usb/umass, devfs: this sucks

[Paul Schmehl]

--On December 25, 2007 10:25:08 PM -0800 David Benfell 
<benfell at parts-unknown.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 00:38:11 -0500, Mikhail Teterin wrote:
>>
>> If we want people to give FreeBSD a try in good faith, it is both
>> profoundly  stupid and dishonest on our part to claim, we have a
>> working USB-system... It  does not matter, how great our buffer-sharing
>> VM is, if a home user can't  process their photos with a
>> FreeBSD-powered computer.
>>

To the OP of this thread - generalized statements like this aren't very 
helpful.  I have a USB  mouse and a USB keyboard, both of which work fine 
and always have.  I mount USB thumb drives frequently to copy and move 
files back and forth.  I have a USB hard drive that is automounted at boot.

None of these devices has ever given me problems.

I'm not sure what you're referring to, but I suspect it's the "failure" to 
automount devices without first doing some configuration or to mount 
devices when you are not logged in as root.

> While I have not experienced difficulty with umass, I would have to
> comment that as near as I can tell, *nothing* else on USB works.  Not my
> scanner, nor my Treo.
>
> Both have worked intermittently in the recent past, so I believe my
> configuration is not at issue.

These I can't comment on, because I don't use them, although I note that 
there is a uscanner driver that *should* work for most scanners.  Man (4) 
uscanner has a lenghty list of supported scanners.  You might check to see 
if yours is on the list.

Paul Schmehl (pauls at utdallas.edu)
Senior Information Security Analyst
The University of Texas at Dallas
http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/