Doesn't detect USB-memory in presens of SCSI-disk

[LinuxSam]

Hi!

I have tried the new feature to have a persistent home-directory on USB-memory and I love the featuere... however I have a problem... It works on most computers I've tried it on but not on my own computer. The USB-memory isn't detected and hence there is no partition to mount as my home-direrctory. I have checked and the usb-storage module isn't loaded.

The only diffrence I have found between my computer and the ones it works on is that I have a SCSI-disk and it occupies the designation /dev/sda I have tried to specify /dev/sdb1 for the USB-memory but since it isn't even detected there is nothing to mount.

How do I solve this? Is there a way to force the loading of the usb-storage module? something else?
Any help is appriciated.

/LinuxSam

[rickenbacherus]

Is there a way to force the loading of the usb-storage module?

/LinuxSam

modprobe usb-storage

[LinuxSam]

LOL that much I knew...

let me rephrase... Is there a way to force loading of the usb-storage module during bootup.
so that It will detect ethe USB-memory before it is about to mount the home directory.

/LinuxSam

[rickenbacherus]

LOL that much I knew...
/LinuxSam

Oh - hehe

/etc/modules

[LinuxSam]

I know how to force the load of modules in a regular Linux system...

so what you say is I have to edit the Knoppix Image itself???

/LinuxSam

[Henk Poley]

I know how to force the load of modules in a regular Linux system...

so what you say is I have to edit the Knoppix Image itself???
I don't think editing the CD will help much. USB should be detected at boottime. Or does modprobeing really help? Then you might try adding it to knoppix.sh for example.

[yohanman]

If i understand thing right you use a scsi configuration.
You have only one harddisk and this is a scsi disk...right ?

Before you blame the scsi controller u should try to boot without the scsi controller and harddisk.
If the USB memorystick still doesn't function then the problem lays elsewhere.

If the memorystick does function after testing without scsi then there's your problem.
Make sure evreything is alright, terminators installed etc.

[LinuxSam]

This is my situation...

I have a Debian testing/unstable system... and the USB-memory works really nice... it is detected when I plug it in ( USB-storage compiled into the kernel) and I have no problems with it... it is detected at /dev/sdb since I allready have one scsi-disk. ( a real one that is /dev/sda)

but when I try to boot Knoppix on my system the USB-memory is not detected. and since it is not detected I can not mount it as my home directory.

If I, when knoppix has booted, run modprobe usb-storage the USB-memory is available for mounting but that is to late to use it as my home-directory.

My system is like this:

AMD XP1500+
MSI K7T266 Pro2
256Mb DDR
2 x 80 Gb WD harddrives (hda and hdd)
1 x 40 Gb IBM harddrive (hdc)
1 x 18,3 Gb IBM UltraStar SCSI (sda)
1 x DVD-rom ( hdb)
1 x PlexWriter SCSI (sr1)
1 x Plextor Ultraplex SCSI (sr0)
Tekram DC-390F (SCSI-card)
PoV Geforce3 Ti200 128Mb DDR
AOpen AW744 (soundcard)
bt878-based TV-card (Hauppage)

I hope this cleared things up a bit.

/LinuxSam

[yohanman]

Hmmm.....that's strange.

Do you use an onboard scsi controller or the 'real' thing ?
Does the controller has it's own bios ?
It has been a while since i used scsi under linux, but i do know that an onboard bios/firmware can cause you a lot of troubles....on the other hand Debian doen't seem to have a problem.....
You have a stange combination of components installed i must say ;)

Try to change the scsi id of the harddisk.

[LinuxSam]

The SCSI-controller is "the real thing" and it has it's own BIOS. Have also updated to the latest firmware for the SCSI-card.

And what is so strange with the hardware I've got?

/LinuxSam

[Henk Poley]

And what is so strange with the hardware I've got?

