Problems with Hotplug

[Chuck Vose]

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 15:23:18 -0800
Chuck Vose <vosechu at gmail.com> wrote:

> You might try googling around to see if anyone else has had trouble
> with that particular brand of USB hub. I can't imagine what could be
> going wrong and I don't have the tools to get into it but I have two
> thoughts.
>
> A) It has happened that a manufacturer doesn't do things to standard
> and that can really screw up Linux. Since the manufacturer gets to
> include their own drivers they can really do whatever pleases them in
> windows and mac.
>
> B) If you have another install, poke around and see what's different
> between the two. There's no good method for poking so I can't really
> advise, but some distros are getting it right so an install of both
> the working and Ubuntu might yield results and a good patch for the
> community :)

Well, my joy was a bit premature.

I unplugged the hub & turned the machine on. It got to hotplu and
stopped. I plugged the hub back in, it was recognized and the boot
completed.

I rebooted and switched the KVM to the Mac. It got to hot plug and sat
there. I let it sit there a long time and nothing happened. I switched
the KVM back and it just sat there. The keyboard would still give return
characters, but no further progress was going to happen, so I forced a
reset.

At boot I left everything attached. When it got to hotplug, I waited a
bit. I unplugged the drive, waited a bit, plugged it back in and several
seconds later it proceeded.

I did a couple of more boots like the last & it worked OK. Then I
updated everything, installed a few things, and tested it all. Once I
was satisfied that I had what I wanted, I rebooted.

It got to hotplug and I did the same thing that I did the last few
times. Nothing. I forced a reset several times, varying between
unplugging the only device on the hub, unplugging the hub, switching the
hub to the Mac, removing power from the CD writer, unplugging things and
plugging them back in, removing other devices, moving devices to a
different hub (physically different as well as different make and model,
and even different USB protocol), changing kernels and trying again, you
name it. Now it gets to hotplug and just sits. The keyboard still
registers as I can hit keys and they show up. But nothing else does
anything.

The hub I've used mainly has been a Belkin USB 1.1 model, partly because
the Mac is older and that's the protocol it uses. But I switched to a
D-Link USB 2.0 model for testing, and it's still the same.

I might suspect the hardware if not for it working OK with other things.
Yeah, there have been a few odd things happen with it, but that happened
mostly with 2.4 kernels, and all of this is with 2.6.

It's a little hard trying to do this while I'm working long hours and
trying to do other things. So progress is slow. But I'll get this worked
out eventually or I'll drive myself crazy trying.

I'll remove all of everything (except mouse and keyboard) the next time
I'm off and have more time to deal with it. I might even find the time
and energy to mess around with the internal boards at some point, too,
though that might not be until next week if it isn't solved before then.

--
It is easier to fix Linux than it is to live with XP.