DebuggingRemovableDevices

When reporting a problem with removable devices, such as USB storage devices ("keys", hard drives, card readers, music players, digital cameras, etc.), please do the following steps:

1. disconnect the device

2. killall gnome-volume-manager

3. In Warty, Hoary, Breezy:

   • gnome-volume-manager 2>&1 | tee gvm.log

   In Dapper:

   • gnome-volume-manager --no-daemon 2>&1 | tee gvm.log

4. connect the device
5. wait a few seconds
6. Press Control-C to stop the foreground gnome-volume-manager

7. lshal > lshal.txt

8. dmesg > dmesg.txt

9. ls -l /dev/sd* > devices.txt

10. attach gvm.log, lshal.txt, devices.txt, and dmesg.txt to the bug report

11. restart your Gnome session to get a proper background g-v-m back

12. paste the output of id into the bug report

13. paste the output of id hal into the bug report

14. paste the output of uname -a into the bug report

In easy cases this is everything that is needed. However, you might be asked for a "hal debug output"; please do the following steps to get it:

1. disconnect the device

2. sudo killall hald

3. In Warty and Hoary:

   • sudo hald --drop-privileges --daemon=no --verbose=yes 2>&1 | tee hal.log

   In Breezy and Dapper:

   • sudo hald --daemon=no --verbose=yes 2>&1 | tee hal.log

4. wait until the flood of messages settled
5. connect the device
6. wait again until no messages appear any more
7. press Control-C to stop the foreground hal
8. Restore the background hal:

   • sudo /etc/init.d/dbus-1 restart (in Warty and Hoary)

   • sudo /etc/dbus-1/event.d/20hal start (in Breezy and Dapper)

9. attach hal.log to the bug report
10. Restart your desktop session