Let me see:


AMD XP1500+
MSI K7T266 Pro2
256Mb DDR
2 x 80 Gb WD harddrives (hda and hdd)
1 x 40 Gb IBM harddrive (hdc)
1 x 18,3 Gb IBM UltraStar SCSI (sda)
1 x DVD-rom ( hdb)
1 x PlexWriter SCSI (sr1)
1 x Plextor Ultraplex SCSI (sr0)
Tekram DC-390F (SCSI-card)
PoV Geforce3 Ti200 128Mb DDR
AOpen AW744 (soundcard)
bt878-based TV-card (Hauppage)

4 harddisks, 3 CD/DVD drives? Maybe that's what he's pointing at?
Shouldn't be the standard (back then) CPU, RAM, Mobo, sound, 3D nor the TV card I guess...

[Dave_Bechtel]

--Actually I refuse to buy a SCSI controller that doesn't have it's own bios anymore. Onboard BIOS means you can boot from the SCSI drive, tweak the settings, and even fdisk it under bare DOS if necessary.

--Only problems I've had is using ' enable disconnect ' on really old 50-pin, 4-gig Seagate full-height drives. They don't like that. Once I got faster 68-pin drives I yanked the ancient 50's for the speed increase.

--Oh, and on some older 68-pin drives you need to limit the transfer speed down a bit from 40MB or they get bozotic. (Usually the next lower setting - 32MB - works fine.) Those are pretty much the only problems I've run into with Adaptec AHA2940 cards.


Hmmm.....that's strange.

Do you use an onboard scsi controller or the 'real' thing ?
Does the controller has it's own bios ?
It has been a while since i used scsi under linux, but i do know that an onboard bios/firmware can cause you a lot of troubles....on the other hand Debian doen't seem to have a problem.....
You have a stange combination of components installed i must say ;)

Try to change the scsi id of the harddisk.

[yohanman]

I'm sorry...offcourse there isn't anything strange with your hardware, it's just that i've never seen such a combination of components.
With 'strange' i meant the fact that Debian doesn't seem to have a problem but Knoppix does.

I must say it hes been a while (3 years ?) that i used scsi, but i had a problem because of the bios installed.
This bios gave a conflict I couldn't solve (had to do with spin up time).

Is your debian installed on the scsi drive ?
Then there might be the answer.
The oly difference between debian and knoppix is in my view that you boot knoppix from cd.

[rickenbacherus]

For what it's worth - I had 3.1 installed with an Adaptec 2940UW controller on an IBM certified to work with this controller. - I had a hell of a go at trying to get USB devices mounted but was never successful. As soon as I yanked it there they were - no problems. This next problem was present irregardless of the OS. - if you powered down the machine, on reboot it failed to load the scsi BIOS and would time out then happily load your ide drive OS. - the only way to get it to load was to clear the CMOS & NVRAM. I got tired of that real quick. There are BIOS flashes available but none of them (at least that I saw) were specifically for my card and so rather than render the controller useless I just installed it to a machine that liked it a little better.

edit
Just found this in the mailing list:

> On my RH 8.0 computer my SCSI CDRW is dev 0,3,0 but when I boot
Knoppix
> on it, the same CDRW becomes dev 1,3,0. Why?

Probably because Knoppix is loading the ide-scsi modules first.
ide-scsi
then becomes SCSI host 0 (even if there are no emulated IDE drives)
and
your real SCSI adapter becomes host 1.

You can also load the ide-scsi module first in your RH system to get
consistent device numbers.

Regards,
Stefan Gybas

[LinuxSam]

Well... I disabled the SCSI-harddrive in the BIOS on the SCSI-card but got the same result...

I guess something is causing my USB-memory to not be detected be it SCSI-card, motherboard, graphicscard or something else.

When knoppix is booted and I insert the usb-storage module manually everything works fine but that is too late to be able to use the USB-memory as my persistant home-directory.

I guess what I need is a "cheatcode" to be able to specify that the usb-storage module should be loaded at boot-time but I guess there is no such cheatcode...

And for the curious... the SCSI-drive happened to fall into my lap and when I allready had a SCSI-card in the computer for the CD-writer I decided to plug it in.

/LinuxSam