[Voyage-linux] Most stable Voyage kernel for USB?

Sat Dec 10 10:14:25 HKT 2005

Punky Tse wrote:
 > Mark Pendrith wrote:
 >
 > Mark,
 >
 > I need to know,
 > - what version of kernels running on RedHat? - what kinds of USB
 > hardware you run?  USB dongle, bluetooth, USB external harddisk, etc.
 > - did you try other version of 2.0-6 kernels like 2.6.8 and 2.6.12?
 >
 > Moreover, I wish you can find out more information on your Redhat PC and
 > voyage (either WRAP or net4801)
 > - dmesg output
 > - lsmod output
 >
 > I don't know what your USB device controlling program is, but if your
 > program involves some kernel call or calls that interact with USB
 > modules, different kernels would yield different behaviour or your code
 > will be broken.  So understand the kernel different between Redhat and
 > Voyage is very important.
 >
 > - Punky
 >
 >> I'm using Voyage (kernel-image-2.6.14-486-voyage_2.0-6_i386.deb) on a
 >> WRAP.1E and also on a Soekris net4801 box. I'm having the same problem
 >> with USB on both boxes.
 >>
 >> I've got four identical USB devices that all work well from my PC
 >> running a version of RedHat linux, but all exhibit the same problem on
 >> both boxes running Voyage. The problem is that my program controlling
 >> the USB device will timeout waiting for a confirmation signal
 >> returning from the device. The device performs the function OK, it's
 >> just that the confirmation gets lost, which leaves the USB device in a
 >> hung state; I need to reinitialise the USB port to reset things.
 >>
 >> After I reinitialise things, I can then send another command to the
 >> USB device, after which it will need resetting again.
 >>
 >> Because the behaviour is identical on two different platforms running
 >> the same kernel, I;m concentrating my investigations there. I've also
 >> eliminated the possibility of the device being faulty, as I have four
 >> of them, which all work perfectly under RedHat, but all misbehave in
 >> exactly the same way under Voyage.
 >>
 >> Does this ring a bell for anyone else using USB under Voyage? Are some
 >> kernels known to have better stability for USB? Or is everyone else
 >> using USB devices without issues?
 >>
 >> Any comments/insights appreciated.
 >>
 >> -Mark
 >>
 >> _______________________________________________
 >> Voyage-linux mailing list
 >> Voyage-linux at list.voyage.hk
 >> http://list.voyage.hk/mailman/listinfo/voyage-linux
 >
 >
 >

Hi Punky,

Sorry that it’s taken me so long to get back to this topic of USB in 
voyage.

I’ve tried to narrow down the USB problem by trying some different 
hardware and software combinations. I’ve made some progress, but it’s 
taken a bit of time.

To recap, I had USB working with my device under RedHat9 Linux (kernel 
2.4.20-31.9) on a PC, but found the device to be failing consistently 
under Voyage on both a WRAP and a net8501 platform. The errors under 
Voyage were always the same: a –110 error returned after a “bulk 
transfer” timeout, and then the device would “hang” until the USB port 
was reset, either by a physical unplug/replug of the device, or by 
system calls.

My device is moderate rather than low power consumption, so a thought 
was that perhaps Voyage on a PC would work better. BTW, I’ve got four of 
the devices to play with and test, so I could eliminate the possibility 
of a broken device.

So I installed Voyage (voyage-0.2pre1.tar.gz) on a PC platform, but got 
the same –110 errors. I then did a apt-get dist-upgrade to get the 
latest, and still the same problem. Interestingly, I was getting the 
same –110 error showing up under Voyage on the PC with a completely 
unrelated device – a USB CF card reader. So the problem was looking to 
be definitely software rather than hardware at this stage.

Next, I decided to try different distros of Linux to see what the story 
was. I installed Slackware 10.2 (kernel 2.4.31) and Debian sarge 
(current “netinstall” version: kernel 2.4.27-2-386) onto different 
partitions the same test PC that already had Voyage on it.

