Internal card reader not working, continually spawning new USB devices

MS3FGX · 12-06-2007, 08:02 PM

I recently bought an extremely cheap internal card reader from China. It has no descriptive information on it at all to identify a make or model, so unfortunately there is nothing I can really look up to try to figure it out. It doesn't even show up with lsusb, since it never actually communicates with the kernel successfully. It does work under Windows however, with the generic card reader driver.

The card reader itself refuses to read any cards, nothing shows up when I plug them in. The USB port built into the reader does work however, which rules out a wiring issue (though, again, it works under Windows so I know it is good).

The only thing it does do is spawn itself as a new USB device every 1/2 second or so, as evidenced by my logs:

Code:

Dec  6 19:21:24 T-Bird kernel: usb 2-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 89
Dec  6 19:21:24 T-Bird kernel: usb 2-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 90
Dec  6 19:21:24 T-Bird kernel: usb 2-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 91
Dec  6 19:21:24 T-Bird kernel: usb 2-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 92
Dec  6 19:21:25 T-Bird kernel: usb 2-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 93
Dec  6 19:21:25 T-Bird kernel: usb 2-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 94
Dec  6 19:21:25 T-Bird kernel: usb 2-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 95
Dec  6 19:21:26 T-Bird kernel: usb 2-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 96
Dec  6 19:21:26 T-Bird kernel: usb 2-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 97
Dec  6 19:21:26 T-Bird kernel: usb 2-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 98
Dec  6 19:21:26 T-Bird kernel: usb 2-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 99
Dec  6 19:21:27 T-Bird kernel: usb 2-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 101
Dec  6 19:21:27 T-Bird kernel: usb 2-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 102
Dec  6 19:21:27 T-Bird kernel: usb 2-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 103

It goes all the way up to 127, and then loops back around. I have tried it under Kubuntu and on Slackware (with both the default kernel and my own custom one), and get the same results. So I am guessing if it is a kernel option it must not be a very common one.

After looking around online a bit, I saw a tip that suggested you enable "Probe all LUNs on each SCSI device" in the kernel, but that had no effect.

Has anyone seen anything like this before?

ehawk · 12-06-2007, 08:43 PM

from http://linuxfromscratch.org/pipermai...4-November.txt

"An USB card reader usually shows up as a SCSI mass storage device.
In that case device entries are created under /dev/scsi/, and some
corresponding entries under /dev/discs/ as well. You can check which
devices where created by looking at the ouput of dmesg, or check the
kern.log or sys.log files in /var/log/."

"If the usbserial message has anything to do which this smart card reader you
can check for device nodes in /dev/usb/tts/ or other subdirectories
of /dev/usb/."

smartcard linux utility:

http://people.debian.org/~rousseau/smartcard.html

http://www.geocities.com/cprados/

Perhaps useful drviers:

ccid free card reader driver:

http://pcsclite.alioth.debian.org/ccid.html

http://www.fsfe.org/en/card/howto/ca...der_howto_udev

http://www.gnupg.org/(en)/howtos/car...n/ch02s03.html

PC/SC, from http://www.opensc-project.org/faq.html

"The good thing about PC/SC is that all companies in the smart card reader business and Microsoft support it. Also it is a modern standard: designed for modern operating systems with many applications, users, drivers, smart cards and it manages all that."

http://www.pcscworkgroup.com/

location with many drivers and community support:

http://www.nabble.com/MuscleCard-f14240.html
http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/~jw35...ard-linux.html

MS3FGX · 12-07-2007, 06:37 AM

Perhaps I should have clarified. This is a standard multi-card reader; Secure Digital, Compact Flash, Memory Stick, etc, etc. Not a smart card reader.