[lug] USB drives

[Daniel Webb]

I have been having problems with my mom's Debian system: whenever she plugs in
the USB memory drive (a SanDisk 256MB Cruzer mini), the usb printer goes
bonkers, with messages in syslog:

Oct  1 15:53:47 gray kernel: usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 2, frame# 1842
Oct  1 15:53:47 gray kernel: printer.c: usblp0: error -84 reading printer
status
Oct  1 15:53:52 gray last message repeated 2501 times

The same thing happens with usb-uhci.o or uhci.o, kernel is 2.4.22 stock
Knoppix, and the printer is a HP 825c.  The printer won't do anything at all
until the USB drive is removed, the printer is powered down then up, and CUPS
is restarted.

I have searched high and low with Google, and the best I can find is rumors that
SanDisk doesn't actually follow the USB specification fully.  I haven't gotten
her to buy a new USB drive from a different brand to test that hypothesis yet.
Anyone else seen this?  I read that the USB stuff in 2.4.22 and on was
backported from 2.6, so upgrading to a 2.6 kernel wouldn't help if that's
true.  

I've seen similar problems with my Maxtor USB hard drive interfering with my
scanner at home, so I'm also highly suspicious of the Linux USB code being the
culprit, or at least not being robust enough that one USB device can't kill
another.

Daniel