taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

I’ve been running into problems recently (since several months ago at least), with USB hardware on my Thinkpad T40 running Ubuntu Hoary Dapper; in particular, every time I plug in my iPod or one of my USB hard disks nowadays, I get this:

[5008549.187000] usb 4-3: USB disconnect, address 14
[5008550.143000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 18
[5008552.643000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 27
[5008557.393000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 43
[5008557.893000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 44
[5008558.643000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 46
[5008558.895000] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: port 3 reset error -110
[5008558.896000] hub 4-0:1.0: hub_port_status failed (err = -32)
[5008559.893000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 48
[5008562.643000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 58
[5008563.143000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 59
[5008563.643000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 60
[5008570.143000] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 85

This repeats ad infinitum until the USB device is disconnected.

I had this down as a hardware issue (since it started happening just after warranty expiration ;), but some accidental googling revealed several other cases – and a workaround:

sudo modprobe -r ehci-hcd

Run that repeatedly, each time replugging the device and monitoring dmesg via watch -n 1 ‘dmesg | tail’ in a window, until the device is finally recognised as a USB hard disk. It generally seems to take 3 or 4 attempts, in my experience.

This LKML thread suggests hardware changes can cause it, but this hardware hasn’t changed in years. Annoying.

Anyway, this is ongoing. This tip seems to help, but it might be just treating a symptom, I don’t know — just posting for google and posterity… and to moan, of course :(

Tags: bugs, disks, ehci-hcd, hardware, ipod, linux, storage, usb

Tech: January 24th, besides being the date the first Apple Macintosh went on sale, is supposedly the day of maximal post-xmas misery. Well, it certainly was for me today.

I decided to power on my old desktop to set it up as a back-room fileserver, and twiddled the partition table accordingly to nuke a few unused Windows partitions and maximise usable space.

Somehow or other, some component of my system decided that it would henceforth be non-bootable. It seems some BIOSes don’t like partition tables where a high-numbered logical partition have a lower starting sector than a boot logical partition, or something… GRUB just errored out with an obscure ‘Error 17′, which apparently means that it couldn’t find its boot partition any more.

OK, so I needed a boot disk. But I had 1 laptop with a CD/DVD drive but no floppy drive, and a desktop with a floppy drive but no CD drive (due to hardware failure)… and the original linux boot floppy was long gone, seeing as I’d hardly booted this machine in the duration of two house moves. Argh.

A dinky little Cruzer mini 128MB USB flash drive saved the day. (R)ecovery (I)s (P)ossible is a tiny Linux distro that fits into 27MB, well inside the USB drive’s limits; it has an exceptionally helpful and detailed README detailing exactly what needs to be done to create a bootable USB flash drive from its ISO image, using just the generic linux toolchain.

Together with fdisk and parted’s ‘rescue a lost partition’ mode, I was able to get the mangled partition table back into shape, mount the boot disk, change the fstab and grub configuration file, and reboot into a working system. phew!

Many thanks to Kent Robotti, who’s done a great job with RIP.

On the other hard — no thanks to whoever came up with the arcane rules behind the IDE partition table… argh.

Tags: boot, day, desktop, disk, drive, grub, linux, partition, table, tech, usb

Spam: Don’t miss this account of the capture of a 419 scammer in mid-spam. Nice work, Steffen! (PS: I don’t think eating a USB memory stick would do any good ;)

Tags: account, capture, memory, scammer, spam, stick, usb, work

Fun: C just got her xmas present; a digital camera, the Sony DSC P10 to be exact. Results to right ;)

Good: Sony’s easy-to-use use of USB mass-storage and open formats (GIF, JPEG, and MPEG). pnmstitch.

Bad: having to upgrade my kernel to 2.4.23 to get the bloody thing mounted! (Of course, iPhoto recognised it right away.)

Tags: camera, dsc, fun, gif, jpeg, mpeg, pnmstitch, right, sony, usb, use