USB drives still don't work correctly

[Hans Petter Selasky]

On Wednesday 22 September 2010 18:03:11 Donald Allen wrote:
> I have tried periodically to use FreeBSD -- a couple of the 7.x
> releases, 8.0 and now 8.1. I do my backups on Seagate SATA drives in
> USB shoeboxes with ext2 filesystems. These drives work fine with Linux
> (Slackware) and OpenBSD. But with FreeBSD, absolutely no luck. The 7.x
> releases would freeze or crash. The much-needed reimplementation of
> the USB layer in 8.x gave me new hope, but I'm still experiencing
> problems.
> 
> I have 8.1 RELEASE installed on a Thinkpad G41, an old system I use
> for experimenting. When I plug in one of the USB drives directly to
> the machine, I get  the following in /var/log/messages:
> 
> Sep 22 09:53:10 elektra kernel: ugen3.2: <Sunplus Technology Inc.> at
> usbus3 Sep 22 09:53:10 elektra kernel: umass0: <Bulk Only Interface> on
> usbus3 Sep 22 09:53:10 elektra kernel: umass0:  SCSI over Bulk-Only;
> quirks = 0x4000 Sep 22 09:53:10 elektra root: Unknown USB device: vendor
> 0x04fc
> product 0x0c15 bus uhub3
> Sep 22 09:53:12 elektra kernel: umass0:0:0:-1: Attached to scbus0
> Sep 22 09:53:37 elektra kernel: (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): AutoSense failed
> Sep 22 09:53:37 elektra kernel: (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): got CAM status 0x10
> Sep 22 09:53:37 elektra kernel: (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): fatal error,
> failed to attach to device
> Sep 22 09:53:37 elektra kernel: (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): lost device
> Sep 22 09:53:47 elektra kernel: (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): AutoSense failed
> Sep 22 09:53:47 elektra kernel: (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): removing device
> entry
> 
> After the above, if I remove the USB connector and plug it back in, X
> freezes (the cursor moves with the mouse, but no response to clicks,
> or to keyboard gestures) until I remove the connector.
> 
> Interestingly, if I plug the drive in prior to booting the system, the
> system recognizes it properly and I can mount it and display its root
> directory. So there is a workaround. But after all this time that I've
> been trying to use FreeBSD and all the effort that's gone into getting
> the USB layer right, it's discouraging to still be running into issues
> like this. Hopefully, one of you will have a bright (configuration?)
> idea that will allow me to use the USB drives as I do on other
> systems, without the need for the reboot workaround.
> 
> Thanks --
> 

Hi,

Maybe your drive needs an USB quirk to work properly. See:

usbconfig -h

Look for "quirk".

--HPS