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Ethernet problem with some USB hubs #114

Closed igoddard closed 11 years ago

igoddard commented 11 years ago
  1. Kbd & mouse plugged directly into pi. Ping www.google.co.uk. from command line. Response times 27 - 28 ms.
  2. Same but from LXterm in LXDE or XFCE. Response times same.
  3. Plug in widely advertised cheap 7-port hub, seen as two Terminus Technology 4-port hubs. Ping from command line. Response times same.
  4. Same hub, LXterm. Response times vary variable up to several seconds.
  5. Replace cheap 7-port hub with Belkin 4-port hub. Ping from command line. Response times as in original. 6 Belkin hub, LXterm. Response times as in original.

This often seems to be attributed to power supply issue. However, I powered the 7-port hub from a good quality 2 amp unit I use to power a USB CD-ROM adapter. Also I then experimented with piggy-backing the 7-port off of the Belkin. As the Belkin on its own is OK (& I know from previous use is itself capable of powering a SATA disk in a USB adapter) it should be isolating the pi from the 7-port. However in this configuration the problem is far worse in that the response times from the command line are bad - I didn't even try to run under X.

With the piggy-back connection I get the following in kern.log (no ping running): Jul 18 10:22:42 raspberrypi kernel: [ 338.885553] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Failed to read register index 0x00000114
Jul 18 10:22:50 raspberrypi kernel: [ 347.115679] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Failed to read register index 0x00000114
Jul 18 10:22:50 raspberrypi kernel: [ 347.115714] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: MII is busy in smsc95xx_mdio_read Jul 18 10:22:55 raspberrypi kernel: [ 352.115743] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: Failed to read register index 0x00000114 Jul 18 10:22:55 raspberrypi kernel: [ 352.115793] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: MII is busy in smsc95xx_mdio_read

I then disconnected the 7-port from the Belkin:
Jul 18 10:22:56 raspberrypi kernel: [ 353.006996] usb 1-1.2.2: USB disconnect, device number 16 Jul 18 10:22:56 raspberrypi kernel: [ 353.007042] usb 1-1.2.2.1: USB disconnect, device number 17

The system sorts itself out: Jul 18 10:23:10 raspberrypi kernel: [ 366.696205] usb 1-1.2.1: reset low speed USB device number 5 using dwc_otg

and no further errors.

I have a copy of this kern.log if you need to look at other parts of it.

It looks as if the problem is the consequence of the 7-port hub's being in the USB chain which also supports the ethernet connection and not a consequence of it drawing power from the pi.

I also noticed that with the hub connected the initial root prompt seems to take longer to appear after the message about running startx.

Ian

asb commented 11 years ago

There have been masses of fixes for USB since this issue was started, assuming fixed. If not, raspberrypi/linux is the correct repo to report USB issues.