To cut to the chase, Debian sarge works quite well, better in fact than 
the Slackware. (The Slackware had less severe problems that also seemed 
related to the “bulk transfer” timeout issue; intermittent rather then 
the “hard” version of the problem I was experiencing under Voyage. I 
mention this because I had been starting to think the problem was a 2.4 
vs 2.6 kernel thing... my understanding is that there were a lot of 
changes to USB handling going from 2.4 -> 2.6, but this appears to be 
too simple an explanation, since I’m also having (intermittent) problems 
with the Slackware 2.4 kernel.)

Anyway, satisfied with the USB performance of the Debian sarge distro on 
the PC, I decided to install it on the WRAP board to see how that 
worked. After messing with LILO for a considerable amount of time to try 
to figure out to get Debian sarge to boot off the CF, I finally got the 
thing to boot...

And yes, the USB on the WRAP board also works well with my device under 
Debian sarge! (I just used the generic Debian sarge kernel that 
installed on the PC; as you can see from the boot messages it took a bit 
of time to accept the fact it wasn’t going to find a keyboard, but 
fortunately it does get over it eventually.)

Once booted, it runs without any other problems I can detect so far.

So, what are the differences between Voyage and the Debian sarge distros 
with respect to USB? Here is the lsmod for Debian sarge 2.4.27-2-386 (on 
the PC):

Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
isofs                  23092   0  (autoclean)
ehci-hcd               14764   0  (unused)
usb-uhci               19504   0  (unused)
usbcore                52268   1  [ehci-hcd usb-uhci]
via82cxxx_audio        17404   0  (unused)
ac97_codec             11252   0  [via82cxxx_audio]
uart401                 5860   0  [via82cxxx_audio]
sound                  48872   0  [via82cxxx_audio uart401]
soundcore               3268   4  [via82cxxx_audio sound]
ide-scsi                8272   0
scsi_mod               86052   1  [ide-scsi]
via-rhine              10960   1
mii                     1952   0  [via-rhine]
crc32                   2848   0  [via-rhine]
ide-cd                 27072   0
cdrom                  26212   0  [ide-cd]
rtc                     5768   0  (autoclean)
ide-detect               288   0  (autoclean) (unused)
via82cxxx               9256   1  (autoclean)
ide-disk               12448   3  (autoclean)
ide-core               91832   3  (autoclean) [ide-scsi ide-cd 
ide-detect via82cxxx ide-disk]
unix                   12752   2  (autoclean)

Here is the lsmod for Debian sarge 2.4.27-2-386 (on the WRAP):

Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
usb-ohci               16488   0  (unused)
usbcore                52268   1  [usb-ohci]
natsemi                14176   1
crc32                   2848   0  [natsemi]
ide-cd                 27072   0
cdrom                  26212   0  [ide-cd]
rtc                     5768   0  (autoclean)
ide-detect               288   0  (autoclean) (unused)
sc1200                  4432   1  (autoclean)
ide-disk               12448   1  (autoclean)
ide-core               91832   1  (autoclean) [ide-cd ide-detect sc1200 
ide-disk]
unix                   12752   2  (autoclean)

And here is the lsmod for Voyage (kernel 2.6.8-486-voyage) (on the PC):

Module                  Size  Used by
sc520_wdt               6452  1
via_rhine              19720  0
mii                     4864  1 via_rhine
ehci_hcd               26116  0
uhci_hcd               29328  0
usbcore               104036  4 ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd
dm_mod                 51324  0
hostap_pci             53136  0
hostap                109064  1 hostap_pci
natsemi                25696  0
crc32                   4480  2 via_rhine,natsemi

Here is a dmesg error listing for Voyage (PC):

