external SD card reader mounting

bland · #1 28th January 2008, 03:57 AM

I have an external USB card reader that appears to be recognized by the OS (Fedora 7) but is sometimes not being mounted. /var/log/messages indicates activity but for some reason the card is not being mounted; furthermore I don't know how to mount it manually in cases when the OS doesn't (pointers would be appreciated).

Here's the activity I see when the card reader is physically inserted:

Jan 27 22:50:16 enzian kernel: usb 3-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 10
Jan 27 22:50:16 enzian kernel: usb 3-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jan 27 22:50:16 enzian kernel: scsi11 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jan 27 22:50:21 enzian kernel: scsi 11:0:0:0: Direct-Access Generic STORAGE DEVICE 9139 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0

A few seconds later the following appears:

Jan 27 22:50:51 enzian kernel: usb 3-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 10

And when I physically remove the reader I see this:

Jan 27 22:51:08 enzian last message repeated 2 times
Jan 27 22:51:08 enzian kernel: usb 3-1: device not accepting address 10, error -71
Jan 27 22:51:09 enzian kernel: usb 3-1: USB disconnect, address 10
Jan 27 22:51:09 enzian kernel: sd 11:0:0:0: scsi: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery
Jan 27 22:51:09 enzian kernel: sd 11:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
Jan 27 22:51:09 enzian last message repeated 2 times
Jan 27 22:51:09 enzian kernel: sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] READ CAPACITY failed
Jan 27 22:51:09 enzian kernel: sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_NO_CONNECT driverbyte=DRIVER_OK,SUGGEST_OK
Jan 27 22:51:09 enzian kernel: sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense not available.
Jan 27 22:51:09 enzian kernel: sd 11:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
Jan 27 22:51:09 enzian kernel: sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Jan 27 22:51:09 enzian kernel: sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
Jan 27 22:51:09 enzian kernel: sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
Jan 27 22:51:09 enzian kernel: sd 11:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
Jan 27 22:51:09 enzian scsi_id[5147]: scsi_id: unable to access '/block/sdb'

I don't understand what it means but there's an error message in there... As an experiment I changed the permissions on the USB ports, /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1, to ugo+rwx (and added my username to the group, but that's redundant at this point).

If anybody has any suggestions I would be grateful.

notageek · #2 28th January 2008, 06:28 AM

When you physically plug it int o your PC check it with

Code:

dmesg|tail

look for the name of the device (from your post its likely to be /dev/sdb)

to mount it manually

Code:

su -
mount /dev/sdb1 /path/to/your/mount/point

hope this helps.

bland · #3 28th January 2008, 02:57 PM

dmesg | tail didn't seem to reveal more clues to me:

Code:

ISO 9660 Extensions: Microsoft Joliet Level 3
ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A
usb 3-1: USB disconnect, address 2
usb 3-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
usb 3-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi3 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 3
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
usb-storage: device scan complete
scsi 3:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Generic  STORAGE DEVICE   9139 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0

It seems as though the OS cannot "see" the partition table of the card; it sees the device (/dev/sdb) but not the partition (/dev/sdb5), which suggests that it isn't possible to mount manually.

Could this be indicative of a hardware problem? If so, would it be the motherboard or the card? I get the same regardless of which USB port I attach the reader to.

notageek · #4 28th January 2008, 03:31 PM

Quote:

Could this be indicative of a hardware problem?

Frankly I wouldn't want to speculate

Quote:

it sees the device (/dev/sdb) but not the partition (/dev/sdb5)

fdisk -ls /dev/sdb should be interesting.

Quote:

It seems as though the OS cannot "see" the partition table of the card; it sees the device (/dev/sdb) but not the partition (/dev/sdb5), which suggests that it isn't possible to mount manually.

Seems to be true, perhaps the filesystem on it isn't mountable.

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, seems like the filesystem on the SD card is

Quote:

ISO 9660 Extensions: Microsoft Joliet Level 3
ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A

What happens when you try to manually mount it.

Trying this might help

Code:

mount -t auto /dev/sdb5 /mnt

bland · #5 28th January 2008, 04:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by notageek

fdisk -ls /dev/sdb should be interesting.

Actually this doesn't return any feedback at all; in fact, it's the same result if I enter non-existant devices as well, suggesting that in fact /dev/sdb doesn't exist either....

Quote:

Originally Posted by notageek

Trying this might help

Code:

mount -t auto /dev/sdb5 /mnt

This returns "mount: special device /dev/sdb5 does not exist".

notageek · #6 28th January 2008, 04:34 PM

Well, the OS isn't seeing the device, usually SD card support in linux is availble through the mmc driver, my kernel config (on Fedora7) looks like this

Code:

# MMC/SD Card support
CONFIG_MMC=m

This is the default kernel i'm using, if fedora isn't able to detect the SD card, then i'm guessing its not supported by the kernel, or worse could be a hardware issue.