Description of problem: writing and reading from an external USB harddisk seems to cause the computer to lock up. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 2.6.20-1.2948.fc6 How reproducible: hung the computer 3 times today Steps to Reproduce: 1.copy data to USB disk 2.at same time read from USB disk 3. Actual results: Computer hangs Expected results: computer should continue to work Additional info: This happened a few times today and I am sure this used to work fine with this HD about a month ago. I am writing data (~700 kB/s from network) to the USB disk. Everything works fine as long as I don't access the disk (much) at the same time. Relevant part of /var/log/messages is attached.
Created attachment 154415 [details] part of /var/log/messages
Created attachment 154416 [details] dmesg output
Created attachment 154417 [details] lsusb -v output
I don't think I can do much if a disconnect happens. It is always initiated by device. Try to find an external enclosure which does not disconnect.
I think there are 2 problems: 1) the device is relatively new (5 months old) and worked fine until about 1 month ago. While it is of course possible that something went wrong with the device I was wondering if there had been changes to the USB driver/kernel that could cause that. 2) even if the device disconnects for some reason, it should not be able to bring the computer to a crawling halt that I can only get out of by rebooting (sometimes CTRL-Alt-Del works, sometimes only a power off!).
Quite so. Although the host does not ever disconnect any USB devices, the software can precipitate a disconnect by making the firmware in the device to crash. Some of them are really fragile, especially anything OEM-ed from Gensys. BTW, FC-6 ships with ub enabled. What does happen if you boot with libusual.bias="ub" in grub.conf? Mind, the mount devce will move from sda1 to uba1 for the test. Look into /proc/partitions to check.
I have been running today with libusual.bias="ub" and the drive seemed to work fine.
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I am currently using Fedora 7 and intend to wait for 9 before upgrading again. About a month (IIRC) after I sent comment #7 the libusual.bias="ub" kernel parameter vanished in FC6 and the behaviour of external USB drives got worse again. I then switched to Fedora 7 to see if there was an improvement, but this did not help. The current manifestation of the problem is no longer a kernel lock up but a shutdown of the USB subsystem (or so it seems). For example, if I have a USB mouse connected, then connect the USB disk and write to the disk I will loose the use of the USB mouse at a random point in time. Unplugging the mouse and reconnecting it (to the same or another USB port) does not make it work. Only a reboot makes the mouse available again, while the touchpad is working all the time. Another manifestation under Fedora 7 is that the USB HDs disconnect (on read or write) and then automatically reconnect. This is seen in the window manager as the disk icon vanishing and then reappearing. This can happen a few times after which the disk stays lost. Unplugging and plugging the disk back in again does not make it accessable again. Only a reboot helps. The problem starts at a random time and sometimes one can work for hours without a problem. I have seen this problem now with 3 different enclosures. Apart from the i686 laptop I have also seen this happen with Fedora 7 on a x86_64 desktop, although (it seemed) less frequently. Older versions of Fedora (eg. FC5) however do not seem to have a problem with these external disks.
Correct, ub is not supported anymore in Fedora. It should be possible to emulate some of its lighter load characteristics by: echo 32 > /sys/block/sdb/queue/max_sectors_kb But honestly I suspect a new motherboard is the solution here.
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