I built this system 3+ yrs ago and have dual-booted for most of that time.
Just recently I deleted the XP partitions and went with OpenSuSE 11.0...throughout the life of this system I've always had a problem getting all 6 usb ports to work (2 in front 4 back)...just before I deleted XP I had 3 in back working...the two on the front I believe were ruined by my kids yanking their ipod (or whatever) out rudely...hardware failure. The two in front worked for a short time.

So when I reinstalled opensuse as the only os I was expecting the 3 in back to remain operational...not so. My Epson scanner is working fine on one port but the other 2 fail. I have 4 thumb drives that I have tried on
all of the back ports and they fail as well...even the port that the scanner is attached to...??? I unplug the scanner, insert the thumb drv and nothing...I unplug the thumb drv and reinsert the scanner and it works fine...???

I've looked throughout YAST and USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 "seems" to be supported. Is there a service that needs to be started? I was thinking about buying a usb hub and attaching the scanner/thumb drives to it but I didnt want to throw more money at a bad situation...just about ready to give up on finding a solution to this...but I'm like a dog with a bone, I hate to think I couldnt figure this out...please advise....thanks!

This sounds most likely to be a hardware problem, it might be the case that not enough power is getting through to the USB device. I had a similar problem where a USB printer (which of course has its own power) would work, but other unpowered USB devices wouldn't work. Your best bet is probably to get a PCI card with USB ports, as that will bypass the existing dodgy ports.

or would a USB hub work?....plug it in to the known good port, or would the power issue still be there? Would the hub provide the required power?

A USB hub might work, particularly if it has its own external power supply. If you already have one, by all means give that a go and see if it works. However, it will still be going through your existing onboard USB which sounds a bit flaky. A USB expansion card will go through the PCI bus and is less likely to have problems in my opinion, so if you don't already have a hub to try out and you're going to need to buy something then I'd say that a PCI card would be a safer bet. You can get them pretty cheap these days with four ports.

Your right...If I have to buy anything I'm leaning towards the PCI card...that way I should be able to solve the power question and my USB problem at the same time. Thanks again so much!