[First note, I'm not on the list, so please copy me with any replies!]
Greetings all,
I apologize if this is a semi-FAQ, but couldn't find reference to it anywhere
on the net with search terms I tried, including archives of the list...
I have installed SuSE Linux 10.0 commercial on my Wife's desktop, an
Athlon64 3200+ on an ASUS K8V SE motherboard (VIA K8T800 chipset), and
in general it's been working well, but I have had a problem that I
haven't had time to completely debug myself, but figured there would
likely be some knowledge on the list about it:
-- There seems to be a rare but real USB-storage bug in the 2.6.13 series
of kernels, and it affects both our Camera and the iPod Shuffle I got
her. It causes indefinite hangs of the USB bus after some random
amount of data has transferred (usually more than 1 song, between
15 and 100 songs, say), and it also runs the transfers to the iPod
quite slowly.
NOTE: I tried using a newer kernel to fix this because I had found
references to USB-storage bugs in large data transfers in vanilla
2.6.13 kernels which were fixed in 2.6.14 series kernels. The
feeling on the part of those posting seemed to be if there were
ever glitches in the transfers, the 2.6.13 series kernel's USB
storage drivers just gave up in bad and sometimes unrecoverable
ways, and the symptoms to the hangs they observed were the same
as the ones I saw.
-- The only fix I could make in the time I have has been to replace it
with a later kernel. I have tried both SuSE 10.1 Beta 4 and
Fedora Core 4 update kernels (trying to get distribution bug-fixes
in).
-- After replacing the kernel, USB-storage works like a dream, fast and
no observed hang or hiccoughs...
-- But on the newer kernels, the desktop automounting of USB-storage now
is broken.
So, is there some either 2.6.13-specific or SuSE-specific feature which
makes the desktop automounting work that I could fix? I patch kernels
all the time, just don't have time to fully debug what mechanisms are
failing and why... there didn't seem any obvious change in kernel
configuration after looking at a few (like KOBJECT_UEVENT, which was
functioning fine, and resmgrd was taking events)...
Anyway, would appreciate any info on the topic that could shed light
into how to get USB working clean/fast *and* keep desktop automounting
working! (preferred solution is getting the automounting working
correctly on the newer kernel, I think...)
--
Erich Stefan Boleyn