USB system: FreeBSD 9-STABLE and 10-CURRENT do not recognize 64GB USB drive while Linux and Windows do

[Hans Petter Selasky]

On Saturday 23 June 2012 11:52:53 Adrian Chadd wrote:
> On 21 June 2012 23:22, Hans Petter Selasky <hselasky at c2i.net> wrote:
> > usbconfig -d 7.6 add_quirk UQ_MSC_NO_INQUIRY
> > 
> > Then re-plug it.
> > 
> > I'm sorry to say a lot of USB flash sticks out there are broken and only
> > tested with the timing of MS Windows. Part of the problem is that it is
> > difficult to autodetect these issues, because once you trigger the non-
> > supported SCSI command, then the flash key stops working like you
> > experience.
> > 
> > I would be more than glad to open up an office to certify USB devices for
> > use with FreeBSD :-)
> 
> Question - if that's the case, then why are we even doing that by default?
> 

Hi,

Do you want a blacklist or do you want a whitelist? Please explain the pros 
and cons.

I believe that those that program wrong shall be held responsible for that and 
given a chance to clean up, and not the opposite way around. As a senior 
programmer I can only testify that many people care equally little about what 
their computer is made of and what they eat. We probably need a control body 
to certify USB devices that is cheaper than USB.org, simply put.

I think it is a bad idea to cripple all USB SCSI devices because what looks 
like the majority do not obey the rules of the specifications they are 
supposed to support. Else we need to make a new USB SCSI class for devices 
that are certified and one for devices that are not certified. Non-certified 
devices can have a limited SCSI command set, which should be implemented in 
the CAM layer like some kind of flag.

If we could join heads on the Linux guys on this, we might be able to do 
something! Like having a pop-up every time a USB device fails certain tests.

From the history we can predict what people will do when they do not know what 
they are doing. They will nail the guy doing it right and let the guy doing it 
wrong go free. And it seems like this happened before too ;-)

I have a personal FreeBSD-native USB test utilty that runs mass storage 
devices through a series of tests. Most USB mass storage devices I've tested 
so far have obvious bugs, which either means their firmware can be hacked or 
made to crash.

Also worth noting, that many USB device are not certified at all. It might be 
clever to look for the USB logo from USB.org next time you want to transfer X 
GB of personal data from location X to Y.

--HPS