Mageia forum

Today I bought a Nikon Coolpix P610 to replace my old Fuji Finepix camera because sometime in the past 11 years I had mislaid the CF disk and could find no modern media which the camera would recognize. The camera works fine but I came up immediately against a real problem with retrieving the data from the camera. The salesman had pointed out that the images could be uploaded via wireless to mobile devices supporting IoS or Android. As I have no mobile devices and have no intention of buying any that rules out one option. So, use the USB cable which is supplied for charging the battery; nope, that does not even register. That left only my USB card reader which always worked with previous cameras on Mandriva. The reader certainly powers up and dmesg lists the new /dev/sd* devices OK. So, plug in the SD card; the red light comes on momentarily, maybe for a second, which is probably the card reader acknowledging the new device, but nothing appears in /run/media/<user>/ or in the df -h listing. This applies to all of four PCs. I even tried rebooting with everything plugged in but to no avail. However, I have two fairly old computers which may be nearing end of life but which run mga4 and mga5 and both have built-in card readers. Putting the SD card in the slot works fine for those. The directory tree appears immediately so problem solved in a temporary sense but it is a precarious situation. I very much doubt that Currys would give me my money back, caveat emptor and all that, so the question is, does anybody know anything about Linux support for USB card readers in general and Trust in particular? This may be a regression or simply lack of suitable drivers?

This extract appears in https://www.cs.sfu.ca/~ggbaker/personal/cf-linux
SCSI Support (CONFIG_SCSI, scsi.o)
SCSI disk support (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD, sd_mod.o)
SCSI generic support (CONFIG_CHR_DEV_SG, sg.o)
Probe all LUNs on each SCSI device (CONFIG_SCSI_MULTI_LUN), required only for multi-card devices.

There is the suggestion that sg3-utils should be installed; not sure what that has to with it. Package not in Mageia.

Also add

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options scsi_mod max_scsi_luns=8

to /etc/modules.conf.

Most of the files referenced in the page do not seem to exist in Mageia nor does the /proc structure tally with Mageia. The documentation itself may be quite old and possibly out of date. There has been some discussion of card reader problems in this forum which gives me the impression that the problem is a missing driver or drivers.

This demonstrates that the card reader is correctly analysed:

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# cat /proc/scsi/scsi
Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
  Vendor: HL-DT-ST Model: DVDRWBD CA30N    Rev: A200
  Type:   CD-ROM                           ANSI  SCSI revision: 05
Host: scsi1 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
  Vendor: ATA      Model: ST31000524AS     Rev: JC4A
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI  SCSI revision: 05
Host: scsi4 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
  Vendor: HP       Model: Portable HD BB07 Rev: 1007
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI  SCSI revision: 06
Host: scsi5 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
  Vendor: USB 2.0  Model: CF Card       CF Rev: 1.6E
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI  SCSI revision: 00
Host: scsi5 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 01
  Vendor: USB 2.0  Model: MS Card       MS Rev: 1.6E
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI  SCSI revision: 00
Host: scsi5 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 02
  Vendor: USB 2.0  Model: SD Card   MMC/SD Rev: 1.6E
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI  SCSI revision: 00
Host: scsi5 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 03
  Vendor: USB 2.0  Model: SM Card       SM Rev: 1.6E
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI  SCSI revision: 00
Host: scsi5 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 04
  Vendor: USB 2.0  Model: XD Card       XD Rev: 1.6E
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI  SCSI revision: 00

$lspcidrake -v
usb_storage     : PASS|2.0 Card Reader [Mass Storage|SCSI|Bulk-Only] (vendor:0145 device:0112)


There does not appear to be a Vendor name; the reader is badged as Trust.

Let's take it step by step

For one, the package is called sg3_utils in Mageia, which is also the upstream name: http://sg.danny.cz/sg/sg3_utils.html
It can be used to scan for SCSI (and other) devices and such.

For two, card readers usually do no require specific drivers. There are some rare cases where some special additional options for the kernel
modules are necessary, one widespread example would be the built-in card reader for the first-generation netbooks like Asus EEE PCs and derivatives.

If it's an external reader, it would be good if you could do the following first for the reader, and then with a little pause for the SD card itself:
Please do the following after unplugging your reader - Open a terminal, and as root run:

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journalctl -af

then wait a few seconds, and plugin the reader, and wait again fifteen seconds or so, until no new output appears.
Then post everything here.

Rinse and repeat for the card itself.


Totally apart from all that, do you have a known good setup for that card reader?
When was the last time it worked, or does it work without issues under another operating system
or with other cards or on another PC?

Thanks for your prompt reply. I ran those tests and....

$ journalctl -af
output the last few lines of the system history but nothing more while the various plug and unplug scenarios played out over several minutes.

The same experiment with dmesg monitoring produced this listing, which covers a couple of plug/plug/unplug/unplug sequences.
Nothing registers when the card is inserted or withdrawn from its slot but the card slots are mapped out on plugging in and a Disconnect message posted when the reader is unplugged.

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[ 9704.349275] usb 4-1.6: USB disconnect, device number 9
[ 9735.516366] usb 4-1.6: new high-speed USB device number 10 using ehci-pci
[ 9735.604120] usb 4-1.6: New USB device found, idVendor=0145, idProduct=0112
[ 9735.604125] usb 4-1.6: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 9735.604128] usb 4-1.6: Product: 2.0 Card Reader
[ 9735.604130] usb 4-1.6: Manufacturer: PASS
[ 9735.604133] usb 4-1.6: SerialNumber: ABCD12345678
[ 9735.605380] usb-storage 4-1.6:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[ 9735.605627] scsi11 : usb-storage 4-1.6:1.0
[ 9736.609839] scsi 11:0:0:0: Direct-Access     USB 2.0  CF Card       CF 1.6E PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[ 9736.612788] scsi 11:0:0:1: Direct-Access     USB 2.0  MS Card       MS 1.6E PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[ 9736.616537] scsi 11:0:0:2: Direct-Access     USB 2.0  SD Card   MMC/SD 1.6E PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[ 9736.621188] scsi 11:0:0:3: Direct-Access     USB 2.0  SM Card       SM 1.6E PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[ 9736.626543] scsi 11:0:0:4: Direct-Access     USB 2.0  XD Card       XD 1.6E PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[ 9736.632926] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdd] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 9736.664810] sd 11:0:0:2: [sde] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 9736.668318] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 9736.670938] sd 11:0:0:3: [sdf] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 9736.674439] sd 11:0:0:4: [sdg] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 9927.111057] usb 4-1.6: USB disconnect, device number 10


Known good setup? Yes, I just remembered that I used a CF card recently to store some images from the PC using the card reader, just as a test to see if it could be done. When I loaded that into the card reader it was instantly visible to the host PC. That and the fact that the SD card works fine on the other two machines with built in card readers now causes me to suspect a contact problem, so there may not be a problem at all. I intend to pick up another card reader tomorrow to check this out, preferably USB 3.0. Will report back and meanwhile thank you for your attention. "Mageia - the distro that never sleeps!"

Yes, that was it. A new card reader had no difficulty with the SD card. Thanks again doktor5000.