Flash Drive Auto Mount Solved but Like to Know Reason

[jakfish]

Dell Inspiron 4000, problem replicated on 4.31, 4.31 Retro, 4.32.

My USB flashdrive would not auto-mount despite installing alternatives to pmount. I got "no device" errors, and after a variety of mknod commands, I got block errors.

If I pulled the USB drive, then physically reinstalled, all was well. This is an old machine, with one USB port, and I didn't want this kind of wear-and-tear.

When I watched another old laptop (Sony Vaio PictureBook PCG-C1VN) boot, I saw it load both "USB" and "USB-storage" modules. With the Inspiron, I realize that it was only loading "USB"

In rc_local, I had to use both of these commands:

rmmod usb_storage
modprobe usb-storage

The flashdrive automounts now, and the underscore and the hyphen are deliberate in those commands.

Why did I have trouble here, when the identical OS works fine in two other laptops? And why did these commands work?

Very confused,
Jake

[Aitch]

rmmod and modprobe are for drivers

Usb modules are ohci_hcd (AMD) , uhci_hcd (Intel) and ehci_hcd (usb-2.0) .

One of these three should work :

Code: Select all

modprobe [select e, u, or o]hci_hcd

though see Barry's blog

http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=02001

maybe a delay is all that's needed?

Aitch

[jakfish]

Hi, Aitch,

Thanks for weighing in.

You got me in the right direction:

modprobe uhci_hcd

redraws the desktop icons and gives me both my Sony memory stick and usb flash drive, unmounted. Which is exactly what I want. Before, when clicking on the desktop icons, I had to go first through pmount to mount the drives. Now they both mount straight off.

Putting modprobe uhci_hcd in rc.local has no effect. I must use a small script in Startup that rmmod's uhci_hcd and then modprobes it again.

This may tie into BK's Wary workings (the post you cite), along with the fact that my cpu is so slow (P1 Crusoe 600Mhz) that it can't catch up properly to the boot commands, I dunno.

But this really helped a lot, thanks,

Jake