SD card not detected unless inserted at boot time

[Jerome]

Just tried here with 3.2.0-4-amd64 from Wheezy on my Jessie installation and it didn't work. I had to blkid /dev/sde.

Looks trickier. What kind of machine is it you have ?

Maybe should I investigate the hal related advice here: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 62#p512396

[llivv]

Just tried here with 3.2.0-4-amd64 from Wheezy on my Jessie installation and it didn't work. I had to blkid /dev/sde.

Looks trickier. What kind of machine is it you have ?

Maybe should I investigate the hal related advice here: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 62#p512396

Or you could try an older Debian Live CD like an early squeeze version.
I have the issue too.
What I noticed was that my older 1GB and smaller SD cards stopped working about a year ago in my USB 2 reader.
But I had been using some 512 MB to 4GB micro SD cards for about a year too before wheezy went stable.
So that leaves about a 2 year window in which the issue could have started for me when I was paying attention to other issues.

I got a new usb 3 card reader and it works fine plugged into my usb 2 ( ten year old i386 machines ) and mounts and reads my newer 8 GB SD cards without issue in wheezy.
My older USB 2 card reader is giving me issues all the time both auto mounting and manually mounting, if I can mount from it at all.

edit:
dmesg and manual mount of SD card

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 [53.252127] device eth0 ----
[ 5992.653382] perf samples too long (2546 > 2500), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 50000
[ 8068.188026] usb 1-3: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-pci
[ 8068.648020] usb 3-1: new full-speed USB device number 3 using uhci_hcd
[ 8068.787230] usb 3-1: Parent hub missing LPM exit latency info.  Power management will be impacted.
[ 8068.791229] usb 3-1: not running at top speed; connect to a high speed hub
[ 8068.818226] usb 3-1: New USB device found, idVendor=05e3, idProduct=0732
[ 8068.818231] usb 3-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=4, SerialNumber=5
[ 8068.818235] usb 3-1: Product:  USB3 Reader
[ 8068.818239] usb 3-1: Manufacturer: Genesys 
[ 8068.818242] usb 3-1: SerialNumber: 000000000390
[ 8068.821335] usb-storage 3-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage
[ 8068.821485] scsi5 : usb-storage 3-1:1.0
[ 8069.824098] scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Generic  STORAGE DEVICE   0567 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[ 8069.827091] scsi 5:0:0:1: Direct-Access     Generic  STORAGE DEVICE   0567 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[ 8069.830096] scsi 5:0:0:2: Direct-Access     Generic  STORAGE DEVICE   0567 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[ 8069.833095] scsi 5:0:0:3: Direct-Access     Generic  STORAGE DEVICE   0567 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[ 8069.833688] sd 5:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg5 type 0
[ 8069.834168] sd 5:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg6 type 0
[ 8069.834576] sd 5:0:0:2: Attached scsi generic sg7 type 0
[ 8069.835060] sd 5:0:0:3: Attached scsi generic sg8 type 0
[ 8069.986123] sd 5:0:0:1: [sde] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 8069.994010] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdd] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 8070.008176] sd 5:0:0:2: [sdf] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 8070.016136] sd 5:0:0:3: [sdg] Attached SCSI removable disk

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me@me:~$ su -c 'mount /dev/sde1 /m'
me@me:~$  ls -la /m
total 132
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root 32768 Dec 31  1969 .
drwxr-xr-x 27 root root  4096 Oct 22 16:40 ..
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 32768 Sep 30 15:39 DCIM
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 32768 Aug 31 20:15 MISC
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root 32768 Aug 31 20:15 PRIVATE

edit 2:
looks like 3.11 kernel is getting even more picky them 3.10
and the usb reader is connecting at usb 1 speed now
from the above code

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[ 5992.653382] perf samples too long (2546 > 2500), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 50000
[ 8068.188026] usb 1-3: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-pci
[ 8068.648020] usb 3-1: new full-speed USB device number 3 using uhci_hcd
[ 8068.787230] usb 3-1: Parent hub missing LPM exit latency info.  Power management will be impacted.
[ 8068.791229] usb 3-1: not running at top speed; connect to a high speed hub

arrrrr

[olivierb2]

For my self, I tried to install hal, but I got this error several time during the startup :

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udevd[2463]: failed to execute '/lib/udev/socket:@/org/freedesktop/hal/udev_event' 'socket:@/org/freedesktop/hal/udev_event': No such file or directory

[olivierb2]

I finally found my solution here :

http://ignorantguru.github.io/udevil/#polling

I added the following command to my /etc/rc.local and now my card reader work like a charm

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echo 2000 > /sys/module/block/parameters/events_dfl_poll_msecs

[llivv]

I think that the issue is a combination of kernel version, card reader and SD card.

