---
name: "pack_cis"
section: "8"
platform: "linux"
package: "pcmcia-cs"
version: "3.2.8-9"
release: "Debian 4.0 (Etch)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/pack_cis"
---

# pack\_cis(8)

compile PCMCIA Card Information Structures

## NAME

pack\_cis - compile PCMCIA Card Information Structures

## SYNOPSIS

**pack\_cis** \[**-o**  *outfile* \] *infile*

## DESCRIPTION

**Pack\_cis** is used to convert a text description of a PCMCIA Card Information Structure (CIS) to its packed binary representation.  It can parse a reasonably useful subset of the possible output of the **dump\_cis** utility.  The primary use of **pack\_cis** is to construct replacement CIS files for cards that have incomplete, inaccurate, or damaged CIS structures.  Thus, the supported tuple types are mostly limited to things that are important for correctly configuring typical IO cards.

By default, the packed data is written to standard output.

## FORMAT

The best way to get started writing CIS descriptions will be to use **dump\_cis** to extract the CIS data from a card, and to examine the CIS files distributed with the PCMCIA source tree in *etc/cis/*.

The basic structure of a CIS is a list of tuple descriptions. Anything following a hash mark (\`\`#'') is treated as a comment. A multifunction CIS can be described with the notation:

```
[common tuple list]
mfc {
  [tuple list for function 0]
}, {
  [tuple list for function 1]
}
```

## OPTIONS

- **-o** *outfile*

  Write the packed tuple data to the specified file.

## FILES

- /etc/pcmcia/cis

  Standard location for packed CIS files

## AUTHOR

David Hinds - dahinds@users.sourceforge.net

## SEE ALSO

[dump\_cis(8)](/dump_cis/8.md), [cardmgr(8)](/cardmgr/8.md), [pcmcia(5)](/pcmcia/5.md).