USB misbehavior causes system hang

[Eric Buddington]

2.6.20-mm2 #1 Mon Feb 26 13:16:04 EST 2007 i686 unknown

I have an external USB drive (WD MyBook 5000YS), which I use for backups.

When I try to back up to it, it works for a while, but inevitably
starts resetting like mad, gives I/O errors, and then (here's the
problem), the softdog module reboots the system.

---------------------------
scsi1 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
input: Western Digital External HDD as /class/input/input8
input: USB HID v1.11 Device [Western Digital External HDD] on usb-0000:00:03.2-6
.2
scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access     WD       5000YS External  106a PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
SCSI device sda: 976773168 512-byte hdwr sectors (500108 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sda: 976773168 512-byte hdwr sectors (500108 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
 sda: sda1 sda2
sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda
sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
reiser4[pdflush(194)]: disable_write_barrier (fs/reiser4/wander.c:234)[zam-1055]
:
NOTICE: md1 does not support write barriers, using synchronous write instead.
reiser4: sda2: found disk format 4.0.0.

---- (works fine here for a while, then:) ----------

usb 1-6.2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 36
usb 1-6.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
usb 1-6.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
usb 1-6.2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 36
usb 1-6.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
usb 1-6.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
usb 1-6.2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 36
usb 1-6.2: device descriptor read/8, error -110
usb 1-6.2: device descriptor read/8, error -110
usb 1-6.2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 36
usb 1-6.2: device descriptor read/8, error -110
usb 1-6.2: device descriptor read/8, error -110
sd 1:0:0:0: scsi: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery
sd 1:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x00050000
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 919931588
sd 1:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
sd 1:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x00010000
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 919931828
sd 1:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
sd 1:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
sd 1:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
...
SoftDog: Initiating system reboot.

-----------------------------------------------------

Now, the USB problem may well be a device or cabling issue, but I
don't think that this drive failure should trigger a reboot - I assume
the drive failure is somehow constipating the entire disk I/O system,
and preventing my softdog-patting script from running.

My softdog script loops 'date >/tmp/$logfile;echo 1 > /dev/watchdog; sleep
30'. Nothing in it accesses the USB disk. /tmp is tmpfs.

Should the USB failure cause this problem?

-Eric


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