Hello: Today I received a Lexar USB2.0 Card Reader. I tried connecting it to an FC1 box (kernel 2.4.2.2129.nptl) with an AMD Duron processor (1.4 GHz). Immediately upon connecting, the system queries the floppy and two existing SCSI devices (an Iomega Jaz drive and a CD burner). Then, inexplicably, the machine hangs and I have to do an uncontrolled (and, needless to say, unclean) shutdown. However, my HP Digital PhotoSmart 120 camera connects without a hitch and, using gtkam, I can save and delete photographs with the camera connected. I tried looking up some instructions for kernel modification, and I know I have a good tool for it (menuconfig) and also the kernel source code. How can I get the reader to connect and mount up without bringing the whole system to a crashing halt? Does FC1 have a special vulnerability that FC2 does not have? I'd really like to know how to fix this, because I'd like to recommend a digital-photography solution to a client of mine. Of course he could probably use gtkam to save his photos straight from the camera, but if he could simply shove the card into a reader and use Nautilus (or even the bash cp command) to pull off his photos to a directory of his own choosing, that would be a lot more convenient for his operations, as I'm sure everybody can appreciate. (He runs a pathology laboratory and would like to take gross photographs and photomicrographs for inclusion in his reports--and he could do that a lot faster if all he had to do was pop out a card and stick it into a reader while he shoves another, blank card into the camera so that he can keep going. And when he's dealing with frozen-section diagnosis, speed is of the essence!)

On Thu, 30 Sep 2004, Mike Burger wrote: > I can't speak to the Lexar units, but I'm using the SmartDisk 6-In-1 > reader with FC2. The OS saw the unit right away, but I had to add: > > options scsi_mod max_luns=255 > > to my /etc/modprobe.conf go get it to see all of the slots. that's what i used for my lexar 8-in-1. actually, you don't need to get that carried away (although it may make no effective difference). from what i can tell, you only need to specify for max_luns the actual number of physical slots on the unit. can anyone clarify this? just based on what i've seen, each physical slot corresponds to a LUN, so i set mine to 3 and it's worked fine.

(I wonder whether it's an architectural mismatch--AMD Duron not quite being an "athlon" or a "686"?),

Frankly I'm stumbling in the dark here, trying to figure out why, every time I connect this card reader with a card inserted to a box running Fedora Core 1, the whole system hangs. I thought that maybe the processor had something to do with it--but it also crashes my old Gateway Solo 2500SE with the Pentium 233-MHz processor, so the AMD Athlon/Duron issue can't be it. The symptoms are these: The box probes every drive connected to it, including the floppy and the CD-ROM and any other physical devices. Then, suddenly, it starts flashing the CAPS LOCK and NUM LOCK lights, the mouse won't respond, and in general I need to execute an uncontrolled, unclean shutdown.

I tried the below procedure. At first it said something about not having something-or-other in place--I can't recall what, because when everything froze, I lost it all. I recall that it recognized the reader as a Lexar, but then kept saying that USB drivers were timing out. And then suddenly it poured out a lot of gibberish, ending in a string of hex codes that I can't possibly recall--ending with the phrase "Kernel panic" and a notice about "killing the interrupt handler." After that, my Caps Lock and Num Lock LED's started to flash, and the system would not respond to anything except a cold-turkey shutdown. Just tho show you how new I am at this game--and that some might say that Fedora Core was a poor choice for a total newcomer to Linux--I did not appreciate what a "kernel panic" was until you told me to proceed as I just did, and I read the above messages (as nearly as I can recall them). All right--so the kernel flies into a panic and shuts down its interrupt handler every time I connect the card reader. I assume that the other machine does the same thing. So how do I get the kernel *not* to panic? Temlakos On Fri, 2004-10-01 at 08:35, James Wilkinson wrote: > What happens if you press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get to a text terminal, then > connect the card reader? > > It throughly sounds as though you've got a kernel panic. > > James.

This might be a silly question, but do you have the reader plugged into a USB 2.0 slot?

As a first shot, can you pls connect the reader only without a medium in it? What's happening then?

Next, what reader do you have? And, is it mentioned here: http://www.linux-usb.org/ ?

Further, is the USB hardware on your motherboard officially supported by the kernel?

At first it said something about not having something-or-other in place--I can't recall what, because when everything froze, I lost it all. I recall that it recognized the reader as a Lexar, but then kept saying that USB drivers were timing out. And then suddenly it poured out a lot of gibberish, ending in a string of hex codes that I can't possibly recall--ending with the phrase "Kernel panic" and a notice about "killing the interrupt handler." After that, my Caps Lock and Num Lock LED's started to flash, and the system would not respond to anything except a cold-turkey shutdown. Just tho show you how new I am at this game--and that some might say that Fedora Core was a poor choice for a total newcomer to Linux--I did not appreciate what a "kernel panic" was until you told me to proceed as I just did, and I read the above messages (as nearly as I can recall them). All right--so the kernel flies into a panic and shuts down its interrupt handler every time I connect the card reader. I assume that the other machine does the same thing. So how do I get the kernel *not* to panic?

> In the meantime, I'm sorry, but there's not much you can do. It looks > like your card reader is not compatible with Fedora Core 1. > > You might have more luck with Fedora Core 2: a lot of work has been done > in this area. Thanks for the advice. Say--do you suppose that Fedora Core 3 will be able to mount it without a panic? I might just wait until then.