PCIExpress to CF adapter cannot be recognized

[davidshen84]

Hi,

I have a PCI-Express to CF adapter which works well in Windows 7. And my gentoo works well with a PCI-Express to SD adapter, so I think my kernel is configured correctly to work with PCI-Express card.

But when I plug in the CF adapter, nothing happens, nothing in dmesg, nothing in /var/log/message. If I plug in the adapter before boot, I see below message:

[Aquous]

Does it work when you boot the Gentoo Live DVD?

[davidshen84]

Sorry, I do not have a Gentoo live DVD. Actually I know the adapter will not work in Ubuntu 10.10, but it works in Ubuntu 9.04. I even logged a bug in Ubuntu, and they said a drive is missing, and it seems they do not want to fix it
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David Shen

[Aquous]

That's... odd. Got a linky to that Ubuntu bug?

[davidshen84]

Here's the link: http://goo.gl/fgcMk

I found my old Gentoo 10.x amd64 Live DVD, here's what I found:
1. the card cannot be recognized after the system boot;
2. the card can be recognized if plugged in before system boot, and it is even been recognized before my hdd.

here's the /var/log/message snippet:

[Aquous]

Some quick googling turned up this - http://misterd77.blogspot.com/2007/12/how-to-scan-scsi-bus-with-26-kernel.html - does that help?

[pigeon768]

What's the output from 'lspci -v'?

[roarinelk]

enable the "pata_pcmcia" driver. and post the lspci output with the adapter plugged in.

[davidshen84]

I do not have Fiber Channel compiled in my kernel, so I cannot see that device file. Is a CF card a Fiber Channel SCSI device?

I pasted my lspci -vvv output at http://pastebin.com/Qarf25Ua, please take a look. There's a couple devices claiming using the 'pcieport' kernel module, but I do not think they refer to my CF card or the adapter. The only thing that looks suspicious is the one on the line 624 in the pastbin.

[roarinelk]

well, seems easy enough: enable the "pata_jmicron" (JMicron PATA support in kernel config) ATA driver.
Although you also have a cardbus bridge, so enable "pata_pcmcia" ("PCMCIA PATA support") as well, just
to be safe.

CF cards are standard IDE devices; the first SSDs so to speak :)

[davidshen84]

Yes, enable pata_jmicron the problem. The device works if I plug it in before the system boot. But this only solve half of the problem. The device still does not support hot plug-in. I read this post http://rackerhacker.com/2009/04/23/re-scan-the-scsi-bus-in-linux-after-hot-swapping-a-drive/. It helps me re-scan the SCSI device, but the block device will not be recognized. Re-scanning give below message:

[davidshen84]

I also tried the rescan-scsi-bus.sh script, but does not work. It seems the scsi part works fine. It is just that the CF card cannot be recognized after re-scan...
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David Shen

[roarinelk]

post a full .config and dmesg (boot without the adapter, then insert it and post the dmesg) please. I suspect for express card you need to enable some pci hotplug drivers/features.

[davidshen84]

Thanks roarinelk, PCI-E hot plug module is the key. Actually I have tried PCI hot plug earlier, but I did not notice there's another module called 'pciehp'...Thanks to all you guys
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David Shen