/dev/sda nodes have dissapeard

[rizzler]

Hi,

Im having a problem on my esata plug. I had a power outage and since then I cannot see the /dev/sda nodes. I am running debian on the SD I received with my box.

I tried using

mknod /dev/sda b 8 0
mknod /dev/sda1 b 8 1

commands but the sda nodes dissapear after a reboot. in the syslogs I see:

May 18 09:07:23 debian kernel: usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using orion-ehci and address 2
May 18 09:07:23 debian kernel: usb 1-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
May 18 09:07:23 debian kernel: usb 1-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
May 18 09:07:23 debian kernel: usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using orion-ehci and address 3
May 18 09:07:23 debian kernel: usb 1-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
May 18 09:07:23 debian kernel: usb 1-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
May 18 09:07:23 debian kernel: usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using orion-ehci and address 4
May 18 09:07:23 debian kernel: usb 1-1: can't set config #1, error -71

the drive I have been using is ntfs and i mount it using ntfs-3g I have used the drive now for 6 months with no problems and it still works fine when plugged into a another system, and it is self powered.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Rizz

[NewIT_Marcus]

• When you manually create the nodes, does the device become accessible (and without errors)?
• Have you tried a different SD card, ie with a known good OS & filesystem on it?

[Cestrian]

I recently have the same problem. I've been using a USB drive for many months, but then moved house, powered it all down for a few days and now I've put everything back together the Sheeva plug can't see the USB drive. /dev/sda is missing. The drive is readable on another Linux system ok so I don't think it's the drive.

Any assistance gratefully received!

Thanks,
Tony

[rizzler]

When you manually create the nodes, does the device become accessible (and without errors)?
Have you tried a different SD card, ie with a known good OS & filesystem on it

No even when i create the nodes im still unable to mount the device. I havent tried another SD card yet but i get the same issue if i boot into ubuntu on the NAND.

[NewIT_Marcus]

When you manually create the nodes, does the device become accessible (and without errors)?
Have you tried a different SD card, ie with a known good OS & filesystem on it

No even when i create the nodes im still unable to mount the device. I havent tried another SD card yet but i get the same issue if i boot into ubuntu on the NAND.

So you've performed 2 tests with the same result. That certainly points to a hardware issue. It might be the PSU; do you have an "old" PSU?

[rizzler]

What do you mean by old PSU? for the sheevaplug? I got the plug in october.

Tha harddisk works fine when plugged into my laptop.

[NewIT_Marcus]

The power supply was changed last year, but I think it was well before October. I don't recall the exact date. One of the symptoms of a failing power supply is intermittent issues with hardware devices (USB ports or ethernet).

There is just one other possibility. What kernel are you using, and what is your arcNumber? Maybe you have a non-eSATA kernel, or perhaps your arcNumber is not enabling eSATA.

[rizzler]

Im using uImage-2.6.36-newit ive never rebuilt the kernel myself. I believe my arcnumber is 2097.But the issue is with the USB, Ive never tried an esata in the plug before.

Rizz

[NewIT_Marcus]

Im using uImage-2.6.36-newit ive never rebuilt the kernel myself. I believe my arcnumber is 2097.But the issue is with the USB, Ive never tried an esata in the plug before.

Rizz

USB devices won't be affected by arcNumber, so it looks like a hardware issue (given that you have booted in different ways and seen the same symptoms). U-Boot has usb commands too; try usb start and usb tree

Code:

Marvell>> usb start
(Re)start USB...
USB:   scanning bus for devices... 2 USB Device(s) found
       scanning bus for storage devices... 1 Storage Device(s) found
Marvell>> usb tree

Device Tree:
  1  Hub (480MBit/s, 0mA)
  |  Marvell EHCI
  |
  +-2  Mass Storage (480MBit/s, 100mA)
       Generic Mass Storage 4FCF52E1457FE0F309D3

[manscher]

I had the same problem once. It turned out that because of the power outage, the usb drives were not powered down correctly, and are somehow marked as such (can't remember the technical details). If this is the problem, and your system boots just fine, you need to umount each partition and run fsck on each partition, then remount. If your system does not boot just fine (e.g. if your root partition is on the affected drive), you may need to wait for a very long time (in my case something like 12 hours) for the automatic fsck at boot to finish properly. Another option is to plug the drive into another linux box and run fsck there.