Several people have note similar problems, and recommend a check of your BIOS settings to see how the BIOS is set to handle USB devices during boot as a first step. But that's seldom the problem.
On my system, USB devices are not available during the boot, but they are after I start KDE. (I seldom use GNOME.) Also, I use the KDE display manager, not GDM. You could try switching to KDE as your display manager. (GNOME works quite well with KDM replacing GDM.) Here's what my
/etc/sysconfig/desktop file looks like:
Code:
$ cat /etc/sysconfig/desktop
DESKTOP=KDE
#DISPLAYMANAGER=GNOME
DISPLAYMANAGER=KDE
#DISPLAYMANAGER=XDM
Note, though, that I think the problem is unlikely to be found in the display manager choice you've made.
Another suggestion: Look at the
udev documentation and see if adding a special rule in
/etc/udev/rules.d/ might help.
This is not directly applicable to your question, but you should note that such a rule can also create a symlink to the "real"
/dev entry for the device which can remain the same even when it's plugged into a different port and the "real"
/dev entry changes.
And, finally, you could look at the
buzilla entries for the 2.6.21 kernels. What you're seeing
could be one of the several bugs in those kernels. Although some of the bugs were cleared up in the latest Fedora kernel, release 2.6.21-1.3228.fc7. Have you installed that version?
.
