I have dealt with a lot of minor nusences, when it comes to linux, for a long time. But this has to be the worst yet. At very random intervals when I first plug in or when i call a usb device for use, my system locks up with little to no warning. it appears to only happen on my usb 2.0 ports but I might be wrong. It doesn't matter what type of device; eg. printer camera phone... and it is very random. I have thoroughly checked my log files and get very little information from them. They always end with a log of the last device plugged in and then the normal boot sequence. Sometimes the system hangs and sometimes it just kills power and reboots . My question is
Has anyone else dealt with an issue like this with debian or ubuntu?
Is there a way to enable more verbose logging to help figure out what is really going on?
I will add that windows 7 remains unaffected so i don't think it's hardware related and I am overclocking(only a little) so when I get the chance ill lower the ghz back to normal and give it another chance. I have also noticed this with ubuntu's latest version.

Thanks in advance for any help.
kim

Can you narrow it down to a particular device? I have a usb card reader which prevents boot on any machine :-/. After boot, it's fine.

Also grep the ehci_hcd source for the word option. There are some options to get around issues. I, for instance, was involved in providing logs of my usb problem 10 years back. The result was an option

option ehci_hcd ignore_oc=1

which disables log spam about overcurrent change on dodgy boxes like the one I then owned.

I had a similar issue in Linux. it happened that the video driver (Nvidia 195.x) was the one freezing my computer. after I removed the driver, it worked as smooth as it can be, no me freezes. hope that works for you.

I appreciate the help
I made some headway today by attempting to recreate the issue, by plugging and unplugging various devices from all of my USB ports. When I was plugging in my printer to the front USB ports on my case, I barely touched the port, it was not plugged in yet, and my computer just shut off and rebooted. That pretty much jumped out as a short/bad wiring somewhere....did some googling and found that this issue is VERY VERY common and even found someone that had the quick fix (which conveniently worked for me). And I am reltively convinced that this is what has been causing the majority of the issues with my USB devices(some of which I didn't list), including the locking up and buggy behavior.

I am not using the same hardware as this guy(motherboard or case), but did experience that exact problem. I haven't gone through all of my USB retests, but I have done a few, including fixing and inserting the problem cable just to verify. For those that may have a similar issue, I am using a GIGABYTE motherboard and an ANTEC 900 case. He was using an ASUS board and COOLERMASTER case.

Great! They've sorted multicore muliti-ghz cpus, support is catching up, and you get snookered by a Reset button :-/.


Mark this one solved and carry on.

agreed, I was too quick to blame Linux on this one....It just really felt that way. Looking back I just didn't do as much with my windows box so that probably why I never noticed it.

That's reasonable - who would notice a crash & reboot every day if you're running windows? The sysadmin in one (windows) house I worked in would reboot things whether they had crashed or not, on the basis that if he didn't, they were going to.

Back for more, with the same issue, I don't even use the front USB ports any more. Still locking up and rebooting, and not with windows (did a much more extensive test with windows and it never crashes....

Try the Kernel Hacking Keys, see if you can get to run top, free, or pstree and see what's going on. Also run a full disk check, and check /lost+found/, which ideally is empty. If it's acquiring stuff, your system may be corrupt.

I will try those commands if the oppurtunity arises...however these kernel panics are usually quite severe and leave my keyboard, and entire computer quite useless.

I am pretty sure this is still a hardware issue, I am trying to narrow it down to a bad mother board or the power supply going bad (or under powering mobo).
My most reliable triggers for the crashes are my phone and usb card reader. I did find that Windows doesn't completely crash when I use these devices but it does severely lag until the device is unplugged, the difference is that it doesn't just reboot/lockup like my debian and ubuntu boxes do.

I stopped OC'ing and installed a new power supply for now even though it is the same Watt rating as the other. My MOBO and P/S are pretty old (~= 4 yrs) and it may just be time to retire them. Looking back to when this started happening the only thing that has really changed is I have upgrade my GPU ad CPU significantly without upgrading my P/S or MOBO, but I shouldn't have had to, I did try to plan ahead a little.

Looking back over the thread, it seems the problem is growing in severity?

The only thing that comes to mind is that if the usb is part of the Southbridge chip, there could be internal faults there. They spreaad internally, so that will become fairly clear. I would check the usuals - memory test and remount / read only
mount -o remount,ro /

and run a disk check on it.

Tried memory test, all tests passed and fsck on / all is good there. Day two with new power supply and no faults. I am going to give it a few more before I remark the thread as solved again!

Case closed and linux is not to blame again...Sorry for the back and forth.

After reading and failing and having the BSOD on windows a few times, I replaced the MOBO. All is good for now. Still a little disappointed that Windows seemed to handle the MOBO bug much better than linux did. But a bug is a bug, and I'm glad it's gone so I can stop pulling out hair and losing work.

End result, Front USB ports will never touch my MOBO again...at least not with this case as I am POSITIVE this is what lead to the early (3 year) demise of my MOBO.