Linux version 2.6.8-486-voyage (root at punknix-uml) (gcc version 3.3.5 
(Debian 1:3.3.5-13)) #1 Wed Nov 2 07:53:56 GMT 2005
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
  BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
  BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
  BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
  BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000000fff0000 (usable)
  BIOS-e820: 000000000fff0000 - 000000000fff8000 (ACPI data)
  BIOS-e820: 000000000fff8000 - 0000000010000000 (ACPI NVS)
  BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec01000 (reserved)
  BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
  BIOS-e820: 00000000fff80000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
255MB LOWMEM available.
On node 0 totalpages: 65520
   DMA zone: 4096 pages, LIFO batch:1
   Normal zone: 61424 pages, LIFO batch:14
   HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1
DMI 2.3 present.
ACPI: RSDP (v000 AMI                                       ) @ 0x000fa6f0
ACPI: RSDT (v001 AMIINT VIA_P6   0x00000010 MSFT 0x00000097) @ 0x0fff0000
ACPI: FADT (v001 AMIINT VIA_P6   0x00000011 MSFT 0x00000097) @ 0x0fff0030
ACPI: DSDT (v001    VIA   P4M266 0x00001000 MSFT 0x0100000d) @ 0x00000000
Built 1 zonelists
Kernel command line: root=/dev/hda1 ro
No local APIC present or hardware disabled
Initializing CPU#0
PID hash table entries: 1024 (order 10: 8192 bytes)
Detected 1697.553 MHz processor.
Using tsc for high-res timesource
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Memory: 256524k/262080k available (1332k kernel code, 4812k reserved, 
706k data, 104k init, 0k highmem)
Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode... Ok.
Calibrating delay loop... 3317.76 BogoMIPS
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
CPU: After generic identify, caps: 3febf9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: After vendor identify, caps:  3febf9ff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Trace cache: 12K uops, L1 D cache: 8K
CPU: L2 cache: 128K
CPU: After all inits, caps:        3febf9ff 00000000 00000000 00000080
CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 1.70GHz stepping 03
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
NET: Registered protocol family 16
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfdae1, last bus=1
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Using IRQ router default [1106/3177] at 0000:00:11.0
PCI: IRQ 0 for device 0000:00:11.1 doesn't match PIRQ mask - try 
pci=usepirqmask
PCI: Hardcoded IRQ 14 for device 0000:00:11.1
Initializing Cryptographic API
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 46 ports, IRQ sharing enabled
ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
hda: ST340016A, ATA DISK drive
hdc: SAMSUNG CD-ROM SC-152A, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: CD-RW IDE5224, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
Using anticipatory io scheduler
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: 78165360 sectors (40020 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63
  hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 > hda3 hda4
hdc: ATAPI 52X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
hdd: ATAPI 52X CD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
input: PS/2 Generic Mouse on isa0060/serio1
serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard on isa0060/serio0
NET: Registered protocol family 2
IP: routing cache hash table of 2048 buckets, 16Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 16384 bind 32768)
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 10
IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling driver
NET: Registered protocol family 17
NET: Registered protocol family 15
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 104k freed
spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7.
natsemi dp8381x driver, version 1.07+LK1.0.17, Sep 27, 2002
   originally by Donald Becker <becker at scyld.com>
   http://www.scyld.com/network/natsemi.html
   2.4.x kernel port by Jeff Garzik, Tjeerd Mulder
hostap_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
hostap_pci: 0.3.9 - 2005-06-10 (Jouni Malinen <jkmaline at cc.hut.fi>)
device-mapper: 4.1.0-ioctl (2003-12-10) initialised: dm at uk.sistina.com
usbcore: registered new driver usbfs
usbcore: registered new driver hub
USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v2.2
uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.0: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 
Controller
uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.0: irq 11, io base 0000e000
uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 1-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.1: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 
Controller (#2)
uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.1: irq 3, io base 0000e400
uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 2-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.2: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 
Controller (#3)
uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.2: irq 10, io base 0000e800
uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 3-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
usb 3-1: new full speed USB device using address 2
ehci_hcd 0000:00:10.3: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0
ehci_hcd 0000:00:10.3: irq 5, pci mem d0817f00
ehci_hcd 0000:00:10.3: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4
ehci_hcd 0000:00:10.3: USB 2.0 enabled, EHCI 1.00, driver 2004-May-10
usb 3-1: USB disconnect, address 2
hub 4-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 4-0:1.0: 6 ports detected
usb 3-1: new full speed USB device using address 3
via-rhine.c:v1.10-LK1.1.20-2.6 May-23-2004 Written by Donald Becker
eth0: VIA Rhine II at 0xd800, 00:0b:6a:09:85:6f, IRQ 11.
eth0: MII PHY found at address 1, status 0x786d advertising 05e1 Link 45e1.
Disabled Privacy Extensions on device c02c69a0(lo)
eth0: Setting full-duplex based on MII #1 link partner capability of 45e1.
sc520_wdt: WDT: Hinkle's Soekris GPIO fix initialised.
sc520_wdt: WDT driver for SC520 initialised. timeout=30 sec (nowayout=0)
sc520_wdt: Watchdog timer is now enabled.
eth0: no IPv6 routers present
usb 3-1: control timeout on ep0in
usb 3-1: usbfs: USBDEVFS_CONTROL failed cmd rr3send rqt 192 rq 179 len 1 
ret -110
usb 3-1: control timeout on ep0out
usb 3-1: control timeout on ep0in
usb 3-1: usbfs: USBDEVFS_CONTROL failed cmd rr3send rqt 192 rq 184 len 1 
ret -110
usb 3-1: control timeout on ep0out
usb 3-1: USB disconnect, address 3
usb 3-1: new full speed USB device using address 5
usb 3-1: USB disconnect, address 5
usb 3-1: new full speed USB device using address 7

