Toshiba SD card

[m3rlin]

Hello, i have a laptop Toshiba Tecra A4, i plugged my SD card, and did
cat /proc/bus/usb/devices and then fdisk -l but the SD card doesn't show up . do i have to do something to make the Laptop card reader to work?
Or should i get a usb card reader?
Best Regards

[bwkaz]

Most card-reader devices don't emit hotplug-type events when a new card is inserted; even USB card readers don't do that. What might work (with a USB device) is to unplug it, then plug it back in with the card inserted, but that's a pain in the butt. (And it won't work with a built-in reader.)

I think there's something else you can do to prod some part of the kernel to make it re-discover the devices, though. I think HAL does this periodically as long as it's running, too -- if your distro has that package available. Otherwise it might work to try looking in /dev to see what sdXY devices are present; it may be that your card reader provides devices even when no cards are inserted.

Otherwise, I remember seeing a mention of how to prod the device somewhere, let me see if I can find it...

Ah yes: http://marc.info/?l=linux-hotplug-de...6804518275&w=2

Apparently it works to just open the /dev/sdX file (or /dev/disk/by-*/*, which is preferred) once in a while. According to that, it should work to "fdisk -l /dev/sdX", as that will open the file.

[saikee]

I never tried it on a SD card but I take it just a normal USB type device.

The method I get a distro to read a newly inserted USB device is just typing "fdisk -l" at the terminal and tap the direction key a few times to repeat the command.

I found modern kernels seem to load the USB device quickly after a few tabs, say 2 to 4 times. Some distros, like Slax for example, can be so quick that USB files pop up in the desktop before my finger reaches the key in the first tap.

[ladoga]

check output of lspci

For example mine shows:

04:00.1 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 13)

So i have a ricoh SD reader and it works with sdhci module (which is included in kernel):
http://mmc.drzeus.cx/wiki/Linux/Drivers/sdhci

It's not automatically loaded so I modprobe mmc_block (and add mmc_block to /etc/modules if i want to have it loaded on every boot), which also loads the rest of necessary modules (sdhci and mmc_core).

ladoga@x41:~$ lsmod | grep mmc_block
mmc_block               6536  0 
mmc_core               20692  2 mmc_block,sdhci

Now when i insert SD card into reader it appears as /dev/mmcblk0p1 and can be mounted normally.

[m3rlin]

Hello, i have used the SD usb reade, and it worked perfectly, he detected has a external hard drive, on /dev/sdb1
:P