Hi,

For future users not as in the know, just a quick note to address an annoying problem with 9.3 (circa July 2005) on a vanilla 9.3 install with all updates applied. This happened for me on an old-reliable Thinkpad 600x.

Problem:
Insert flash drive and drive does not
-mount
-konqueror file manager window does not launch with the contents of the USB drive.
-Error messages in dmesg: usb 1-1: device not accepting address 5, error -110 and or usb 1-1: device descriptor read/64, error -110

Solution:
-Install apmd. I'm set up to check repositories online. Someone please confirm/deny this is on one of the CD's.
-As root, modify /boot/grub/boot.lst and add acpi=off to end of boot line. Alternatively, you could always type acpi=off in the boot manager screen.

Comments:
9.3 has quite a few issues they haven't worked out yet. Much better install on a desktop vs. laptop. Generally as good as Debian Sarge with less paranoid default security and much better than my Kubuntu nightmare.

Feel free to ask any questions.

Interesting.

I haven't encountered a similar problem on my Acer Ferrari 3400 but this may presumably be because your Thinkpad has an Intel processor and an older BIOS.

The only thing that does confuse me is that udev doesn't seem to be bug-free, or maybe it is just not optimized yet for 64-bit and my VIA Technologies chipset (it installs via82cxxx driver into the kernel, by default), since I am, as yet, unable to stop it setting up the four usb ports (seen as USB2.0 by Windows - or at least advertized by Acer as such) initally as uhci devices and then converting the fourth to ehci.

I fail to see why in the 2.6 kernel it is necessary for my /dev creates over 7,500 devices, which contain no data, and which appear to have no use. that and the fact that the /dev/.udevdb directory creates 8 block@loop[0-7] and 16 block@ram[0-15] devices, that persist despite the fact that initrd has finished its boot process - and as far as I can see these 'devices' are only set-up for virtual ram in loading vmlinuz at boot time. Do you happen to know, if trhey exist on your machine, if they are ever used after booting?

Furthermore, usbcore seems to find a mass storage device in my machine (Manufacturer: Generic, Serial #: 7777777777777777 ... with a Vendor ID 0x483 (SGS Thomson Microelectronics), Product ID 0x321 (no name) - very weird.

Also I haven't been able to get my ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 128MB to 3D agp8 (in 64-bit) yet - maybe it too needs some tweaking - although I haven't tried lately since it would only be to prove that it can be done and to find out what fps I can get. Mere Idle curiosity on my part!

However, my usb devices (which include a Maxtor One-Touch 250GB USB2.0 external HDD, and a Dane-Elec 512MB Thumb drive that is partitioned with a 1MB 'virtual' floppy drive and it is seen as such by SuSE 9.3 - I didn't even have to load any scsi drivers (it appears to have been done automagically by SuSE 9.3).

My guess the reason there's no usb issues on your laptop is because it's a later laptop than mine. I have a more recent desktop where the distro has no hardware related problems.

Ferrari mmmmmm.....

I found another solution to failure to mount usb storage.

I added acpi=noirq to the boot arguements and removed acpi=off.

This is on an old thinkpad 600x Part number 2645-9zu.

Much better battery life now!

Excellent news. Enjoy. And thanks for posting your solution.