Boot problem with USB hard disk attached

So I got a couple of Fantom Gforce/3 Mini drives on sale to go with the $5 Pogo Pro and Mobile I got to make a couple of poor man's NASs for family members. Everything works pretty well except that if I try to boot off a flash drive with the Fantom drive attached, it won't mount the Fantom drive. Here's the relative part of dmesg output:

[   14.399639] udevd[267]: starting version 175
[   18.191004] usb 1-1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
[   33.381007] usb 1-1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
[   33.571000] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 5 using oxnas-ehci
[   48.651005] usb 1-1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
[   63.841958] usb 1-1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
[   64.031016] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 6 using oxnas-ehci
[   74.450593] usb 1-1.2: device not accepting address 6, error -110
[   74.531005] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 7 using oxnas-ehci
[   84.950592] usb 1-1.2: device not accepting address 7, error -110
[   84.957012] usb 1-1-port2: unable to enumerate USB device
[   85.268262] random: nonblocking pool is initialized
[   97.280212] stmmaceth 40400000.ethernet eth0: Link is Up - 100Mbps/Full - flow control rx/tx

After much research, it appears that the "error -110" is some kind of power issue, although I wonder about that since I get the same error even if the drive is connected to a powered hub and then to the Pogo.

Short of using a different drive, anyone have any ideas?

-JT

JT,

Have you tried to plug the Fantom drive to the USB port in the back (next to the ethernet port)?

-bodhi
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Thanks, bohdi. I think I've tried every port. Currently I have the flash boot drive in the bottom rear port just above the ethernet connector and the Fantom just above that. If I reverse them, it tries to boot from the Fantom, fails, and then boots from the flash drive, but the Fantom still doesn't get mounted. At one point I could swear that I could do a cold boot (everything connected before the power) but a warm boot (i.e., issuing a reboot command) failed to mount the Fantom with that error -110 message. I can't seem to recreate that now and a cold boot gives the same results as a warm boot.

The mobile gives the same results. If that error -110 message is really power related (is there a list of these error messages somewhere?), it doesn't make sense to me. Weren't these things designed to be used with unpowered external drives? Could the fact that the Fantoms are USB 3.0 have anything to do with it?

-JT

JT,

> Could the fact that the Fantoms are USB
> 3.0 have anything to do with it?

It could be the USB controller inside the Fantom enclosure. We've seen the Sandisk Ultra Fit exhibited the same problem (see recent posts in the forum).

-bodhi
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Thanks, bohdi. Interesting reading. It doesn't sound like it was ever resolved. Any chance one of those quirks would work? I don't have the serial port connected at the moment, but I'll open it up again if you think it's worth a try.

-JT

JT,


I think it's worth a try. And you don't need to connect serial console to try it. With the latest u-boot, you can add the quirks in the bootargs env in the uEnv.txt so that it is not set permanently.

For example, if the bootargs is:

usb_set_bootargs=setenv bootargs console=$console root=$usb_root rootdelay=$usb_rootdelay rootfstype=$usb_rootfstype $mtdparts $usb_custom_params

If the product and device ID are 0x0781 and 0x5583, respectively, then to add the "u" quirk to the uEnv.txt:

cat /boot/uEnv.txt

usb_custom_params=usb-storage.quirks=0x0781:0x5583:u

You can find the product and device ID with

lsusb -v

-bodhi
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@renojim - I'm not saying this is "the problem", but USB3 ports are rated at higher current than USB2 ports - wikipedia :

Quote
Wikipedia
The USB 1.x and 2.0 specifications provide a 5 V supply on a single wire to power connected USB devices.

A unit load is defined as 100 mA in USB 2.0, and 150 mA in USB 3.0. A device may draw a maximum of 5 unit loads (500 mA) from a port in USB 2.0; 6 (900 mA) in USB 3.0.

Within that a laptop harddrive itself SHOULD run off of the power supplied by a USB2 port. Laptop harddrives are generally around 2watts = 400mA @ 5V

I've had a similar issue, on different hardware platform. In the end I'm using a self-powered caddy, which doesn't rely on the "computer's" power.

You could also obviously try a USB2 caddy which might solve the problem.

Cheers

Don Charisma ... because anything is possible with Charisma

My blog - http://DonCharisma.org
Our commercial site - http://DonCharisma.com

Thanks, Don. I had tried a powered hub with no change. For the record, the drive says it uses 500mA which would max out the current a USB 2.0 port/hub is required to support. But, there's no problem if I plug in the drive after Debian has booted.

