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Date:      Thu, 23 Sep 2010 17:59:48 +0200
From:      Bernd Walter <ticso@cicely7.cicely.de>
To:        Donald Allen <donaldcallen@gmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-usb@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: USB drives still don't work correctly
Message-ID:  <20100923155948.GC2846@cicely7.cicely.de>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTinaf9bg=pGSwGtiSr08HAtguFpWriLYEqL%2BF4J=@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <AANLkTimkzMiGCvu256tUR3ZUrantNQjXGTcSCvxFX5eL@mail.gmail.com> <201009230834.12501.hselasky@c2i.net> <AANLkTinaf9bg=pGSwGtiSr08HAtguFpWriLYEqL%2BF4J=@mail.gmail.com>

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On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 11:07:59AM -0400, Donald Allen wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 2:34 AM, Hans Petter Selasky <hselasky@c2i.net> wrote:
> > 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".
> 
> There are 48 supported quirks. Do you have suggestions as to which I might try?
> 
> I would add that I'm not sure if you are suggesting this as a solution
> to my problem, or as a step toward improving the USB driver. If the
> latter, I'm happy to help. If the former, I'd argue that's not
> sufficient. These drives (I have three identical ones) work
> flawlessly, with no user intervention, with Linux (Slackware), and
> OpenBSD. FreeBSD ought to do the same. And if a "quirk" is needed with
> FreeBSD, it seems odd that the drives work correctly and without added
> quirks with FreeBSD when plugged in at boot-time (as I said in the
> message to which you replied). but not when hot-plugged. This suggests
> to me that there's a bug, or, at the very least, a missing feature.

Or FreeBSD tries to use a feature, which is broken with the drive,
which often happens, since FreeBSD tries hard to be fast and correct.
For example broken cache flushes won't hurt if your OS don't bother
to even try a flush, broken tagged command queuing or pipelining won't
hurt if your OS only does single transactions.
Yes: FreeBSD is unusual in that it expects a device to work correctly
and that announced features can be used.
You also shouldn't ignore that fact that other OS are also use quirk
tables to work aroung broken devices - of course Linux is more often
used with crappy hardware than FreeBSD, so they likely have bigger
quirk tables - with OpenBSD - well either it doesn't use the broken
feature at all or they are already stumbled over the problem by luck.
I've never seen a Sunplus USB mass storage device so far and I've seen
a lot.
The FreeBSD driver likely isn't at fault, since it works with so many
non-broken devices.
For me it looks like the device is just hanging on a command, which
would be clearly against specification.
I've seen so many creative firmware bugs in USB devices that I don't
easily trust any of them.
Fortunately most vendors have learned their lessons, so that more
recent devices are less error prune.

> I'm happy to work with you to try to understand this better, since I
> can reproduce it at will. Let me know what you'd like me to do.

-- 
B.Walter <bernd@bwct.de> http://www.bwct.de
Modbus/TCP Ethernet I/O Baugruppen, ARM basierte FreeBSD Rechner uvm.



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