[gentoo-dev] pcmcia-cs stuff

[Chad Huneycutt]

I am proposing the following to replace Gentoo's current pcmcia setup.  
If you use pcmcia, please read the following and reply with any comments
or suggestions.  In particular, if you have a laptop that only works with
pcmcia-cs's i82365 controller driver, please let me know via a comment in
bug #14650

There are several bugs complaining about the fact that it is not
currently possible to use the kernel controller driver, i.e.,
yenta_socket, with pcmcia-cs modules.  Actually the bigger complaint
currently is that yenta_socket isn't on the livecd, but if we instead
had just kernel support on the CD, the outcry would be worse.

If you are curious why it is either/or, the problem is that there are
several modules provided by pcmcia-cs package that are also provided by
the kernel.  I have no idea about which is better (they may be
identical), but when that collission occurs, then kernel modules are
always preferred.  The other problem is that pcmcia-cs provides the
i82365 controller driver and the kernel provides yenta_socket.  I
honestly don't know exactly the history of these drivers, but it appears
that a lot of laptops require the yenta_socket.  I haven't heard anyone
say that they had to have i82365, though.

To address these problems, I have broken the pcmcia-cs package into two
separate pieces, pcmcia-cs-tools and pcmcia-cs-drivers.  The idea is
that the split package will make setup a little more clear.  It is a
little confusing to have your kernel configuration affect the outcome of
an emerge.

The pcmcia installation steps of a laptop now looks something like:

1. When configuring the kernel, if you need pcmcia support, make sure to
*enable* it (either as modules or built-in).  If you need any modules
that *aren't provided by pcmcia-cs [probably need to provide a pointer
to pcmcia-cs.sf.net's list of supported cards], then enable them
(probably as modules, so they can be unloaded when you remove the card).

2. After installing your new kernel modules (make modules_install), if
you need any kernel modules provided by the pcmcia-cs project, then
emerge pcmcia-cs-drivers.  NOTE: you will need to remerge this every
time you rebuild your kernel to rebuild the modules for your new kernel
and reinstall them.

3. If you want to use cardmgr to control starting and stopping of pcmcia
services, then emerge pcmcia-cs-tools && rc-update add pcmcia default

This scheme essentially means that we use yenta_socket and prefer
pcmcia-cs modules, although I think that if you configure a kernel
module, it will override the pcmcia-cs module.  The only case that isn't
handled as I mentioned above is if you *need* the i82365 and ds driver
from pcmcia-cs.

Thoughts, objections, discussion?

-- 
Chad Huneycutt (chadh@g.o)


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