How to get the internal SD card working

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NOTE!
The information on this page is stale, the SD-Card patches mentioned below have long found there way into the kernel, so patches for any recent kernel are no longer required. SD cards (at least storage cards) should work out of the box with any recent Linux distribution

Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter

1. First of it all you need a working kernel 2.6 source.

2. Get the patches at http://mmc.drzeus.cx/wiki/Linux/Drivers/sdhci all the *.bin.

=> Note that with kernel versions >= 2.6.17-rc1, the driver is included in the kernel, and patching is unnecessary.

3. Patch your kernel

 cd /usr/src/linux
 patch -p1 < sdhci-0001.bin
 patch -p1 < pci-sdhc-0001.bin
 patch -p1 < mmc-respopcode-0001.bin

4. reconfigure your kernel with menuconfig

 make menuconfig

5. activate "Device Drivers" -> "MMC/SD Card support"

 <*> MMC support
 <*>   MMC block device driver
 <M>   Secure Digital Host Controller Interface support  (EXPERIMENTAL)

6. recompile your kernel & reboot

 make clean && make && make modules_install.. dont forget to copy your new kernel. ;)

7. Modprobe your new kernel module:

 modprobe sdhci

8. Mount your SD card

 mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt

9. RocknRoll


Ubuntu 6.10 'edgy eft':

To get the card reader working on edgy:

Add the module 'tifm_sd' to /etc/modules and restart. Now this module gets loaded on sys bootup and a card is detected when inserted. The card reader is found as /dev/mmcblk0 and mounted automatically on card insert.

Step-by-step:

1. Make a backup of your 'modules' in case something goes wrong:

 $ sudo cp /etc/modules /etc/modules.backup

2. Open the file with gedit:

 $ sudo gedit /etc/modules

3. Add the following entry to the end of the file:

 tifm_sd

4. Save and close the file. On the next boot, the sd-card reader works.

As mentioned below, this is already reported as a bug: BUG #53268

Update for FC5 running the newest 2.6.17 kernel:

1. modprobe mmc_block

2. modprobe sdhci

3. mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt

4. RocknRoll

Tested on my X41 with 04:00.1 Class 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 13)

Automated module loading

I'm using ASPLinux release 11 (Seliger) based on FC4 and kernel 2.6.17-1.2142asp.

  • 1. I created the script /etc/sysconfig/modules/sd.modules to load modules on boot. Don't forget to chmod it 775.
#!/bin/sh

start () {
        for i in mmc_core mmc_block sdhci; do
                /sbin/modprobe $i >/dev/null 2>&1
        done
}

stop () {
        for i in sdhci mmc_block mmc_core; do
                /sbin/rmmod $i >/dev/null 2>&1
        done
}

restart() {
        stop
        start
}

case $1 in
        start)
                start
        ;;
        stop)
                stop
        ;;
        restart)
                echo -n "Reloading SD modules"
                restart
                echo ".. DONE"
        ;;
        *)
        start
esac
  • 2. This script will run after reboot. When you insert a card the automount system in KDE or Gnome will catch the medium on the fly. I found that it only works if the medium is inserted at boot time due to a BUG :-(. That's why my script is longer then it has to be...

BUG Currently the bug exists in automounting an SD card. The SD card is mounted properly when the card is inserted at boot time (or at time when modules is loaded). Otherwise it is not mounted (BUG #53268). The temporary workaround is to remove && insert the module while the medium is in the reader (/etc/sysconfig/modules/sd.modules restart). Note that you have to be root to perform this.

Tested on my Z60t with 14:00.2 Class 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 17)

Texas Instruments 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD)

The TI 5-in-1 card reader is found several Z-series ThinkPads (such as the Z61m, Z61e, and the Z61t). You will need a recent kernel and will need need to enable the tifm drivers in the kernel:

Device Drivers → Misc devices → [M]TI Flash Media interface support (EXPERIMENTAL) (CONFIG_TIFM_CORE)

Device Drivers → Misc devices → [M]TI Flash Media PCI74xx/PCI76xx host adapter support (EXPERIMENTAL) (CONFIG_TIFM_7XX1)

Device Drivers → MMC/SD Card support → [M]MMC support (CONFIG_MMC)

Device Drivers → MMC/SD Card support → [M]MMC block device driver (CONFIG_MMC_BLOCK)

Device Drivers → MMC/SD Card support → [M]TI Flash Media MMC/SD Interface support (EXPERIMENTAL) (CONFIG_MMC_TIFM_SD)

NOTE!
As of this writing, these drivers are still experimental and under ongoing development. See the tifm page for further important details and caveats.

After rebuilding your kernel, you should have the modules tifm_core, tifm_7xx1, tifm_sd, mmc_core, and mmc_block. Because these drivers are relatively new, the HAL auto-detection system may not load them on boot, requiring you to add them to /etc/modules (or equivalent for your distribution).

The modules may be loaded by hand using the modprobe command as root:

# modprobe tifm_7xx1 tifm_sd

modprobe will correctly load the dependent modules. Once loaded, you may insert an SD card into the slot. The LED should blink once as the card is inspected, and output from dmesg should report finding a card:

 tifm_core: MMC/SD card detected in socket 0:1
 PM: Adding info for tifm:tifm_sd0:1
 PM: Adding info for No Bus:mmc1
 PM: Adding info for mmc:mmc1:b368
 mmcblk0: mmc1:b368 SD    993792KiB 
  mmcblk0: p1

If you see errors, you could probably do with a newer version of the tifm drivers.

After insertion, the /dev heirarchy is populated with new devices. /dev/disk/by-label should be populated with the labels of the partitions on the device, which you may then mount:

# mount /dev/disk/by-label/cardlabel /mnt

Alternatively, you can mount the block device directly, which usually appears as /dev/mmcblk0 or, when the card has a partition table, /dev/mmcblk0p1:

# mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt

NOTE!
As of this writing, only SD cards are reported to work. The driver isn't yet able to handle MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD cards.