Re: [2.6.30-rc2] usb reset during big file transfer and ext3 error

From: Robert Hancock
Date: Tue Apr 21 2009 - 20:41:24 EST


(ccing linux-usb)

RogÃrio Brito wrote:
Hi there.

I have an amd64 system running Debian's sid distribution and I installed
Linux 2.6.30-rc2 on it, as a way to get improvements for the i915
subsystem.

Unfortunately, when I was transferring the contents of 2 DVDs from the
main IDE HD to a USB external HD, I got errors from the USB host, the
writes on the external HD become failures and the ext3 filesystem there
enters into error mode, going read-only.

I eventually lose the access to the device (i.e., the /dev/sd??? device
isn't there anymore) and I then have to re-run fsck on the given
filesystem.

This has already happened 2 or 3 times already and I observed that it
only occurs when there is high traffic---if I am, say, compiling the
kernel on that external HD, I don't see any problems.

Attached is part of the dmesg log that shows the problem. I put the
whole dmesg at <http://rb.doesntexist.org/linux/>.

As always, if any further information is needed, please let me know.

You're seeing these:

[103051.265045] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: detected XactErr len 1536/4096 retry 1
[103051.265156] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: detected XactErr len 1536/4096 retry 2
[103051.265281] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: detected XactErr len 1536/4096 retry 3
[103051.265406] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: detected XactErr len 1536/4096 retry 4

According to the EHCI spec, XactErr is "Set to a one by the Host Controller during status update in the case where the host did not receive a valid response from the device (Timeout, CRC, Bad PID, etc.)"

Quite likely this is some kind of hardware problem - maybe the USB port doesn't quite provide enough power for the drive, etc. A lot of these USB enclosure devices are also rather poor quality in general..
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