[plug] USB drive mounting problems

[Cameron Patrick]

Daniel J. Axtens wrote:

> I'm having some problems mounting my 256MB, ~6month old, Astone USB
> thumbdrive. It mounted at school this morning (Windoze), but at home,
> it won't mount on Linux ( FC3, PII 350, 2.6.9-1.667 ), complaining
> (dmesg):
[...]
> Any ideas?

I've seen that before with certain kernel versions and hardware, in
particular 2.6.8 on machines with Nvidia Nforce-based motherboards.
In this instance _no_ USB devices would work (no mouse, no USB key,
nothing).  Upgrading the kernel fixed that one.

I also get see the "device not accepting address" with some people's
USB keys on my laptop - they need to be unplugged and replugged
several times and are eventually happy.  Buggered if I know why.

My experience has been that the flakiness of Linux's USB storage
support is matched only by the flakiness of its fireware subsystem :-/

> Are my computers['] USB busses toast?

Quite likely not - you could plug in a USB keyboard/mouse to test.
(If you have a Mac, I presume you'll have one of those?)  On the Mac,
I'd be suspicious of plugging a thumb drive into a USB port on the side
of the keyboard; mine doesn't work properly on those on the iMacs at
uni.

Cameron.