[wellylug] linux usb

[Ian Beardslee]

Don't panic there Brenda, you are not alone.

I'm having 'interesting' problems with a USB Flash drive, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.  I've been able to read and write to it a couple of times but apart from that it spits the dummy in a major way.  I have a USB mouse working a dream.

Just be aware I am using Slackware with no gui on a P200, 32MB, Digital laptop with one USB port trying to get a 128MB USB flash drive to work. So your mileage may vary :-)

Earlier, I hauled out the laptop plugged in the USB 'key' booted into linux and mounted the device - it worked.
Then I unmounted the device and unplugged the USB key, plugged it back in.  It appears in /proc/bus/usb/devices but then when I went to mount it told me 'mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1, or too many mounted file systems'.
Sigh ... restarted and remounted the device again and it was there.
Double sign ...  restarted and remounted (or at least tried to) and it has failed.
I often get a message saying 'ldm_validate_partition_table(): Disk Read Failed'  Usually 5 or so minutes after I realised that things aren't working as they should.
Each time the drive is plugged in the assigned address increments (reset on a reboot).

My understanding is that the /dev/sda thingy (is that the correct technical term :-) should automagically be created if everything is there AND working properly.  On one occasion instead of things being 'sda1' they were 'sdb1' which needless to say just about had me practising discus throws with the laptop.

Just quickly a couple of notes I've been making as I stumble along here ...

On another virtual console  'tail -s 3 -f /var/log/messages'  This should display the last 10 lines (add '-n 20' for the last 20 lines) of the messages file and refreshes the display every 3 seconds.  This should show you what happens when you unplug and plug in the USB device.

Check '/proc/bus/usb/devices' (eg 'cat /proc/bus/usb/devices') for the USB devices the systems thinks it recognises.  '/proc/bus/usb/drivers' for the drivers it has loaded for the USB devices.

It seems that my usb hotplugging isn't being done right.  The messages log telling me something about '/etc/hotplug/usb.agent' needed to be setup for my flash drive.  I have a feeling that in the 'usb.agent' I need to set something up to unload the usb-storage module to reset things but that may be a real ugly solution if there is more that one USB storage device.  I haven't tried 'modprobe -r usb-storage' yet to see if that solves or creates any problems.

I don't know how much help this is - most of it confuses me.  Most of my exploring the problem and the solution is done by jumping all over the place.

Ian

-----Original Message-----
From: wellylug-admin at lists.naos.co.nz
[mailto:wellylug-admin at lists.naos.co.nz]On Behalf Of Brenda Wallace
Sent: Tuesday, 16 September 2003 2:38 p.m.
To: welly Lug
Subject: Re: [wellylug] linux usb


i'm still confused :-(

On Fri, 2003-09-12 at 16:35, Brenda Wallace wrote:
> i'm using lots of usb devices here, and i'm a little confused.. maybe a
> lot confused..
> 
> i'm using mandrake 9.1
-- 
Brenda Wallace <brenda at wallace.net.nz>


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