Hi everyone

I'm struggling to get a USB removable hard drive to mount in Linux. Its part of a removable car audio system called a Phatbox.

I can see the unit is being recognised by the system, but I can't find a relevant /dev/sda* entry which I can then mount to a folder. Can anyone help?

My kernel is 2.6.35-27-generic-pae - as part of Ubuntu meerkat

My starting point for all this is dmesg (as usual!), which after I pull out and plug in the device, says the following:


[] usb 2-1: USB disconnect, address 5
[] usb 2-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
[] scsi7 : usb-storage 2-2:1.0

When I do the same, /var/log/messages says:

23:03:01 Notebook-PC kernel: [ 1046.117967] usb 2-2: USB disconnect, address 7
23:03:01 Notebook-PC halevt: Running: halevt-umount -u /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_424_20cd_noserial_if0_scsi_host; halevt-umount -s
23:03:01 Notebook-PC halevt: Running: halevt-umount -u /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_424_20cd_noserial_if0; halevt-umount -s
23:03:01 Notebook-PC halevt: Running: halevt-umount -u /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_424_20cd_noserial; halevt-umount -s
23:03:07 Notebook-PC kernel: [ 1052.740079] usb 2-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
23:03:07 Notebook-PC kernel: [ 1052.909300] scsi9 : usb-storage 2-2:1.0
23:03:30 pete-HP-Pavilion-dv9700-Notebook-PC kernel: [ 1075.152126] usb 2-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
23:03:40 pete-HP-Pavilion-dv9700-Notebook-PC kernel: [ 1085.408200] usb 2-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
23:03:56 Notebook-PC kernel: [ 1101.669121] usb 2-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
23:03:56 Notebook-PC kernel: [ 1101.928045] usb 2-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
23:04:07 Notebook-PC kernel: [ 1112.184489] usb 2-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
23:04:07 Notebook-PC kernel: [ 1112.331065] scsi 9:0:0:0: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery


I can see at the end there it says "not ready after error recovery" - how do I find out what that error was?

Then lsusb gives me this line:

Bus 002 Device 009: ID 0424:20cd Standard Microsystems Corp. Sitecom Internal Multi Memory reader/writer MD-005

I've looked up Sitecom on the HCL and MD-005 doesn't appear - does that mean its not compatible or just not on the list? Its listed here - http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.ids


So - can anyone help? How do I diagnose why that error happened - and why it is that although its discovered it as a scsi device, scsi9, it then offlines it?

Any help much appreciated!

Thanks,

Pete

The error may have been that you just unplugged it instead or doing a proper removal.

You should boot with it plugged in and check under /media to see if it shows up there.

I'm afraid I've tried pretty much every combination of booting / plugging / unplugging / re-inserting drive into cradle... I'll try one more time and see though - but I thought that an unmounted device was safe to remove and plug in with no issues!?

I think the bit that strikes me as odd is that it has never ever been assigned anything under /dev/sd*. It only ever gets called "scsi9" or something like that.

In theory there should be two partitions as well, but only one device shows up.

It should be /dev/sdc and should get mounted under /media

...but /dev/sdc does not exist...should I create it somehow? I'm sure I read once that you could do that...although I thought Ubuntu was supposed to avoid users from having to get that technical...

I've recreated /dev/sdc with MAKEDEV - but when I try and mount them, it just tells me its not a valid block device. And in dmesg its still not associating the drives with any of them (1, 2, 3, etc)...

You shouldn't have to do this. Udev should take care of all of this for you.

So is the issue with udev perhaps?

Do you have a LiveCD you can try it with?

I tried that..same events in dmesg I'm afraid and no sd* devices in /dev...

I think the key to this is the line which says:

scsi9 : usb-storage 2-2:1.0

and the line which says

scsi 9:0:0:0: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery

- so firstly it doesn't get assigned to anything in /dev, and then there's an error.

Other people's dmesg's on other forums seem to have lines saying "[] sdc: sdc1" or similar - which tell you which block device it is. Mine's not getting that far.

I tried setting the rsyslog debug output to be included - but no more messages are appearing... I've used linux for a while but I'm stuck on this one for what other information I can gather to debug this!

Does anyone else have any ideas?