Using Multi-Card Flash Readers

Using Multi-Card Flash Readers

How to configure and access flash card readers with support for multiple different flash cards.

I had a San Disk Imagemate Dual card reader and later purchased a Viking Intelliflash 6 in 1 card reader. Both are usb and I could mount the Compact Flash part of each reader with no problem. But, I was unable to access any of the other ports in either reader. I did the steps outlined on a RedHat 8.0 distro with an updated kernel (2.4.18-27).

The following resources helped a bit, as did the SxS mailing list:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6687
http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~ggbaker/personal/cf-linux

usb-storage            62064   0
scsi_mod              107240   6 [usb-storage st sd_mod sg sr_mod ide-scsi]
usb-uhci               26188   0 (unused)
usbcore                77056   1 [usb-storage hid usb-uhci]

In particular, usb-storage, must be loaded. If it isn't, execute:

insmod usb-storage

$ cdrecord -scanbus

My output looked like:
    Cdrecord 1.10 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2001 Jrg Schilling
    Linux sg driver version: 3.1.24
    Using libscg version 'schily-0.5'
    scsibus0:
            0,0,0     0) 'DMI     ' 'MultiFlash      ' '3.00' Removable Disk
            0,1,0     1) *
            0,2,0     2) *
            0,3,0     3) *
            0,4,0     4) *
            0,5,0     5) *
            0,6,0     6) *
            0,7,0     7) *
    scsibus1:
            1,0,0   100) 'YAMAHA ' 'CRW2100E        ' '1.0N' Removable CD-ROM
            1,1,0   101) *
            1,2,0   102) *
            1,3,0   103) *
            1,4,0   104) *
            1,5,0   105) *
            1,6,0   106) *
            1,7,0   107) *

#!/bin/sh
echo "scsi add-single-device 0 0 0 0" > /proc/scsi/scsi
echo "scsi add-single-device 0 0 0 1" > /proc/scsi/scsi
echo "scsi add-single-device 0 0 0 2" > /proc/scsi/scsi
echo "scsi add-single-device 0 0 0 3" > /proc/scsi/scsi
cat /proc/scsi/scsi

If you have less than 4 ports, you can remove the lines for each port that you don't need. You can also put the running of this script in /etc/rc.local (but I haven't tried that :-) ).

You should see something like:

$ cat /proc/scsi/scsi
Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: DMI      Model: MultiFlash       Rev: 3.00
Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 01
Vendor: DMI      Model: MultiFlash       Rev: 3.00
Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 02
Vendor: DMI      Model: MultiFlash       Rev: 3.00
Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 03
Vendor: DMI      Model: MultiFlash       Rev: 3.00
Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Host: scsi1 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: YAMAHA   Model: CRW2100E         Rev: 1.0N
Type:   CD-ROM                           ANSI SCSI revision: 02

$ sg_scan -i

Will tell what devices are on scsi, they should match whats in /proc/scsi/scsi.

$ sg_map

Shows the mappings of devices. This will help you figure out which device name to use when mounting. For example, with my Viking 6-in-1, I see:

/dev/sg0 /dev/sda
/dev/sg1 /dev/scd0
/dev/sg2 /dev/sdb
/dev/sg3 /dev/sdc
/dev/sg4 /dev/sdd

Each card has 1 partition, so you would mount the compact flash, as /dev/sda1, etc. You'll have to play with the reader to determine which maps to what flash port. I did this by sticking 1 card in the device and trying to mount each one in turn to see which was the one I wanted.

To mount the MMC/SD port, for example I execute (as root):

$ mkdir /mnt/mmc # only need to do this 1 time.
$ mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/mmc

If it returns the following error:

mount: you must specify the filesystem type