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[ts-7000] Re: TS-7300 boots slowly due to several /sbin/hotplug usb

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Subject: [ts-7000] Re: TS-7300 boots slowly due to several /sbin/hotplug usb
From: "Andy Mercier" <>
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:46:55 -0000
I've made further observations, they'll be interspersed in the text of
the last post that made observations...

--- In  "spincycl_2002" <> wrote:
>
> THATS EXACTLY MY PROBLEM - a "sometimes" slow boot up on a 7300.  
> Those usb agents are SUPPOSED to spawn when a NEW device is added.  
> Tonight I was trying to solve this problem, but one time I actually 
> had it in a perpetual loop re-spawning the agents continuously.  
> After 15 minutes it still had 12 or so of them running.   
> 
> The most annoying thing is that the behavior is NOT consistant.   The 
> type/brand of devices does not seem to make much difference 
> (according to my tests).
> 
> so, here are some observations that may be of interest to you:
> 
> 1.  A hub will almost always slow it down.  If you have ONLY 2 
> devices plugged into the 7300 it's not bad at all.  But, even 6 or
> 4 port mini-hubs will usually DOUBLE the slowdown - or worse.  My 4 
> port hub is a "little" less noticable than the 6 port.
I discovered that I have real one keyboard that causes the problem the
majority of the time. Upon closer examination of the keyboard I found
that it has an additional USB port (really hard to find since there
was no icon for USB port on the plane of the keys). This would  appear
to support your observation that a hub makes it worse. I have nothing
connected to the "expansion" USB connector on my keyboard and it still
makes the boots slow with the spawning of numerous hotplug usb.agents.

> 2.  The top and bottom port on the 7300 are NOT exactly the same in 
> some respects.   I find that mounting flash drives always works
> when using the lower port.   But, I have had LOTS of times where I
> simply could not use any flash drive in the top port.   

There's something special about one of the USB ports that is described
in some TS document somewhere... something about support for updates
from a USB flash drive and it uses a script. The update process works
from only one of the two ports.

Since you say "mounting", are you putting the flash drive in after the
boot up, or is it in there while the board boots?


> 3.  I have found that it is better to let the USB agents run in 
> the "quickboot" mode.  I just let all of the usb-stuff get sorted 
> before I type "exit".   The overall  boot time is actually better 
> than just letting it jump into the SD card boot sequence.

Interesting; since you mentioned it, I've noticed that too. This may
be related... I sometimes start typing on the USB keyboard really soon
after getting the "quickboot" prompt and the keys on the keyboard
don't appear, they're completely ignored. Other times it sees the keys
right away. I've checked, with ps, what was running in "quickboot" and
have seen multiple usb.agents spawned there too - just not as many as
I've seen when booting the full Debian.

As a related observation... If I leave my USB devices, a mouse and a
keyboard, disconnected while the board boots I have yet to see any
problem with boot speed - the full Debian, as a default boot with both
JP2 and JP6 removed, boots in less than 30 seconds. This is a stock TS
Debian. I can connect the mouse and the keyboard at the completion of
the boot up, while at the login prompt, and the system runs without a
slowdown. A check of the processes running has yet to show any usb.agents.

There's a bug in the kernel or a module somewhere... I wonder how hard
it is to find the history of keventd and hotplug from the versions TS
used to the latest? Is there anyone experienced in how to quickly
search the various bug fixes and release notes on 2.4 kernels who
could give advice on this?

----
Andy




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