And in case it is of any interest, here are the boot messages for Debian 
sarge 2.4.27-2-386 on the WRAP:

--- Debian 2.4.27-2-386 on WRAP boot messages ---

PC Engines WRAP.1C/1D/1E v1.10

640 KB Base Memory

15360
31744
48128
64512
80896
97280
113664
130048 KB Extended Memory

01F0 Master 848A SanDisk SDCFB-512

Phys C/H/S 993/16/63 Log C/H/S 993/16/63

LI

LILLOO  2222..66..11  LLooaaddiinngg 
LLiinnuuxx................................................................................................................................................................................

BBIIOOSS  ddaattaa  cchheecckk  ssuucccceessssffuull

Linux version 2.4.27-2-386 (horms at tabatha.lab.ultramonkey.org) (gcc 
version 3.3.5 (Debian 1:3.3.5-12)) #1 Mon May 16 16:47:51 JST 2005

BIOS-provided physical RAM map:

  BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 00000000000a0000 (usable)

  BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)

  BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 0000000008000000 (usable)

  BIOS-e820: 00000000fff00000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)

128MB LOWMEM available.

On node 0 totalpages: 32768

zone(0): 4096 pages.

zone(1): 28672 pages.

zone(2): 0 pages.

DMI not present.

ACPI: Unable to locate RSDP

Kernel command line: auto BOOT_IMAGE=Linux ro root=301 
console=ttyS0,9600n8 reboot=bios

No local APIC present or hardware disabled

Initializing CPU#0

Detected 266.582 MHz processor.

Console: colour dummy device 80x25

Calibrating delay loop... 532.48 BogoMIPS

Memory: 123532k/131072k available (1069k kernel code, 7156k reserved, 
459k data, 96k init, 0k highmem)

Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode... Ok.

Dentry cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)

Inode cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)

Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)

Buffer cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)

Page-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)

CPU: NSC Unknown stepping 01

Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.

Checking for popad bug... OK.

POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX

ACPI: Subsystem revision 20040326

ACPI: Interpreter disabled.

PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfc46b, last bus=0

PCI: Using configuration type 1

PCI: Probing PCI hardware

PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)

PCI: Device 00:95 not found by BIOS

Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4

Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039

Initializing RT netlink socket

Starting kswapd

VFS: Disk quotas vdquot_6.5.1

devfs: v1.12c (20020818) Richard Gooch (rgooch at atnf.csiro.au)

devfs: boot_options: 0x0