I've been meaning to post an update in case anyone else stumbles upon this thread. It took a while and a failed flash drive (which may end up being the topic of another thread) but I managed to get through all the "quirks". None of them made a difference which isn't too surprising since they seem to be tied to a Vendor/Product ID. I don't think it ever gets that far; I never see it printed in any debug messages. During the u-boot process, the uniqueid (that's what Windows diskpart calls it) gets printed out, so it appears to be able to access something from the disk.

Just for fun I tried to boot off the drive. No joy. I didn't spend any time trying to figure out why since I've already spent days on this problem, so it may be that it's possible, but that's not what I'm trying to accomplish

I'm just going to have to instruct my family members to disconnect the drive, cycle the power, wait a minute or two, and then plug the drive back in when they want to reboot. If they didn't live a place prone to power failures it probably wouldn't matter since they'll probably never need to reboot, but that's not the case. They aren't going to like it, but short of getting new drives, I'm going to have to give up.

-JT

@renojim - you're welcome ... and yes I know entirely what you mean about hours evaporating over these kinds of issues ... usually I learn something, and often either eventually get it working or find a workaround !

As for power failures, I get plenty of those here at random times ... UPS would be the a solution, but I haven't got around to buying one yet.

And, yes just had a failed Sandisk MicroSD myself ... my own fault for making it do intensive writes ...

Cheers

Don Charisma ... because anything is possible with Charisma

My blog - http://DonCharisma.org
Our commercial site - http://DonCharisma.com

A followup:

I got the idea today to swap the 1TB Fantom drive from its USB 3.0 enclosure with an old Verbatim drive in a USB 2.0 enclosure. Both the Pogo Mobile and PogoPro boot just fine with the Fantom drive connected via the Verbatim USB 2.0 electronics, so it would appear that it's the USB 3.0 interface that's causing the problem with booting.

-JT

Just in case anyone else stumbles upon this thread, that "error -110" noted in the dmesg output is "timed out".

-JT

@renojim I'd entirely forgotten we had this conversation. I've had some power issues with my Odroid board connecting external hard drives. My solution was to build my own custom USB cable, which "injects" 5v DC, instead of it being powered by my Odroid. It takes some dismantling of USB cables and soldering, but do-able ...

Something like this

[img]http://s15.postimg.org/u9ip19i8n/custom_usb.jpg[/img]

For a male to female straight through USB cable, like an extension.

"Bossing" into the cable can be done at either end plug or socket, or you could do mid-cable and rejoin the wires ...

You can use the same power supply as your ARM board if it's 5V or an external 5V supply wallwart/brick.

A fairly fine soldering iron and steady hand, and patience required ... also heatshrink tubing is great for these type of projects, I can for instance make a fairly neat USB plug again, with some strain relief using correct size heatshrink ... and hotglue pretty handy stuff too !

EDIT - img tag doesn't seem to work here, so I've attached the graphic to this post as attachment.
EDIT 2 - layout of my diagram not so great, socket was supposed to be "undisturbed", and connection to external 5V supply made at the plug end.

Cheers

Don Charisma ... because anything is possible with Charisma

My blog - http://DonCharisma.org
Our commercial site - http://DonCharisma.com



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/04/2015 10:38AM by DonCharisma.

Sorry for the delayed response. Thanks for the idea, but I think I tried a similar cable I made for an old laptop that wasn't supplying enough power for my external drive. I know I tried a powered Seagate FreeAgent Go Dock+ I bought years ago when I thought I was buying a Dockstar.

I've now put both Fantom drives into old USB 2.0 enclosures and both the Pogoplug Mobile and Pogoplug Pro are much happier and I can pass these off to family members as poor man's NASs. I'd love to know what the problem is with the USB 3.0 drives and I can't believe I'm the only one with the problem.

-JT

JT,

Have you set up netconsole or do you have serial console on the box that you can try testing the Fantom enclosures? you might see some more interesting messages in u-boot. Netconsole would be enough to see if this enclosure can be brought up (e.g. with a long enough delay period).

-bodhi
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bohdi,

I have both, but I don't think I'll get another chance to do any debugging since I'm on the road now until after the holidays and I'll be leaving them with family members. From the dmsg output I posted above you can see that it appears to give the drive 15 seconds to respond. I tried to find some reference to a 15 second timeout period in the source, but I never found any.

I'll have one of the GForce/Fantom controllers left when I get back (connected to an old Verbatim drive) and I'm curious to see if my Dockstar perfoms the same way. If it does, maybe I'll be able to do some more diagnostics.

-JT

JT,

It's possible that this problem could be solved using the u-boot usb_ready_retry period (if it's only a timeout). Not entirely sure, but it's worth a try.

-bodhi
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