Problem with USB storage
 

For the longest time, I have been using an older version of bcharge and everything I cared about was working. (What I cared about was USB charging and access to USB storage.) Then today, I noticed that my 8100 wasn't charging.

I changed bcharge packages and ultimately installed barry 0.8 from RPMs on sourceforge. Still not working. "lsusb" wasn't even showing the device I soon noticed, then I changed the USB cable I was using and it's working... however!

USB storage no longer works. I get this in dmesg:

I'm sure this is something easy to fix or something but the brain isn't working today so I'm hoping someone will just point the way to it for me?

Grab a flashlight and look at the miniUSB cable -- does it have 4 or 5 pinout connectors on both ends? Some cables have 4 and will not work with phones (Moto, BB) so I'd check that first and foremost.

If you have 5 pins -- did you try unplugging the cable and plugging it back in? After a phone reboot my first plug of the BB *never* works right with mass storage, I always have to unplug/plugin it again in order for mass storage to start working. This is without bcharge at all, just a raw BB device - the OS is buggy.

Yeah, I had determined the "original" problem was the cable acting up. I used a different cable after I had messed up my software configuration... bcharge works when using the other cable. Now my problem is as stated in the first post... somehow this new version of bcharge is preventing the usb-storage thing from doing what it did before.... before I messed things up.

"is it plugged in" check: did you check the USB Mass Storage settings of the phone? perhaps you meant to temporarily turn it off while dealing with the bcharge upgrade...

Assuming that's not it, the previous output makes it feel like usb_storage is loading sooner than bcharge, bcharge then resets the port which screws up usb_storage. I haven't tried 0.8 yet to know what happens with that code, I honestly don't want bcharge resetting my ports. One of these days I'm going to dig up the old original version which did nothing more than adjust the current flow and exit.

That's probably what's happening in this case. I have the USB storage setting on my phone set to "prompt" so each time I answer the question yes or no, so it leaves little doubt.

That makes me wonder though...

Yeah I have mine set the same way, if left to auto-mount (in the phone, i.e. Yes) I sometimes don't get it working correctly. I suspect some sort of timing issue, by having it on Prompt *something* (hotplug? insmod? the phone?) is given more time to do what it needs and allows a successful mount always, except for the "first time since phone reboot" issue I mentioned.

If you sneak over as root and rename bcharge to bcharge.old, then plug in the phone, do you get a normal correct USB mount consistently? (for debugging rmmod usb_storage first as well just to be clean)

Okay, that was interesting. rmmod'ing usb_storage didn't seem to help (especially not a good idea if I have other USB storage devices in use) However, I did prevent bcharge from running automatically. The notice on the BB screen informing me of insufficient power for charging though... then I manually ran bcharge, and it did its thing... now every 2nd or third time I plug in the USB cable, the blackberry mounts... still not as reliable as it once was but at least it's accessible. I wonder what would be the best fix for this?

I didn't mean to run bcharge at all -- what happens when you just plug it in, get the 'insufficient charge' screen and hit ESC, then Yes to mount the card? Does it mount reliably (repeatedly) without any bcharge usage whatsoever?

Ah yes... in that it's rather reliable. I had never tried escaping past the low-power dialog before! :) I didn't know you could access the usb-storage device without an adequate power supply.