I wrote:
I'm having trouble getting USB to work on a SuSE 9.3 system. I don't know much about how it all works. <details snipped> I've looked in the admin and user manual, in the suse sdb and mailing list archives, and with google, but haven't managed to find a solution. I'm sure I've missed something obvious, but what is it?
Catimimi replied:
I've tne same problem with SuSe 9.3 and the vanilla kernel. Add in this order : uhci-hcd ehci-hcd ohci-hcd to the list of modules to load at boot.
Thanks for this; it helped me make some progress. I found that if I do: modprobe ehci-hcd then my USB2 memory stick works and if I do modprobe uhci-hcd my USB scanner works, so that's great. I don't think I need ohci-hcd because I don't have any controllers of that type? I think I should load ehci-hcd first to ensure USB2 devices are correctly detected? Now I'd like to make these settings persistent but I'm not sure of the best way to do that. I believe I could add those modules to the INITRD_MODULES list and make a new initrd, but that seems like a kludge. Or I could add them to MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT? Or should they be loaded automatically? A quick experiment with another SuSE 9.3 box (a 32-bit Intel rather than the 64-bit Athlon that is giving me trouble) shows that ehci-hcd and uhci-hcd are already loaded before I insert any USB plugs. The only files I can find in /etc that mention them are things like /etc/init.d/kbd (I have a PS/2 keyboard), so I don't understand what's loading these modules? Can anybody point me to a troubleshooting guide or somesuch? Thanks, Dave