Messages in this thread | | | From | Stanislav Meduna <> | Subject | USB stability - possibly printer related | Date | Sun, 14 Oct 2001 17:44:16 +0200 (CEST) |
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Hello,
I would like to ask whether anyone is using USB printer support in recent kernels and with what results.
I had quite bad crashes on my fresh Mandrake 8.1 installation, one of them was so bad that it brought the filesystem into a FUBAR state - I had to reinstall. I strongly suspect the USB part of the kernel to be responsible for this.
My hardware: Abit BP6 motherboard, 2 x Celeron, 512 MB RAM, IBM DJNA-371350 disk on the classic controller, IBM IC35L040AVER07-0 disk on the HPT 366 controller, root USB hub on the 440BX chipset, "noname" USB hub, HP PSC 750 printer/scanner/copier connected to the hub, no other switched-on USB devices at the time of my experiments (otherwise I have Compaq iPAQ PocketPC and HP 315 digital camera; the camera works quite OK under Linux with usb-storage).
Before anyone suspects the hardware: I have _zero_ problems with the HPT 366 (I have my /home there, doing compiles there etc), I don't have APIC problems more often than is "normal" on the BP6 (one in several days) and just to be sure I checked memory with memtest86 and disk drives with the vendor tools. The machine dual boots with W2K, which also run reliably - I have both system and data on the disk on the HPT. I am using the newest BIOS available for the mobo.
Incidentally the W2K also has problems with the printer and I must switch all the devices on in the correct order, otherwise I get bluescreen, but this is probably due to a crappy HP driver and I don't think that it is relevant for Linux problems.
The filesystems are ext2 and I am using the hpoj OfficeJet software included in the Mandrake distribution to communicate with the printer.
Unfortunately the problems are not 100% reproducible - sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Some datapoints collected so far:
- The most frequent symptom is a lockup - I send something to the printer, it prints a few lines and then the machine locks up - no mouse reaction etc. SysRq does work, but despite sync - unmount - boot sequence I get some fs problems on the subsequent reboot.
- I have problems with both Mandrake's kernel (heavily patched 2.4.8) and vanilla 2.4.12
- It does not matter whether I use uhci or usb-uhci
- It does not seem to be a SMP issue (or at least not only a SMP issue), uniprocessor kernel also did have problems
- The worst crash had another symptoms shortly before - a few Oopsen in processes completely unrelated to printing (unfortunately the Oops data were lost after the fs exitus :-() and messages stating that some processes cannot be started.
- I got a corruption of the files that were surely _not_ opened for writing.
- At least one another person on a local mailing list got very similar problem - loaded USB modules, got a lockup and lost sd_mod and /usr/bin/kdeinit - this time not with a printer, but using usb-storage (which needs sd_mod)
I am an experienced Linux user and I am willing to test suggested patches etc (just allow some delays, I usually have time for Linux on weekends only). I am however no kernel guru and I am afraid I cannot help in active searching for the bug in the code myself.
I already posted to the linux-usb mailing list, but got no response. I reported the problem also on the Mandrake Bugzilla - the 8.1 is probably the first distribution that brings the USB printing very close to the user (in another distros it requires more action and a knowledgeable person to set up a USB printing). If there are more cases like mine, this can harm Linux in general :-(
A related question: As I stated before also files that were not written to, but were opened short before the lockup, got corrupted. This was not my experience with Linux and ext2 before, actually I found the ext2 quite resistant to corruptions resulting from the lockups - whether induced by experimenting with some drivers, or a few powerfails. Now I had one crash destroying the filesystem and at least one another requiring manual fsck. Is this quite normal (and my good experience was a statistical deviation), or does this also suggest a memory corruption occuring somewhere? I don't quite get how a r/o file can get corrupted in the case of lockup - yes, the inode is modified because of atime update, but the new data either are written, or do not make it to the disk - both cases should not cause a corruption.
Please, Cc: replies to me - I read l-k irregularly.
Regards -- Stano
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