Linux and the Nokia D211 GPRS/WLAN PCMCIA Card

I got the Nokia ^(tm) D211 working under Linux for GPRS and because the information is limited for that card, I have written this report. The WLAN part is not tested yet. Tested on Slackware 9.1 running on a HP Omnibook 6100 laptop.

GPRS

First you'll need to download both tarballs from the Nokia ^(tm) site. One binary and one source. As of when I wrote this, they where named:

        nokia_d211-linux-1.06-bin-gcc3.2.tar.gz
        nokia_d211-linux-1.06.tar.gz

Make sure you have your kernel sources available.

Go to /usr/local/src and extract the source tarball. Then extract the binary tarball over it:

# tar zxvf nokia_d211-linux-1.06-bin-gcc3.2.tar.gz
# tar zxvf nokia_d211-linux-1.06.tar.gz

There is nothing wrong with reading the d211/INSTALL file if in doubt ;)

Change to the "d211" directory to compile and create the module:

• Rename the config.mk.orig file to config.mk
• Edit the config.mk file to match your system configuration
• type: make all; make install
• To copy the default nokia_cs script and settings, type: make config_install. This will overwrite your previous settings, and therefore it is recommended to be run only when installing for the first time.

!! IMPORTANT !! If you get a message in the syslog that looks like the following:

        cardmgr[69]: unsupported card in socket 0
        cardmgr[69]:   product info: "Nokia", "D211"
        cardmgr[69]:   manfid: 0x0124, 0x1120  function: 6 (network)

It's because you need to enable "CONFIG_ISA=y" for the card in the kernel.

Edit /etc/pcmcia/nokia_cs.opts. For GPRS, all I have in the file is the line that follows:

        MODE=GSM

Now some of us use another distro than RedHat so we'll need to make a little change to /etc/pcmcia/nokia_cs. Change:

        initlog -c "$NOKIA_CS" &

to:

        "$NOKIA_CS" > /dev/null 2>&1

That's it. If you reboot (old winblows habit I'm trying to shake off), you should see the module be loaded at startup (instead of rebooting you may try to restart the PCMCIA services, e.g. /etc/init.d/pcmcia restart or rcpcmcia restart). To be sure all is well, check to see if all the details of the card can be found in proc:

# cat /proc/net/nokia_cs
WLAN NetDev =eth1
...

Now run:

# nokia_ctl enable_gsm
# nokia_ctl gsm enableGSMradio

Now that your card is active, all you have to do is configure the dialup. I also made a link to make sure all programs could use the device: ln -s /dev/ttyNC0 /dev/modem

That's it. Hope this helped.

Wireless LAN

This will come later, hopefully.

Resources

• manufacturer information for Linux users [PDF]
• Running Sony Ericsson GC75 GPRS PC Card Modem on Linux HOWTO
• Linux on PCMCIA cards

This page is a courtesy for TuxMobil by Edoardo Costa <edoardocosta_at_yahoo.com> .