Introduction

Help on debugging removable device issues.

Things to try first

Run fsck (dosfsck?) on the disk to make sure it does not have any configuration errors. Sometimes a misconfigured drive will work fine in Windows but not in Linux.

In Hardy or later, remove the "usefree" option with gconf-editor (Applications --> System Tools --> Configuration Editor). This can prevent drives from auto-mounting.https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-mount/+bug/151025 The "usefree" option should be removed from system --> storage --> default_options --> vfat --> mount_options

How to report

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. in a terminal, start udevadm in monitor mode and capture output
   

   • sudo udevadm monitor -e | tee udev.log

3. connect the device

4. open a second Terminal and capture lshal, dmesg and ls the attached volumes
   

   • lshal > lshal.txt
     dmesg > dmesg.txt
     ls -l /dev/sd* > devices.txt

5. Press Control-C in the first terminal with the "udevadm".

6. attach lshal.txt, devices.txt, dmesg.txt and udev.log to the bug report

7. paste the output of ck-list-sessions into the bug report

8. paste the output of id haldaemon into the bug report

9. 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. stop hald
   

   • sudo killall hald

3. start hald while capturing its output
   

   • 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 more messages appear
7. press Control-C to stop the foreground hal

8. restore the background hal:
   

   • sudo /etc/init.d/hal restart

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

Debugging procedure

TBD.

Known bugs

Description of known issues, how to recognise them and stock responses/actions.

Open

Closed

Non-bugs

TBD.

CategoryBugSquad CategoryDebugging