Death of a USB device... natural causes or foul play?

Question

I've had a little usb flash drive mp3 player for years. The last time that I mounted it (mount -o umask=0 ...) to replace some songs, the songs were correctly copied but umount hung when I tried to dismount it.
After about 5 minutes I killed umount and checked that the device was unmounted, which it was. After removing the device, I turned it on to check it but it wouldn't proceed past the initial logo screen.
I can no longer mount the device. Here's the dmesg output from multiple attempts:
[ 101.066671] usb 6-2: new full speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd
[ 101.515930] usbcore: registered new interface driver uas
[ 101.520972] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
[ 101.521079] scsi10 : usb-storage 6-2:1.0
[ 101.521176] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
[ 101.521182] USB Mass Storage support registered.
[ 102.903338] usb 6-2: reset full speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd
[ 103.020004] usb 6-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 103.240002] usb 6-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 103.450003] usb 6-2: reset full speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd
[ 103.620002] usb 6-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 103.840000] usb 6-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 104.050005] usb 6-2: reset full speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd
[ 104.463350] usb 6-2: device not accepting address 2, error -71
[ 104.570003] usb 6-2: reset full speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd
[ 104.983340] usb 6-2: device not accepting address 2, error -71
[ 104.983365] usb 6-2: USB disconnect, device number 2
[ 105.090003] usb 6-2: new full speed USB device number 3 using uhci_hcd
[ 105.260002] usb 6-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 105.480006] usb 6-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 105.690003] usb 6-2: new full speed USB device number 4 using uhci_hcd
[ 105.806673] usb 6-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 106.080003] usb 6-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 106.290002] usb 6-2: new full speed USB device number 5 using uhci_hcd
[ 106.703342] usb 6-2: device not accepting address 5, error -71
[ 106.810006] usb 6-2: new full speed USB device number 6 using uhci_hcd
[ 107.223340] usb 6-2: device not accepting address 6, error -71
[ 107.223350] hub 6-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 2
[ 847.596593] usb 6-2: new full speed USB device number 7 using uhci_hcd
[ 847.781385] scsi11 : usb-storage 6-2:1.0
[ 869.493259] usb 6-2: reset full speed USB device number 7 using uhci_hcd
[ 879.739928] usb 6-2: reset full speed USB device number 7 using uhci_hcd
[ 895.993259] usb 6-2: reset full speed USB device number 7 using uhci_hcd
[ 896.243260] usb 6-2: reset full speed USB device number 7 using uhci_hcd
[ 906.489922] usb 6-2: reset full speed USB device number 7 using uhci_hcd
[ 906.636310] scsi 11:0:0:0: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery
[ 1240.346582] usb 6-2: USB disconnect, device number 7
[ 1242.973223] usb 6-1: new full speed USB device number 8 using uhci_hcd
[ 1243.141696] scsi12 : usb-storage 6-1:1.0
[ 1265.439888] usb 6-1: reset full speed USB device number 8 using uhci_hcd
[ 1275.693217] usb 6-1: reset full speed USB device number 8 using uhci_hcd
[ 1291.943223] usb 6-1: reset full speed USB device number 8 using uhci_hcd
[ 1292.193219] usb 6-1: reset full speed USB device number 8 using uhci_hcd
[ 1302.439883] usb 6-1: reset full speed USB device number 8 using uhci_hcd
[ 1302.586484] scsi 12:0:0:0: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery
I get the same messages on a different system.
I've tried removing the ehci-hcd module as recommended in the Linux USB FAQ and in several threads concerning similar issues. I've even taken the device apart to see if anything was broken, fried or disconnected, but I didn't notice anything.
Before I give up and accept that it's an irreparable hardware failure, is there anything that I should try?
I should also mention that I swapped some songs recently, so if this was caused by recent kernel changes, then they were probably introduced in 2.6.39.3. I've found the following in the kernel changelog, which may be relevant:
commit b8680d130d565da6eb07567bd6ff20b73f747498
Author: Alan Stern <[email protected]>
Date: Wed Jul 6 17:03:45 2011 -0400
USB: additional regression fix for device removal
commit ca5c485f55d326d9a23e4badd05890148aa53f74 upstream.
Commit e534c5b831c8b8e9f5edee5c8a37753c808b80dc (USB: fix regression
occurring during device removal) didn't go far enough. It failed to
take into account that when a driver claims multiple interfaces, it may
release them all at the same time. As a result, some interfaces can
get released before they are unregistered, and we deadlock trying to
acquire the bandwidth_mutex that we already own.
This patch (asl478) handles this case by setting the "unregistering"
flag on all the interfaces before removing any of them.
Signed-off-by: Alan Stern <[email protected]>
Tested-by: Éric Piel <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <[email protected]>
commit 042fe1a2805b175b318db0fa10cf8c9df192fa7c
Author: Alan Stern <[email protected]>
Date: Fri Jul 1 16:43:02 2011 -0400
USB: fix regression occurring during device removal
commit e534c5b831c8b8e9f5edee5c8a37753c808b80dc upstream.
This patch (as1476) fixes a regression introduced by
fccf4e86200b8f5edd9a65da26f150e32ba79808 (USB: Free bandwidth when
usb_disable_device is called). usb_disconnect() grabs the
bandwidth_mutex before calling usb_disable_device(), which calls down
indirectly to usb_set_interface(), which tries to acquire the
bandwidth_mutex.
The fix causes usb_set_interface() to return early when it is called
for an interface that has already been unregistered, which is what
happens in usb_disable_device().
Signed-off-by: Alan Stern <[email protected]>
