Subject: Re: PCMCIA external hard drive
From: David Hinds (dhinds@lahmed.Stanford.EDU)
Date: Wed Dec 13 2000 - 18:23:19 GMT+1
Chad David Cover <foodforfree@mediaone.net> wrote:
: I've looked at the PCMCIA how-to, and have followed the instructions
: there. The how-to suggests that you edit /etc/pcmcia/ide.opts to
: recognize one's external drive. Apparently, one needs to know the
: scheme, the pcmcia slot number and the drive's serial number. I have
: edited this file with the latter two bits of information, but I have no
: idea how to find information about the scheme. Help! What is a scheme,
: and where do I find out about which ones I may or may not have?
The HOWTO talks about what PCMCIA schemes are. But you do *not* need
to know the scheme, slot number, and serial number in order to mount a
drive automatically. You *may* choose to configure drives based on
these pieces of information if you wish. If not, just leave these
fields as "*" in the ide.opts file, the way they are by default.
To do what you want, just use the default ide.opts file and uncomment
the example lines that are commented out. The PCMCIA-HOWTO also shows
an equivalent example ide.opts file to do this.
: Also, I run a dual-boot system (Win 98 and redhat 7.0). I would like to
: change my master boot record to boot linux from the external drive and
: leave Win98 on my internal hard drive. Apparently, I have to pass some
: pcmcia parameters to the kernal from the master boot record (so that
: the kernel recognizes the external hard drive through the pcmcia slot).
Booting Linux from an external PCMCIA device is hard and not really
supported. There is some discussion of how to do it in the PCMCIA
HOWTO. The kernel cannot recognize the external drive on its own; you
need to use an initrd ram disk that contains the PCMCIA drivers.
-- Dave
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