PCMCIA card drivers are built into the kernel as modules since kernel version 2.6.13. On a system running Debian Squeeze, you simply have to install the user space support contained in the pcmciautils package.

The wireless-tools package is also necessary for good management of Wifi cards.

Every time you connect or remove a card, the daemon configures or deconfigures it, by executing a script in the /etc/pcmcia/ directory, which gets its settings from the /etc/pcmcia/*.opts files. These files have been slightly adapted to work with a Debian system; the configuration of the network is delegated to ifup if the /etc/pcmcia/network.opts file does not take care of it. The same is true for configuration of a wireless network, which can be specified in /etc/network/interfaces instead of /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts. The /usr/share/doc/wireless-tools/README.Debian file also describes the syntax to use.

After this overview of basic services common to many Unix systems, we will focus on the environment of the administered machines: the network. Many services are required for the network to work properly. They will be discussed in the next chapter.