[olug] problems with external USB device

[Ryan Stille]

I'm trying to get an external USB hard drive working with my Dell 
server.   When I plug it in, there is nothing logged in messages.  lsusb 
locks up and I can't get out of it with Ctrl+C or even kill -9.  Same 
problem with usbmodules and even lsmod.

If I unplug the usb drive, all these commands return to the shell, and I 
am then able to run them again properly.  I don't think its a problem 
with the drive because it works ok on a windows machine.  I also tried a 
second drive, a flash memory stick, and had the same problems.

The USB controller is detected, lspci shows:
00:0f.2 USB Controller: Broadcom OSB4/CSB5 OHCI USB Controller (rev 05)

Its also detected upon boot up:
dmesg | grep usb
usbcore: registered new driver usbfs
usbcore: registered new driver hub
usbcore: registered new driver hiddev
usbcore: registered new driver usbhid
drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.0:USB HID core driver

When the drive is not plugged in, lsusb returns:
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Any ideas?

-Ryan