Last week, I received a used, older (built ~ 2005 or so) IBM ThinkCentre desktop (machine 8143-2EU) having a Pentium 4 (64 bit), 3.0 GHz CPU. It came with WinXP- 64 bit as the sole OS. When I tested my USB devices with the WinXP OS, they were detected and read. I wiped the WinXP and installed MEPIS 11- 64 bit. [There's only a single Intel Pentium 4, 64 bit CPU known to work for MEPIS 11- 64 bit. It's the Pentium 4 Prescott with EM64T. I don't know if my P4 is that one.] Things seem OK with my MEPIS 11- 64 bit OS except for the times when I plug in USB devices--> they're not detected nor read. In a MEPIS forum, a guy told me to try, after first plugging in the USB devices, running lsusb in Konsole. I do that, the system wakes up, and the USB devices are detected and read. But why do I have to do this to get my system to detect and read the devices?

I've made the MEPIS system setting so that all USB devices are automounted when plugged in. Doing that did not correct this problem.


As root, in Konsole, I ran hwinfo and noticed that for the USB controllers, the driver - uhci_hcd - is not active. Here's the hwinfo output for one of the USB controllers:

18: PCI 1d.2: 0c03 USB Controller (UHCI)
[Created at pci.318]
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_8086_265a
Unique ID: mvRC.QIjZy35pcn1
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.2
SysFS BusID: 0000:00:1d.2
Hardware Class: usb controller
Model: "Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3"
Vendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
Device: pci 0x265a "82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3"
SubVendor: pci 0x1014 "IBM"
SubDevice: pci 0x02d8
Revision: 0x03
Driver: "uhci_hcd"
Driver Modules: "uhci_hcd"
I/O Ports: 0x3480-0x349f (rw)
IRQ: 18 (no events)
Module Alias: "pci:v00008086d0000265Asv00001014sd000002D8bc0Csc03i00"
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: uhci-hcd is not active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe uhci-hcd"
Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown

[end of selected hwinfo output]

That output gives the command - modprobe uhci-hcd - to activate the driver. So I did that in run level 3. I get:

FATAL: Module uhci_hcd not found

[I suppose or guess that all MEPIS users who don't have this USB-device-detection-and-read problem have uhci_hcd.]


To see what would happen as a test, I also used a MEPIS 11- 32 bit Live DVD in this computer having the MEPIS 11- 64 bit OS. When I use the Live DVD, I have the same USB detection-and-read problem! What does that mean? With some USB devices plugged in while I'm using the Live DVD, I'm forced again to run lsusb in Konsole. This wakes up the system so that it detects and reads plugged-in USP devices. Why? Any idea on how to fix this? Does this problem seem more a software one rather than a hardware one?

Thanks

1) verify that you do not have a module named uhci_hcd. In a console, run "locate uhci_hcd". If the module exists, the locate command should turn up uhci_hcd.ko, a kernel module.

2) if module uhci_hcd.ko doesn't exist, you need to re-configure your kernel to include that module (you will find it in this section (# USB Host Controller Drivers) of the kernel config file).

Then reboot to load the new kernel with the uhci_hcd module.

bigrigdriver, thanks for your interest and help.

Before and after posting here, I've been consulting with MEPIS users. The experts there told me to not mess around with the kernel so I didn't do what you wrote above.

Since I was advised to do the following, I wiped the MEPIS 11- 64 installation and replaced it with the MEPIS 11- 32 bit OS. That didn't solve the problem: I still have plugged-in USB devices that are not detected nor read 'til I open Konsole and run lsusb. That wakes up the system causing it to recognize and read plugged-in USB devices.

In another thread in this forum (see http://bit.ly/pdmee7 ), a person named {BBI}Nexus{BBI} wrote that appending noapic to the bootup screen should end the problem. Asked why this works, {BBI}Nexus{BBI} stated that "Probably [appending noapic works] because there is a timing fault with an interrupt request. Updating your BIOS can sometimes rectify and eliminate the need to use noapic."

Well I appended noapic to the MEPIS bootup screen and this didn't help: I still have the problem. Maybe 2 days after I got this 64 bit computer last week I did update the BIOS in this ~ 2005-built IBM desktop tower. The old BIOS was probably dated 2005 and now bears the update date of 2008 which is the latest one for this machine. Where in the BIOS is there some setting dealing with adjustment of a timing for something connected perhaps with drivers being loaded or with whatever might be behind the failure of the OS to detect and read the plugged-in USB devices?