Kubuntu hangs when USB mass storage device plugged in on boot

[kurisu]

Hi folks,

I have Kubuntu installed on my IDE HD just fine, but if I have a USB mass storage device connected on boot, Kubuntu hangs after a few seconds. I have other (non-storage) USB devices attached, but these don't affect it. Any suggestions?

Many thanks

[penguin.ch]

Re: kurisu

Ad hoc, I'd suggest you take a look at your machine's BIOS and make sure that it does not (!) try to boot from the external (read: USB) harddisk.

[kurisu]

Re: kurisu

Will do, although I don't think my BIOS supports booting from USB.

[kurisu]

Re: kurisu

I checked but my BIOS doesn't support booting from USB devices as far as I can tell. I have an Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe board. Thanks.

[askrieger]

Re: Kubuntu hangs when USB mass storage device plugged in on boot

The next time you reboot, try typing Ctl-Alt-F1 after choosing Kubuntu from the boot menu. You will see all the diagnostic messages that the Ubuntu developers (in their wisdom) decided to hide from you during the boot process. At some point, they will stop flying by because your machine is hung up. Write down THE EXACT WORDING of the last two or three lines on the screen and post them here. That will give us a clue as to what is happening.

I don't know whether this will make you feel better or worse, but I have two boxes with attached USB hard drives and they both boot up without problems. So, it IS possible to make this work in Kubuntu.

[kurisu]

Re: Kubuntu hangs when USB mass storage device plugged in on boot

Hi,

I tried Ctrl+Alt+F1 but I don't get any more text. I removed 'quiet splash' from the boot params and got verbose. The last few lines are:

...
Uniform CD-ROM driver revision : 3.20
usbcore : registered new driver usbfs
usbcore : registered new driver hub
GSI 17 Sharing vector 0xD9 and IRQ 17
ACPI : PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1c.0[A] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 217
ohci_hcd 0000:00:1c.0 : OHCI Host Controller

P.S. I get the 'MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC' bug every time I boot, but this doesn't by itself stop Kubuntu booting successfully. I have tried booting with 'noapic' appended to the boot params: this prevents the MP-BIOS bug but if a USB mass storage device is attached it still hangs.

Thanks for your time

[askrieger]

Re: Kubuntu hangs when USB mass storage device plugged in on boot

The fact that the last line is about OHCI confirms that it is indeed the usb Open Host Controller Interface that is causing your problem. I did a quick google search and found some references from at least a year back that implied that AMD64 BIOS firmware of that generation was having trouble with OHCI. But you'd think that that problem would be fixed by now. Also, you haven't said that you're using an AMD64 CPU, I'm just conjecturing that from the fact that you have the APIC problem, as well.

It may be that if you disconnect the USB drive during boot and then plug it in afterwards, you'll be able to make it work. But on my AMD64 systems that is not necessary, so I can't guarantee that it will help. Besides, if you're dual booting and using windoze frequently, you may find that unsatisfactory.

[kurisu]

Re: Kubuntu hangs when USB mass storage device plugged in on boot

I am indeed using an AMD 64 (Athlon 3700) and dual booting with Windows. Windows is ok with them plugged in on boot, just not Kubuntu for some reason, I updated my BIOS recently with what I believe to be the most recent firmware. The drives can be plugged in and work after Kubuntu boots, but it's a nuisance to do as you can imagine. I tried Mandriva a short time ago and I don't think it hung, but my memory is hazy on that front.

[askrieger]

Re: Kubuntu hangs when USB mass storage device plugged in on boot

There really shouldn't be a difference between Mandriva and Kubuntu on a feature as fundamental as OHCI, because that's part of the Linux kernel. It was on a kernel-hacker web site that I found the comments about AMD64s and OHCI. Presumably both distros start with the latest kernel available at the time they freeze a particular release. In general, the later kernel versions in a particular family like 2.6.* fix bugs found in earlier versions. It's possible, though, that something slipped in during the interim between the time you tried Mandriva and now. Also, I know that the Ubuntu developers make modifications to the kernel and I assume that Mandriva does too. So something could have slipped into the kernel that way as well.

[kurisu]

Re: Kubuntu hangs when USB mass storage device plugged in on boot

Ah this is Interesting. I probably should have mentioned I'm on Dapper, and Mandriva (Spring 2007.1) probably uses a newer kernel. I suppose now the question becomes, should I upgrade my kernel, and if so, how? I'm painfully new to Linux...

[askrieger]

Re: Kubuntu hangs when USB mass storage device plugged in on boot

The easiest way to upgrade your kernel would be to upgrade your distro to Feisty. If you choose that path, I would strongly advise either a fresh install or an upgrade to Edgy followed by an upgrade to Feisty. If you haven't made major tweaks to your computational environment, the fresh install would be the easier path.

If you wish to stay with Dapper for its purported stablilty and its guarantee of 5 years of support, you should check the repositories to make sure that you have the most current kernel package installed. For i686, it is 2.6.15-28 (my Dapper box has a 686).

[kurisu]

Re: Kubuntu hangs when USB mass storage device plugged in on boot

Is there an easy way to upgrade using Adept? I think I have the most current version of the kernel for Dapper as there are no updates available (as shown by Adept). Thanks.

[askrieger]

Re: Kubuntu hangs when USB mass storage device plugged in on boot

There have been a significant number of changes between Dapper and Feisty. These resulted in some changes in configuration options, which is why I suggested a fresh install. However, if you want to do the upgrade, I STRONGLY suggest that upgrade in two steps, first from Dapper to Edgy, and then from Edgy to Feisty. Please follow the instructions on this page from the Ubuntu Community Help Wiki and, especially, the references therein.

[Snowhog]

Re: Kubuntu hangs when USB mass storage device plugged in on boot

My 2-cent observation.

Kurisu says that when he plugs his mass storage device USB in prior to boot, he has the problem, but not with other 'non-mass storage device USBs' attached.

If Kubuntu was installed without the mass storage USB attached, would this problem not be with the dynamic mapping of the systems drives during boot? I've seen several posts concerning drive mapping when removable devices were involved.

[kurisu]

Re: Kubuntu hangs when USB mass storage device plugged in on boot

I'm going to upgrade to Edgy and see whether all my problems are fixed. If not, I'll then go to Feisty. I wouldn't lose much by doing a fresh install of Feisty, but I figure there will come a time when upgrading is necessary, so I might as well get used to it. Having said that, I remember trying Ubuntu Edgy and having a problem with my SATA controller: the system would wait about 3-4 minutes during boot for SATA devices to respond or something. I think I fixed this by disabling SATA in the BIOS but I can't remember. Does this problem sound familiar to anyone?