Problems with Hotplug

[ABrady]

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 04:50:22 -0500
ABrady <xunil at kc.rr.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 20:35:14 -0800
> Chuck Vose <vosechu at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hotplug support is definitely linked to USB so I believe Vince is
> > right about try to disconnect some devices, but don't go out and buy
> > SCSI yet. Let's find the problem before we start introducing more
> > problems.
> > 
> > It also might help you diagnose if you can boot warty in rescue mode
> > (or access from Mepis) and look at /var/log/messages for anything
> > interesting. /var/log/dmesg might also have clues.
> > 
> > Let us know what happens,
> > Chuck
> 
> A much more sensible response.
> 
> I hadn't thought to look at /var/log/messages via Mepis. It's too
> early in the morning to play around with things, but I'll see what I
> can come up with later. besides, it's installed on a drive in another
> drawer. So I'll have to go in with a kive CD to look. May as well use
> the Warty live CD to help solve a Warty problem, eh? I have one and it
> always boots fine. (So far.)
> 
> USB is definitely quirky. I've found ways to live with it and make it
> behave, though.
> 
> I'm sure it's USB-related, but I still hold out the slim chance it's
> something else. I once had a PS/2 keyboard that one distro (RH6.1I
> think it was) wouldn't boot using.That was troubling to track down
> because it always hung up right after card services were started
> (which i didn't use anyway) and gave no indication that it was a
> keyboard problem. I went in with a rescue disk and removed the symlink
> to pcmcia and it would still hang up. I changed keyboards for a
> different reason and it booted up fine. When I put the other back in,
> it would hang again.

OK. I tested this again. It hung during boot again, So I loaded up a
live CD and looked in /var/log. Nothing there. No messages file
whatsoever. The syslog was empty. This problem evidently pops up before
logging ever gets started. Since it was a fresh install, there never was
a chance to log anything in a previous boot.

I reinstalled (since I'd done nothing to the last install anyway). It
went through the install perfectly. At first boot I pulled a couple of
devices to see what would happen. It hung. I pulled the plug on a hub
and it proceeded.

Progress!

After it started going ahead, I plugged the hub back in and it was OK.
It should be anyway, since it was already past USB probing.

It either doesn't like the hub or the only active device on the hub: the
CD writer. I have 2 other cables attached so I can plug in the mp3
player and the camera whenever I need to, but they haven't been attached
whenever I've tried to get things going.

Now the puzzling parts.

1. Why isn't there a problem during install when I can clearly see the
devices being probed, yet the same devices in the same configuration
cause problems during boot?

2. How can I get around this short of switching that hub off/on during
boot?

I failed to mention earlier that I also have the CD writer on a KVM to
share with the Mac. I have it separate so I can switch keyboard and
mouse and not interrupt any CD writing I might be doing. Same rationale
applies to the other cables for devices I don't normally switch back and
forth between the 2 machines.

Tonight's experimentation will involve playing with just the one hub and
writer attached to it as last night's agenda ended with letting the
installer complete the rest of its tasks after the boot was finished.

-- 
Nimda - Innovative Microsoft peer-to-peer software.