can't access USB hard drive

Jim 232777 · n00b Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 40

Well, seems like old story, but nothing others have used to make this work have done it for me, so here goes. (This is kind of a long first post, but it may save several Q&A exchanges.)

I have a USB (1.1) hard drive, actually an Archos Jukebox 20 mp3 player, that won't get recognized by the computer.

I get a variety of responses when plugging the drive into the USB port. Rarely, everything works, and dmesg shows

GordSki · Guru Joined: 18 Oct 2004 Posts: 329

What kernel version are you running? I've had the "unable to read /dev/sdX" with a few devices on 2.6.10 (I think....). The problem seems to be resolved in the newer versions.

G.

Jim 232777 · n00b Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 40

kernel is gentoo sources 2.6.13-r5.

By the way, I didn't say outright, but on the most often result (the third one above), where dmesg says

GordSki · Guru Joined: 18 Oct 2004 Posts: 329

Well that's me stumped :-(

Have you tried your Archos on another machine/OS to make sure it's not a hardware fault?

G.

Jim 232777 · n00b Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 40

Well, I had previously tried it on the Windows system I dual boot to at home, but crappy WinMe choked on the driver, without even trying to connect the drive. I had to bring it into work, and it worked right away on a Win2000 system here.

I guess everything is fine on Win2000. It's telling me I can't disconnect yet. I did move a couple of mp3 directories around on the hard drive to test it's function. The moves look like they moved, but it may still be working. Would the thing move the files back and forth across the USB port if I just moved things to a different directory on the same drive? I figured that was just a FAT operation . . . Oh well, I'll try disconnecting later.

So, that leaves me trying to figure out why access through Gentoo is sporadic (and rare!).

Jim
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twalter · Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 1:56 pm Post subject: USB HD problems

I have a Genesys Logic USB 2.0 IDE HD enclosure and am getting the same error. It does seem specific to the 2.6.15 series of kernels as under 2.6.14 it works flawlessly (under M$ too.) With the new kernels I am getting the same error and it will "bounce" between sda and sdb through a series of disconnect errors. Previously with this adapter it was necessary to set maxreadahead to 64 (from 256) and a kernel patch had automatically done this. This patch appears to be missing from the .15 series. I'm guessing a regression here.

HTH,

- Todd.

dsd · kernel is gentoo sources 2.6.13-r5.

Jim 232777 · n00b Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 40

GordSki · Guru Joined: 18 Oct 2004 Posts: 329

For what it's worth. Upgrading to 2.6.14-r2 fixed the issues I was talking about.....

G.

dsd · Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 11:29 am Post subject:

2.6.15 is ready to go stable but is being held back by some packages which rely on the kernel to compile:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=118671

so yes, give it a try. its by no means unstable
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Jim 232777 · n00b Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 40

dsd · Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 10:23 pm Post subject:

you should still be able to boot it and test your usb disk, even if you cant watch tv

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Jim 232777 · n00b Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 40

Yeah, I guess I'll have to do that for now. (Kind of busy for the next few days, but maybe I can get around to it.) It does bring up a couple of questions about the kernel upgrade, though.

1. /usr/src/linux symlink--is this just for correct compiling, or does it need to be set correctly to run? I'm guessing it's just for compiling, since grub can point to different kernels?

2. The kernel upgrade guide (section 6) says to reinstall external modules, with the module-rebuild command. The first paragraph says it rebuilds against the source in /usr/src/linux. The second paragraph says it builds against the currently running kernel, and NOT necessarily against /usr/src/linux. Don't quite understand that.

3. I assume when it rebuilds things, it keeps separate versions for the different kernels?
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dsd · Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2006 12:07 pm Post subject:

/usr/src/linux is only really used for compiling external kernel modules in portage (such as nvidia-kernel). it isnt strictly needed for kernel compilation or booting.

if you emerge a module ebuild (e.g. nvidia-kernel) manually, it will build against /usr/src/linux. if you use module-rebuild to do this, it will (apparently) build against the currently running kernel, regardless of what /usr/src/linux points at.

modules are kept separately for different kernels and are not removed by portage.
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Jim 232777 · n00b Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 40

Time to wake up this topic. I put the problem on the back burner, and am now back trying to make it work. Last suggestion some months ago was to move to a newer kernel. I'm now up to 2.6.16-r13 and have essentially the same problem.

lsusb:

dsd · Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 11:03 pm Post subject:

you should enable USB storage debugging in your kernel config
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Jim 232777 · n00b Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 40

OK, that was easy enough. dmesg now generatees hundreds of lines of 'usb-storage' messages. Is there something I should look for? Or maybe there's some log file somewhere that has the important info?

Tell me where to go from here, and I'll be all over it!
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Registered Linux User #232777

Jim 232777 · n00b Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 40

Well, I've sorted through things a little, and it's not as bad as I thought, although still alot of info. Turns out I had also plugged in other USB storage to compare, and got all the message confused.

Here we go. output when plugging in the usb drive

GordSki · Guru Joined: 18 Oct 2004 Posts: 329

One thing I've noticed is that other USB stick you used appears to be USB 2 (ehci_hcd) where as your archos is a USB 1.1 (ohci_hcd) device. Have you tried other 1.1 devices to see if there's a problem with the actual 1.1 host controller in your machine?

G.

Jim 232777 · n00b Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 40

Yep. My digital camera is just usb 1.1, and uses ohci just fine . . .
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GordSki · Guru Joined: 18 Oct 2004 Posts: 329

Well I can only think of one more thing to try. Why not compare the Puppy Linux kernel config with the one for your Gentoo box and see if there are any obvious USB related differences. I doubt you'll find anything, the config you posted above looks good, but there could be something we've missed.

Sorry

G.

EDIT: I could have sworn there was a chunk of kernel config up there..... :oops:

Jim 232777 · n00b Joined: 18 Mar 2005 Posts: 40

Kernel config? not really. I just described what I had enabled in the config, such as ISD200, usb storage, scsi support, etc.

You did give me an idea, though. Puppy is a small distro that can run completely from CD, like Knoppix, but unlike Knoppix run quickly (!) because it's designed to be small and compact. As I said, it's ideal for the old laptop someone gave me. Anyway, it's also easy to boot my desktop with the CD without cluttering up the system--so I did.

What happened when I plugged in the usb drive? Exactly what happened under Gentoo. dmesg even gave the same output--

GordSki · Guru Joined: 18 Oct 2004 Posts: 329

Well that sucks

At least you've been able to narrow it down to a problem with hardware incompatability or a driver bug. It might be worth digging through the source for the nVidia chipset driver and seeing if there's a mailling list or a maintainer that you can email directly.

G.