrc:

#!/bin/ash
export PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin
. ./etc/settings.s
update &
mount -t proc /proc /proc
#
# LOOK HERE
# The setting below is definitely correct for this site.
#
cat>/etc/resolv.conf<<X
domain nomolog.nagoya-u.ac.jp
nameserver 133.6.33.1
X
cat>/etc/hosts<<X
127.0.0.1	localhost
X
cat>/etc/passwd<<X
root:xxxx:0:0::/:/bin/sh
shutdown:*:6:0::/:/usr/bin/shutdown
halt:*:7:0::/:/usr/bin/halt
X
cat>/etc/profile<<'X'
export PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/doc
cd /
ls () { /usr/bin/ls --color=tty "$@";}
clear
stty sane
ddate
X
#
# LOOK HERE
# These parameters feed into the works via the usual
# "network" script, in /etc/pcmcia.  Everything shows
# up correctly when I do "ifconfig".  But the card doesn't
# seem to function.
#
cat>/etc/pcmcia/network.opts<<'X'
case "$ADDRESS" in
*,*,*,*)
IPADDR=133.6.33.14
NETWORK=133.6.33.0
BROADCAST=133.6.33.255
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
BOOTP="n"
GATEWAY="133.6.33.254"
DOMAIN="nomolog.nagoya-u.ac.jp"
SEARCH="133.6.33.1"
DNS_1="133.6.33.1"
start_fn () { return; }
stop_fn () { return; }
;;
esac
X
cat>/etc/pcmcia/PCIC<<X
export PCIC=i82365 # or tcic
X
FM=`sh -c 'shift 2;echo $8' \`dd if=/proc/meminfo 2>/dev/null\` `
if [ $FM -gt 6000000 ]
then
mkfs.minix /dev/ram3
else
mkfs.minix /dev/ram3 256
fi
mount /dev/ram3 /root
#
# LOOK HERE
# These are the same modules loaded by the "pcmcia" script under
# "/etc/rc.d".
#
insmod pcmcia_core
insmod i82365
insmod ds
cardmgr
hostname rm-325
clear
cat <<'X'
1 be	4 dk	7 fr	10 is	13 la	16 pt	19 sf
2 cf	5 es	8 gr	11 it	14 no	17 ru	20 sg
3 de	6 fi	9 hu	12 jp	15 pl	18 se	21 uk

X
read -p "Select keyboard, ENTER for default: " J</dev/tty1>/dev/tty1 2>&1
case $J in
1)loadkeys be.map;; 8)loadkeys gr.map;;15)loadkeys pl.map;;
2)loadkeys cf.map;; 9)loadkeys hu.map;;16)loadkeys pt.map;;
3)loadkeys de.map;;10)loadkeys is.map;;17)loadkeys ru.map;;
4)loadkeys dk.map;;11)loadkeys it.map;;18)loadkeys se.map;;
5)loadkeys es.map;;12)loadkeys jp.map;;19)loadkeys sf.map;;
6)loadkeys fi.map;;13)loadkeys la.map;;20)loadkeys sg.map;;
7)loadkeys fr.map;;14)loadkeys no.map;;21)loadkeys uk.map;;esac
{ echo -e "\n\n\n\n\tWhat you have is...\n"
{ find / -path /proc -prune -o \( -type f -o -type l \) -printf "%f\n"\
|sed -e s/\\.o$// -e /\\.map$/d -e s/\\.diff$// -e s/\\.so\.*// -e s/\\.awk$//\
|sort -u
} |fmt -80
echo -e "\n\t...Login as root.  Remove the floppy.  AltF1-AltF4 for consoles.\n"
echo -n " \l "
} >/etc/issue


/bin/ash -i

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