weird issue with a 500GB USB external drive
 

Hello folks, hope you can help me with this weird issue.
First of all, some info about the environment in which I'm having this problem:
- Got the kernel 2.6.6-1.435 & 2.6.6-1.435smp RPMS from rpm.pbone.net.
- Fedora Core 2 - Kernel 2.6.6-435-smp
- 500GB Firewire/USB2 LaCie external HDD drive

If i try to use it while running FC2 using a 2.6.6-1.435 (non SMP) kernel, the disk
gets properly recognized and the usb-storage module is automatically loaded.

If I reboot the system, and instead of the 2.6.6-1.435smp, I try the 2.6.6-435-smp
kernel. This time when I activate the disk the device seems to be unrecognized
plus the usb-storage module is not loaded.

In this situation, loading the module usb-storage doesn't help, as the disk doesn't
appear on the system. This is the output from loading the module manually:

"Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered."

and if I run an "lsusb" command I get these lines:
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Any hint of what could be happening? and hopefully how to solve it?

Thx in advance!

If you need more details, please let me know.

what does the dmesg command say when you plug / unplug the drive when using the problem kernel?

I've just unplugged and plugged the device, and dmesg says:

usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using address 4
usb 1-1: control timeout on ep0out

Checking some early entries on dmesg I got this:

usb 1-1: control timeout on ep0out
usb 1-1: device not accepting address 2, error -110
usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using address 3
...
usb 1-1: control timeout on ep0out
usb 1-1: control timeout on ep0out
usb 1-1: device not accepting address 3, error -110

Hope this is what you were asking about.

Thx again.

Make sure usb-storage and sd_mod is loaded. If they are not then load them yourself. I suggest downloading 2.6.11 or newer from kernel.org and configure it and compile it.

sd_mod is loaded. Like I said before, usb_storage doesn't get load once I plug/unplug
the drive...I have to do that manually...but doesn't make a difference since the disk is not
recognized by the system.

By the way, I would like (if possible) to keep working on that kernel version. The problem
is that I cannot migrate to new kernels each time I find an issue. :(

Thx anyways!

List everything that dmesg, lsmod, lsusb, and cat /proc/bus/usb/devices. PLEASE DO NOT TRUNCATE THE INFORMATOIN.

It is possible that the newer kernel will have support for it. Also in kernel 2.6.11, the developers said they have fixed the CD/DVD reading/recording problem that previous 2.6.x kernels had.

Good news! Seems I managed to solve the problem. Seems the issue was not the kernel itself, but the
motherboard BIOS.

The computer had a 694D PRO ver1.0 MB, with BIOS v1.4 (2000). I upgraded it to version 1.9 using
the files downloaded from MSI website, after that I started Linux with an SMP kernel and I was able to
use the disk (detected as /dev/sda).

How did it happen?
Well, I installed the latest SMP kernel RPM available via yum, which is 2.6.10, and still had problems
with the external disk. After several reboots, I noticed that the system was complaining about acpi
issues caused by an outdated BIOS. As I said before I updated it and that seemed to fix the problem.

I also realized that the problem was this particular computer, as I have another machine (not related)
running a 2.6.6 SMP kernel in which is possible to use this USB external HDD.

Anyways, thanks a lot for your support and your time. (Electro & Taxtropel)