Topic: USB drives

[Rick Jones]

As a first experiment with USB I tried accessing one of those pocket flash-memory sticks that behave as removable drives. I insmod'd usb-storage, but it wouldn't recognize the device. In /var/log/messages I got:

Sep 20 15:42:36 smithy kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
Sep 20 15:42:36 smithy kernel: usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage
Sep 20 15:42:36 smithy kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered.

-- looks like the driver loaded OK, then on plugging in the device:

Sep 20 15:43:59 smithy kernel: hub.c: USB new device connect on bus1/2, assigned device number 2
Sep 20 15:43:59 smithy kernel: usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 2, frame# 1847
Sep 20 15:43:59 smithy kernel: usb.c: USB device not accepting new address=2 (error=-110)
Sep 20 15:43:59 smithy kernel: hub.c: USB new device connect on bus1/2, assigned device number 3
Sep 20 15:43:59 smithy kernel: usb.c: USB device not accepting new address=3 (error=-110)

-- the device doesn't seem to want to talk. This was before attempting to mount it, which obviously failed.

This gadget is compatible with Win 2k & XP without additional drivers, but I'm wondering how many variants there are of removable USB storage.

Longer term I'm thinking of a USB hard drive for backup, so thought I'd try this out to start with. Do all USB storage devices implement the same protocol, or does the driver have to know what it's talking to in order to work? If the latter, does anyone know what devices are and are not supported?

I'm still a bit unclear as to how this all hangs together.

TIA
Rick

[Randall Perry]

The thumbdrives are interchangeable.

Sounds like a hardware issue (as in the controller).
If you are using this on a USB2 controller, try moving it to the USB1.1
controller and see what happens.

Try running any USB device (mouse, etc) and see what happens.

Good luck.

[Randall Perry]

I did a quick lookup for you.
One referenced ACPI being enabled.
So if it isn't the hardware (my guess) try running without acpi

[Rick Jones]

Tres strange !!

I'd plugged it into the lower USB port (pair of integral 1.1 ports on the MB), so I thought I'd try the top port. This time it was recognised, device number assigned, and it worked fine. After doing that, it would also work in the bottom port!

And it wasn't just bad connections, because I'd removed it, checked it in another PC, plugged it back in, etc. Just always plugged into the bottom port - for no logical reason.

Is it a USB driver quirk in that it has to allocate a device to the first port on the integral hub before it can deal with the others?

Moral - always start at the top!

( Now I have the courage to buy a USB IDE adaptor! )