Package: pcmciautils
Version: 014-3
I really appreciate that you people produce Debian Linux for the rest of us to
use, but I hope that this bug report makes
it easier for other people.
The symptom is that after I install Debian 4.0r1 for the i386 platform from the
Network Install CD and then reboot, the
PCMCIA network card does not start and no network communication is available.
The same occurs for Debian 4.0r0. The
installer starts the PCMCIA network card correctly and is able to download the
required files during the installation.
The PC is a very old Toshiba 420 notebook, with 40MByte of memory, and the
network card is a Netgear FA411 (16-bit).
Removing and reinserting the network card has no effect because the PCMCIA
bridge has not been detected.
I can start the network card by typing modprobe -b i82365 at the command line
after the boot has finished.
This particular problem does not occur when I use the same Network Install CD
to upgrade Debian 3.1 to Debian 4.0r0.
There are two problems with the installation:
1. The file /etc/default/pcmciautils is not installed.
2. The file /etc/init.d/pcmciautils has a coding bug at line 100:
MODPROBE_OPTIONS="$MODPROBE_OPTIONS -Q"
The upper-case Q should be a lower-case q.
The problem is fixed by:
1. Creating a file /etc/default/pcmciautils with the following five lines:
PCMCIA='yes'
PCIC="i82365"
PCIC_OPTS=""
CORE_OPTS=""
CARDMGR_OPTS=""
2. Editing line 100 of /etc/init.d/pcmciautils to change the upper-case Q to
lower-case.
Line 100 is executed because VERBOSE has the value "no" and MODPROBE_OPTIONS
has the value "" just before line 99 (if [
"$VERBOSE" = "no" ]; then) is executed.
The resulting MODPROBE_OPTIONS value of " -Q" is invalid, and when line 112
(modprobe -b $PCIC $PCIC_OPTS) is executed,
modprobe displays the error message:
Usage: modprobe [-v] [-V] [-C config-file] [-n] [-i] [-q] [-b] [-o <modname>] [
--dump-modversions ] <modname>
[parameters...]
modprobe -r [-n] [-i] [-v] <modulename> ...
modprobe -l -t <dirname> [ -a <modulename> ...]
Just before line 112 is executed the value of PCIC is "i82365" and the value of
PCIC_OPTS is "".
The installed version of /etc/default/pcmcia is correct in that it does not
comment out the line REFRAIN_FROM_IFUP=yes, and
the file /etc/network/interfaces is correct in that it does contain the two
lines:
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
I assume that when Debian 3.1 is upgraded to 4.0, pcmciautils is called with
VERBOSE not "no", so that MODPROBE_OPTIONS is
an empty string when modprobe is run, but I have not confirmed it.
The contents of /etc/init.d/pcmcia and /etc/init.d/pcmciautils are identical
regardless of whether Debian 3.1 was upgraded
to 4.0 or whwther Debian 4.0 was installed from scratch, both using the Network
Install CD.
I did see the same symptom using the Network Install CD for version 4.0r0, but
I haven't verified that the causes are the
same.
All the above occurred after I used aptitude to do an update and a dist-upgrade
to get the latest version of everything.
I'm very happy to provide any further information you might need.
Regards
David Bellair
