Hi.

I bought a fit-PC2 a couple of weeks ago and I am using it as a 24/7 file- and SVN-server which it is perfectly suited for. Initially I ran a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.04 server (I prefer not having a graphical interface on a server) but the hard disk performance was very poor and the system would hang occassionally with hard disk timeouts. Well, ide_generic is not a recommended driver for anything these days.

I therefore installed the fit-pc 8.04 kernel which gave fine and stable hard disk performance. Unfortunately that kernel was missing the device mapper which I need for encrypted volumes (truecrypt).

So I installed Ubuntu 9.04 server instead which runs fine out-of-the-box with good hard disk performance. It has been rock solid for a couple of days now with respect to the internal hard disk, but I have trouble with my USB external hard disk which is used for online backups.

In /var/log/messages I occasionally see this:



and earlier today I even lost connection to the USB drive:



After unplugging the USB disk and replugging it has worked OK, but it still gives me the occasional "reset high speed USB device..." messages when I use it heavily - which it will be during backup. I have tried to increase the INQ_TIMEOUT value from 5 to 20 seconds but it has not had any effect
(doing "echo 20 > /sys/module/scsi_mod/parameters/inq_timeout").

My kernel version is



I unmounted the USB disk and put it on my old power-hungry server (a DELL PowerEdge) and stress-tested it there. It has been running for more than 3 hours doing an infinite-loop copy of GB's of files without a blip in that server's log.

That server is running a standard Ubuntu 8.04.2:



Is there a known fix for this in the fit-pc kernel ? Or is it perhaps a power supply issue ? It is definitely not a thermal issue as both the disk and the fit-pc are standing right next to a fan that cools them both (I did consider possible electrical interference from the fan and moved the USB cables a comfortable distance from the fan - no effect).

Cheers
-- Jan

I suspected possible power supply issues because the USB disk that I intended to use for online backup is bus powered - it draws all its power from the USB connection. This morning I therefore mounted another USB disk that has its own power supply.

After just 5 minutes of copying files I again see the USB reset every 4-5 minutes:



Can I debug this further by bumping the logging level somehow ?

Cheers
-- Jan

I haven't got a clue but I googled your error message (reset high speed USB device) and found this
http://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-bugs ... 68416.html

"Linux version 2.6.28-11-server"
==> You might also upgrade your kernel with the last recommended one (sudo apt-get upgrade)

Hi Mylife.

Thanks for the pointer. That was a thing I hadn't tried before. However, I don't seem to have devkit or whatever it's called running on my machine. However, I tried stopping udev before I did the stress-test by running "/etc/init.d/udev stop" but it had no effect - still see the resets.

I then tried to decrease the max. sector parameter by doing

echo 128 > /sys/block/sdc/device/max_sectors (it was 240)

and even tried

echo 64 > /sys/block/sdc/device/max_sectors

but no change. Still seeing resets. I will try to upgrade the kernel from 2.6.28.11-server to 2.6.28.15-server and see if that makes a difference.

Upgraded my kernel to 2.6.28-15. Still seeing resets .

This means that I cannot use USB disks. Cannot make backups. Disaster pending - Highly annoying.

Can anyone reproduce this ? To stress-test I copy my home directory (some GBs) repeatedly from the internal hard disk to the external USB disk:

while true; do cp -r /home/jhje/* /mnt/usb1/test/; done

and in parallel I monitor /var/log/messages. After 5-10 minutes I start seeing USB resets.

Kind regards
-- Jan

Last try : did you choose GV3 instead of C-States in the BIOS ?
C-States hangs network on Linux, maybe it hangs USB too

Bingo! Enter BIOS setup, set Processor Speed to "GV3 only" and reboot. I have now been running the external USB disk at full throttle for two hours without a blip in the log and it is still chucking along.

Thank you so much for this essential tip !

Cheers
-- Jan

I'm grateful to prj too : viewtopic.php?f=9&t=361