# USB problems...

## mdpye

I have compiled USB support into my kernel and the startup sequence (care of dmesg) confirms that both my USB1 and USB2 hubs are detected and that the correct number of ports are added, but nothing further happens. There is no message logged when I plug / unplug a USB device, no /proc/bus/usb structure, nothing.

I have tried compiling support directly into the kernel and also modularising all the components (hoping to find which were required), but modprobe reports that none of the modules I try (e.g. usbcore, uhci, ehci) can be found.

Can anyone help please?

----------

## jezza

Hi there a fellow UK Gentooer(?)  :Very Happy: 

Ok let me see if I can help you here.  I hope I am not telling you stuff you already know.  I gather for the USB detection to function correctly, as well as enabling the relevant uhci USB modules you need:

"in USB Support, hit y at Support for USB. Scroll down to "Preliminary USB device filesystem" and hit y. "

i.e. you need to ensure that USB filesystem is set to 'Y', otherwise you probably won't get anything.  Maybe you've already tried this, so thats all I can suggest for now. The fact that you say via dmesg your hubs were detected, suggests that the core USB support is probably functional.  Try the option above and do a re-compile if its not there.

I'd suggest reading the USB-Keyboard guide in the Documentation forum if you want more info!

Good luck,

Jeremy.

----------

## mdpye

Hmm. That's the second suggestion of that fix, so I'll go try it (I'm surfing on a doze box til my new gfx card is delivered tomorrow morning...).

Only thing is, I compile quite a lot of kernels and I'm sure I would have inculded support for the usbfs if it was offered. Maybe I'm going blind, only way to find out is go check...

----------

## jezza

Ah the windows box isn't too bad, my Gentoo box (Dell laptop) snuffed it and had to go back to Dell.    :Crying or Very sad:   Is it too geeky that I can't wait to get it back to do:

"emerge rsync"

and see whats new  :Laughing: 

Yeah I'd certainly check that USB filesystem option, unfortunately to get my USB Intellmouse working (the cool LED light sabre one) I have to load around 4 modules, it seems a bit overkill for a mouse??!!  Maybe Torvalds is on crack   :Wink:  .

Let us know how it goes,

Jeremy.

----------

## jouzts

The Keyboard/mouse doc is a little misleading:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=79

When Linux loads it will trash your bios keyboard support, so you must either have a modules.autoloaded driver or build it into the kernel. 

I have been able to get both USB keyboard and USB mouse built into the kernel. I find that I have to use the ide-scsi and usb-storage modules to use a USB cdrom burner;i.e., I can't compile them into the kernel. Perhaps this is related to triggering devfsd to create the appropriate devices? I have not tried altering devfsd.conf to set up the devices in advance. 

Let us know the results of your compiling efforts. Do you have extract-ikconfig and binoffset to read the .config compressed into the kernel (if you set that option)? I found these very helpful in combating my muddleheadedness.

John

----------

## mdpye

You were right, it's the USB fs that was missing, thing was, it seemed to be missing from the menuconfig menus as well. Thus my confusion about forgetting it.

I remerged the gentoo sources and there is was after all. In all the tweaking and swapping of .configs I've done I must have fscked it somehow...

----------

