USB_ModeSwitch

Hi Josh,

I'm sorry to keep bringing up this blasted device. Aka the Cisco AM10.

I know you said you're not an expert in boot issues, but I can tell you that my system hangs when my Cisco AM10 is plugged in, and this is after I've chosen my Linux distribution on Grub 2.

I can tell you that it hangs in Arch, Mageia 2 and Mageia 4, Ubuntu 11.04, Mint 13 and Mint 17 within the Linux boot sequence.

I know I can just keep the stick unplugged, but I often forget, and my system becomes completely unresponsive (even Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work), so it's annoying. And plus my processor for some reason tries to blow itself up by repeating some exponential operation over and over until it overheats and the motherboard beeps at me.

So ideally, I'd like to know if there's some way to blacklist the device early in the Linux boot process or have usb_modeswitch run earlier? Perhaps the answer is in udev?

Or perhaps I can format the USB drive in some way that the system will find it totally uninteresting. Just brainstorming here. I started asking the question here and gave up, but a few years later of constant problems, I'd like to bring it up again (sorry):

http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswit ... &start=105

Must have forgotten about that ... This is what comes to my mind immediately:

First question - does your BIOS have a "Legacy USB" option? If so, try to toggle it.

Second question - does Grub 2 incorporate a 'feature' to boot from a CD-ROM or USB storage device? If so, can it be disabled?

Third question - did you try to play around with the "delay_use" parameter of the usb-storage module? Maybe you can set it to a very high value.

Hi Josh,

Thanks for the thoughts!

Hmm, well, I do know that I'm getting the error in the initial booting of the kernel, during ACPI. I've tried turning ACPI off but I got the same error. Maybe I can try again:

Anyway, here's the output:
That last line is where it hangs about one time out of six.

My current delay_rate is set at 1, so it seems that that value is already high enough. But just in case, I did:

sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/slow_storage
Since this is the kernel, I'm confused about what good changing the BIOS would do. In any case, I didn't see a legacy USB option. I do see: USB-HDD, USB-ZIP, USB-FDD.

I'll try "acpi=off" as well in my kernel settings.

lol turning acpi=off was very bad. It was pretty hairy loading that way and I don't think much loaded at all, in fact.

I'll keep acpi I guess. For the moment, I think the use_delay helps the kernel pass through the ACPI loading of the USB device, though I can't imagine why. So thanks!

With usb delay-use, now my system freezes maybe 1 time out of 6, which is much better, but not awesome.

I know that grub2 does not have boot from CD options enabled--it's possible, I imagine, but it's not like it's setup. Besides, the freeze is happening within the kernel, for sure.

Well, maybe let me know if any of those BIOS options seem interesting, but honestly, it seems like passing a command to the kernel might be the most promising. But ACPIoff was not good.

OMS!