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Author Topic: Ubuntu 18.04 writing to SanDisk USB flash sticks bug Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 12-09-2018 02:57 PM                        Putting this in the digital cinema forum, because I'm guessing that some of us will be using Ubuntu to create ISDCF-compliant DCP distribution drives. I installed a bunch of updates for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS yesterday evening. This morning, I tried to write to a SanDisk Cruzer Glide (USB2, black and red) 32GB flash stick. Midway through formatting the drive (ext3, inode=128), the computer totally froze. The mouse pointer froze, the computer was totally unresponsive, no response to ctrl/alt/del, not even any response to pressing and holding the power button for four seconds. The only way I could even reboot the computer was to power cycle the power supply unit. After the reboot, I repeated the procedure. This time it formatted, but froze again copying content to it. One hard reboot later, I tried again, with another flash stick of the same model. Again, it froze up during the format. One reboot later, I was able to partition, format, and write to three other sticks, of the same capacity but a different model, without any problem. I then rolled back Ubuntu to a Clonezilla image taken immediately before installing those updates yesterday. The SanDisk sticks that had previously caused the computer to freeze, partitioned, formatted, and wrote without any complaints. Ergo, one of those updates buggered the computer's ability to write to that specific model of flash stick. Among the updates was a sub-module of Ubuntu Base, called "USB multiplexer daemon for iPhone and iPad Touch devices." I suspect this of causing the bad interaction. When I get some time, I'll test this theory by installing all of these updates apart from that one, and then trying to write to a SanDisk stick again. None of the other updates look like they could have anything to do with USB functionality. Just thought I'd mention this in case anyone else is yet to install updates. The moral of the story: take an image of your system drive on any mission critical computer (i.e. one that you cannot afford to have go unstable until you've figured out why) before letting it install updates.  |  IP: Logged Marco Giustini Film God Posts: 2713 From: Reading, UK Registered: Nov 2007 posted 12-09-2018 05:41 PM                     I’m puzzled by the ‘four seconds power button’ that didn’t work? That’s a hardware thing AFAIK, nothing to do with software. If it’s a bug it must be a pretty big one.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 12-09-2018 09:33 PM                        It's a function of the BIOS. The power button is connected to a two-pin header on the motherboard, and the BIOS constantly listens for a contact closure on it: either instantaneous or for four seconds, depending on what you choose in the BIOS setup. I had it set to four seconds, simply because that's what it is by factory default (presumably to prevent accidental resets), and I never had any reason to change it. All I can guess is that when the fault happened, the graphics card carried on displaying what was in its onboard RAM at the time, but the rest of the motherboard totally stopped working. As you say, the fault must have affected the BIOS, and not just the operating system, because if it had only caused Ubuntu to seize up, the reset button would have worked. So if that USB/iPhone module in Ubuntu is responsible, it must contain code that interacts directly with the BIOS's functionality related to its control of the USB interface. Another out-of-curiosity experiment would be to try the same model of flash stick in another computer (different model of motherboard) running Ubuntu 18.04 with that update installed, and seeing if the fault reproduces.  |  IP: Logged

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