Tested-by: Sarah Sharp <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <[email protected]>
commit 8c603fc5c6608bac3e3df537f8f4a70a24e4edd0
Author: Alan Stern <[email protected]>
Date: Wed Jun 15 16:29:16 2011 -0400
USB: don't let the hub driver prevent system sleep
commit cbb330045e5df8f665ac60227ff898421fc8fb92 upstream.
This patch (as1465) continues implementation of the policy that errors
during suspend or hibernation should not prevent the system from going
to sleep.
In this case, failure to turn on the Suspend feature for a hub port
shouldn't be reported as an error. There are situations where this
does actually occur (such as when the device plugged into that port
was disconnected in the recent past), and it turns out to be harmless.
There's no reason for it to prevent a system sleep.
Also, don't allow the hub driver to fail a system suspend if the
downstream ports aren't all suspended. This is also harmless (and
should never happen, given the change mentioned above); printing a
warning message in the kernel log is all we really need to do.
Signed-off-by: Alan Stern <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <[email protected]>
commit c4c3048b2bda6562bcdf5507bb9c6c248a87f675
Author: Alan Stern <[email protected]>
Date: Wed Jun 15 16:27:43 2011 -0400
USB: don't let errors prevent system sleep
commit 0af212ba8f123c2eba151af7726c34a50b127962 upstream.
This patch (as1464) implements the recommended policy that most errors
during suspend or hibernation should not prevent the system from going
to sleep. In particular, failure to suspend a USB driver or a USB
device should not prevent the sleep from succeeding:
Failure to suspend a device won't matter, because the device will
automatically go into suspend mode when the USB bus stops carrying
packets. (This might be less true for USB-3.0 devices, but let's not
worry about them now.)
Failure of a driver to suspend might lead to trouble later on when the
system wakes up, but it isn't sufficient reason to prevent the system
from going to sleep.
Signed-off-by: Alan Stern <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <[email protected]>
commit a96e5158f0cab04b29e9236f04214c056efe3a04
Author: Sarah Sharp <[email protected]>
Date: Sun Jun 5 23:22:22 2011 -0700
USB: Free bandwidth when usb_disable_device is called.
commit fccf4e86200b8f5edd9a65da26f150e32ba79808 upstream.
Tanya ran into an issue when trying to switch a UAS device from the BOT
configuration to the UAS configuration via the bConfigurationValue sysfs
file. Before installing the UAS configuration, set_bConfigurationValue()
calls usb_disable_device(). That function is supposed to remove all host
controller resources associated with that device, but it leaves some state
in the xHCI host controller.
Commit 0791971ba8fbc44e4f476079f856335ed45e6324
usb: allow drivers to use allocated bandwidth until unbound
added a call to usb_disable_device() in usb_set_configuration(), before
the xHCI bandwidth functions were invoked. That commit fixed a bug, but
also introduced a bug that is triggered when a configured device is
switched to a new configuration.
usb_disable_device() goes through all the motions of unbinding the drivers
attached to active interfaces and removing the USB core structures
associated with those interfaces, but it doesn't actually remove the
endpoints from the internal xHCI host controller bandwidth structures.
When usb_disable_device() calls usb_disable_endpoint() with reset_hardware
set to true, the entries in udev->ep_out and udev->ep_in will be set to
NULL. Usually, when the USB core installs a new configuration,
usb_hcd_alloc_bandwidth() will drop all non-NULL endpoints in udev->ep_out
and udev->ep_in before adding any new endpoints. However, when the new
UAS configuration was added, all those entries were null, so none of the
old endpoints in the BOT configuration were dropped.
The xHCI driver blindly added the UAS configuration endpoints, and some of
the endpoint addresses overlapped with the old BOT configuration
endpoints. This caused the xHCI host to reject the Configure Endpoint
command. Now that the xHCI driver code is cleaned up to reject a
double-add of active endpoints, we need to fix the USB core to properly
drop old endpoints in usb_disable_device().
If the host controller driver needs bandwidth checking support, make
usb_disable_device() call usb_disable_endpoint() with
reset_hardware set to false, drop the endpoints from the xHCI host
controller, and then call usb_disable_endpoint() again with
reset_hardware set to true.
The first call to usb_disable_endpoint() will cancel any pending URBs and
wait on them to be freed in usb_hcd_disable_endpoint(), but will keep the
pointers in udev->ep_out and udev->ep in intact. Then
usb_hcd_alloc_bandwidth() will use those pointers to know which endpoints
to drop.
The final call to usb_disable_endpoint() will do two things:
1. It will call usb_hcd_disable_endpoint() again, which should be harmless
since the ep->urb_list should be empty after the first call to
usb_disable_endpoint() returns.
2. It will set the entries in udev->ep_out and udev->ep in to NULL, and call
usb_hcd_disable_endpoint(). That call will have no effect, since the xHCI
driver doesn't set the endpoint_disable function pointer.
Note that usb_disable_device() will now need to be called with
hcd->bandwidth_mutex held.
This should be backported to kernels as old as 2.6.32.
Signed-off-by: Sarah Sharp <[email protected]>
Reported-by: Tanya Brokhman <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Cc: Alan Stern <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <[email protected]>
Does anyone know if any of those changes could kill a USB flash drive?
Linux fun fact #3487: if you remove the uhci-hcd module, your usb keyboard and mouse stop working (luckily I still have an old non-usb keyboard)
Last edited by Xyne (2011-07-22 11:49:37)

Answer 1

I had a while ago similar problem with USB memory stick. At the end, I don't know why, just formatting it using WinXP helped me.
S-
Last edited by StenM (2011-07-22 17:56:32)