usb storage does not work

[Roberto Ugoccioni]

Hi all,

I recently installed Fedora Core 2, and usb-storage does not work.
I have been using SuSE 8.1 all along on the same hardware, using 
several usb devices which require usb-storage, including memory 
sticks and digital cameras. 
Notice that the usb part in general works in Fedora (e.g. the scanner
works), just storage devices don't.
I have tried the same memory stick on FC2 on other computers, both newer and
older ones, and found the usb storage to work as expected every time.

FC2 is not un upgrade, it is a fresh install.
I also installed SuSE 9.1, but exactly the same result
occurred. SuSE and Fedora handle hotplug differently, so I think 
this is related to the new kernel 2.6.
Google showed some posts from last summer which stated the same or a very
similar problem, but no solutions!

Here is my /var/log/messages:

kernel: usb 1-1: USB disconnect, address 2
kernel: usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using address 4
kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
kernel: scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
kernel:   Vendor: Generic   Model:              Rev:     
kernel:   Type:   Direct-Access                 ANSI SCSI revision: 02
kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered.
kernel: SCSI device sda: 251904 512-byte hdwr sectors (129 MB)
kernel: sda: Write Protect is off
scsi.agent[2981]: disk at /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:07.2/usb1/
        1-1/1-1:1.0/host0/0:0:0:0
kernel: hub 1-0:1.0: port 1 disabled by hub (EMI?), re-enabling...<6>

In all cases it never got to attaching the device - on other systems
with FC2 and working usb-storage there follow lines like these:
> kernel:  sda: sda1
> kernel: Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi9, channel 0, 
>          id 0, lun 0
> kernel: Attached scsi generic sg0 at scsi9, channel 0, id 0, 
>          lun 0,  type 0
> kernel: updfstab: Using deprecated /dev/sg mechanism instead of 
>          SG_IO on the actual device
> scsi.agent[10376]: disk at 
>          /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:10.1/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.
I stress that the above does not happen on my system.

In addition, "ps -ax" shows a 'modprobe -s usb-storage' process which
never proceeds, it stays there until reboot, while "lsmod" shows
the usb-storage module in the listing and "rmmod usb-storage" complains 
that it cannot remove the module because it is in use.

Finally, I found out that any attempt to read /proc/bus/usb/devices 
hangs and cannot be interrupted.

The motherboard is an AOpen AK73 Pro(A) with an Athlon 1000, 
the options "assign IRQ to USB" is disabled in the BIOS (this was 
needed for SuSE 8.1 usb to work). 
I also tried booting with "noapic acpi=off" without success.

Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance

Roberto