I saved a bunch of dmesg while testing my usb2 and usb3 card readers
with a 512 mb, 2 partition, SD card and the 8 gb SD card from my camera
using wheezy default gnome and 3.2.0-4-686-pae kernel

nautilus behaved differently almost every time I changed either the SD card or the card reader.
and would not detect my 8gb SD card from the usb2 card reader.

I haven't gotten a chance to test
bw123's mounting script yet, thanks bw123
or olivierb2 workaround either
echo 2000 > /sys/module/block/parameters/events_dfl_poll_msecs

but that is why I posted in the thread in the first place.
I wanted to test some stuff, as I missed how it broke on my box too.

[flabdablet]

I've seen this behavior on a Dell Vostro 200 desktop running jessie/sid Xfce with kernel 3.10. SD cards and optical discs just don't get detected on insertion, with nothing happening in dmesg until an attempt is made to read from the card reader or disc drive concerned. Anything that performs a read will trigger detection and associated dmesg output: dd if=/dev/sdX count=1 of=/dev/null is enough, and fdisk -l or parted -l or blkid work equally well, as does explicitly triggering udev with udevadm trigger.

Olivierb2's solution (enabling kernel polling for device media) fixed it for me. I did that by editing GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" inside /etc/default/grub to read GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="block.events_dfl_poll_msecs=2000" and then running update-grub (all as root of course).

The box concerned belongs to a customer and I won't have access to it again for some weeks, but having read the udevil documentation olivierb2 linked to,I suspect that the udisks package is not installed on it and that simply doing that would remove the need for kernel polling. I will certainly try that next time I do have access because as I left it, selecting the Xfce removable media options for auto-mounting inserted media resulted in successful auto-mounting on only about one try in four. The Debian package for xfce4-power-manager suggests udisks, so if it works it's probably the Right Thing.

[flabdablet]

OK, so I've just seen this issue again, this time on a box that does already have udisks installed, and enabling kernel polling for device media fixed it.

[Jerome]

I realized today that this problem has mysteriously disappeared from my machine.

I'm running an up-to-date Jessie with 3.13 kernel from experimental. udisks is installed. I don't know if it was, back then.

Great.

[llivv]

it's not really that mysterious when you realize what the variables are,
which comes with practice and at least two different era - usb1 usbe2 usbe3 - card readers
and a few different era cards to be read by them.

either the kernel sees the combination or something else happens.

[Pinyaka]

Enabling polling fixed this for my MMC card as well. Thanks for posting.

[Jerome]

I realized today that this problem has mysteriously disappeared from my machine.

I'm running an up-to-date Jessie with 3.13 kernel from experimental. udisks is installed. I don't know if it was, back then.

I realized today that this problem has mysteriously reappeared on my machine.

I'm running an up-to-date Jessie with 3.14 kernel. udisks is installed.

[flabdablet]

Try turning kernel polling on. Some optical disk drives and some card readers simply don't generate the medium-insertion/removal events that less brutal approaches rely on.

[llivv]

just out of curiosity i booted a knoppix 6.7 live cd to cli and it does work correctly sensing media until i run

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apt-get purge hal

maybe that will help you better understand the issue, the kernel was 2.6.39 not sure of hal version you could probably look it up.

This would indicate that hal is required. Heard about it but I don't have any specific knowledge. I can check I got that installed / running.

If blkid works, I suppose I could have it croned to run every second and I'd have a seemingly instantaneous detection. But that sucks...

If blkid shows the drive, then the system knows about it.

Yes, that's the good point. It means there has to be a software solution. The ugly one being the blkid polling script. We could identify what specifically in blkid triggers the detection.

Desktop card readers are almost 100% USB devices - so it would be helpfull, if You'll provide "lsusb -v" output with the card inserted.

OK, I'll try to do that soon both with and without the card detected.

Thank you guys for the support. I'm not sure many of us are concerned, but I'd be happy to get this solved in the distro (vs. ugly local workaround).

What desktop are you running?
gnome ( still uses hal, iirc) and kde are usually pretty good about automounting cards --
unless there is a card reader version, card version conflict/issue.
there are a lot of different card versions and sizes, and a lot of different card readers versions ie: usb1, usb2, usb3, that will read one card and give problems reading another card of a different size/version.
So you have to match the card reader to the card many times.
It's not like you can just expect any card reader to read any card, it just doesn't work that way, even though many think that is how it is, or should be.
Which it should be, but it's not. At least from what I have seen.
As always, YMMV

It helps to know if dmesg shows sde1 ever time you have the issue so it can be narrowed down to an automounting issue.
Which would also most likely be a misconfiguration issue
and most easily fixed by testing different automounting / usb packages, unless you are running gnome or kde.

If you are convinced it is a software bug you need to be much more specific about what you are running and exactly what is going on when the card is[are] not working as expected.