[SOLVED] Installer won't detect USB external hard drive

[ca-on-adam]

Hi there,

I am using a laptop borrowed from a friend of mine. He gave me his unwanted 160GB drive from a PC he had recycled, so I rigged it to a USB enclosure so I could install Linux without touching his laptop's internal drive.

Hardware problems are ruled-out: I successfully installed Fedora 18 and Sabayon 10 in their separate partitions on this USB Hard Drive with this laptop before trying to install Mageia.

The following threads are similar but those cases actually have the drive detected, unlike my case.

https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?t=399&p=2577
https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?t=2850&p=21468

The "Hardware Detection Tool" in the Mageia 2 DVD boot menu can detect this drive inside its enclosure:

Code: Select all

Disk 0x80 (EDD 30)
Size: 149.04 GiB / 156.29 GB
Host Bus / Interface: PCI USB / USB
...
MBR: Grub2 (v1.97)  (0xEB6390D0)
...

Additionally, OpenSUSE detected this drive with its installer, but after a successful install, the boot-time kernel would not detect it, causing a hang at the splash screen. I have the exact same kernel output from openSUSE as I do with Mageia installer.

Here is the kernel output from when I disconnected and re-plugged the drive,to see what was going on:

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...
usb 2-1.3: usb disconnect, device number 4
usb 2-1.3: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd
usb 2-1.3: New USB device found, idVendor=04b4, idProduct=6830
usb 2-1.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=57, SerialNumber=44
usb 2-1.3: Product: Cypress AT2+LP
usb 2-1.3: SerialNumber: DEF10C98EF63
...


I see that the enclosure is detected as some sort of device, either the kernel doesn't recognize it as an enclosure, or it is missing some software to use this device.

I would have expected the next message to include "sdb" or info about the hard drive model (a Samsung IDE Drive), but no messages came up.

Here is the output from openSUSE rescue mode, /var/log/boot.msg, relating to detecting the external hard drive:

Code: Select all

(Booting openSUSE 12.2 DVD in rescue mode)
...
usb 2-1.3: Product: Cypress AT2+LP
usb 2-1.3: SerialNumber: DEF10C98EF63
scsi7: usb-storage 2-1.3:1.0
usbcore: registered new interface driver ums-cypress
scsi6: usb-storage 1-1.5:1.0
usbcore: registered new interface driver ums-realtek
...
sd 7:0:0:0: Direct Access SAMSUNG SP1604N 0000 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
...


Seems like the driver "ums-cypress", and possibly "ums-realtek" are needed to detect my drive.

How can I get this to work with Mageia?

Thanks




EDIT: From the Mageia DVD installer, (first screen before detecting disks) I hit CTRL+ALT+F2. Confronted by a shell named "Drak" I found my way to /lib/modules/(kernel version)/ and then typed "insmod ums_cypress.ko.xz" and then all of a sudden /dev/sdb was now detected!!!

[djennings]

A quick google suggests that this device should work with the usb-storage module if ums-cypress is not available.

In the Mageia installer you can look through the boot log and get access to a console shell by selecting Ctl+Alt+F1-F4
You will only have access to a limited set of commands but you could perhaps try using insmod to insert the usb-storage module


EDIT
------
FWIW ums-cypress is in the run time kernel. I do not know if it is in the boot kernel.

[ca-on-adam]

I just solved this with openSUSE. I modified the initrd to add the ums-cypress.ko module to the cpio archive, then when the boot failed and dropped me to a shell, I typed #/sbin/insmod /lib/modules/(kernel version)/kernel/drivers/usb/storage/ums-cypress.ko.

Immediately the drive was recognized and assigned the id /dev/sdb.

Then openSUSE was able to boot, and I rebuilt the initrd the proper way so the kernel knows that the .ko file is there.

All I got to do is get ums-cypress to load with Mageia DVD installer, then I'll be fine.

[doktor5000]

Well you could fire up the installer, and switch to a tty via Ctrl+Alt+F2 and see if you can find the module ...

FWIW, you have that drive connected when the installer loads (as one of the first steps is to scan for mass storage devices/controllers
and load additional drivers, which can normally be shortly seen) or do you connect it only later in the process when it comes to partitioning? Just to be sure ...

[ca-on-adam]

The drive is connected from start to finish, and the Mageia 2 DVD installer shows a status bar "loading usb-storage" but it hangs for 10-15 seconds, and does not load ums-cypress.

Also, convenient but mysterious, the Mageia installer appears properly set up the final installation to load ums-cypress from the initramfs, assuming that the default install does not do that.

Of course, maybe the only thing that would need to be fixed is the installer, if the final install loads ums-cypress regardless of the installation environment.

[doktor5000]

Then please try again with Mageia 3 beta 4 installer, and if the issue persists, please report that as bug immediately,
so it may be fixed before final Mageia 3 release: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_report_a_bug_properly
(as there won't be any new Mageia 2 installation media provided, it can't be fixed there)
Mageia 3 beta downloads: http://www.mageia.org/en/3/