Random failure to detect USB devices with kde-4

[rawthey]

Could anyone help me to solve this problem. I have a couple of USB memory sticks, sometimes they are detected by KDE and sometimes they are not. There appears to be no logical pattern to the behaviour, sometimes they will be detected when I insert them from time to time over a period of a few hours and then fail to be detected when I insert them a few hours later in the same KDE session. On the occasions when they are detected they appear in the Places panel in Dolphin and can be mounted but they never appear in the Device Notifier and only sometimes appear in the Kickoff "Computer" tab.

There's no problem with the memory sticks being detected by the OS, devd always sees them and creates the relevant /dev/da*s1 files. Even when KDE fails to detect the devices I have no problem mounting them from the command line.

One thing that I have discovered is that when the devices fail to be detected I can force KDE to see them by using usbconfig to power the device off and on, e.g.: # usbconfig -u 1 -a 4 power_off
# usbconfig -u 1 -a 4 power_on
to activate the device at /dev/da4s1. Not a solution to the problem but perhaps it might provide a clue to the cause.

curlew:/home/mike% uname -a
FreeBSD curlew.lan 9.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE #0 r243825: Tue Dec  4 09:23:10 UTC 2012
root@farrell.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64

curlew:/home/mike% pkg_info -Ix ^kde-4 ^hal ^dbus
dbus-1.4.14_4       A message bus system for inter-application communication
dbus-glib-0.94      GLib bindings for the D-BUS messaging system
hal-0.5.14_20       Hardware Abstraction Layer for simplifying device access
kde-4.8.4           The meta-port for KDE Software Compilation 4

curlew:/home/mike% sysctl vfs.usermount
vfs.usermount: 1

curlew:/home/mike% cat /usr/local/etc/PolicyKit/PolicyKit.conf
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!-- -*- XML -*- -->

<!DOCTYPE pkconfig PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD PolicyKit Configuration 1.0//EN"
"http://hal.freedesktop.org/releases/PolicyKit/1.0/config.dtd">

<!-- See the manual page PolicyKit.conf(5) for file format -->
<config version="0.1">
    <match user="root">
        <return result="yes"/>
    </match>
    <define_admin_auth group="wheel"/>
    <match action="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-removable">
        <return result="yes"/>
    </match>
    <match action="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.eject">
        <return result="yes"/>
    </match>
    <match action="org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-fixed">
        <return result="yes"/>
    </match>
</config>

curlew:/home/mike% usbconfig
ugen0.1: <OHCI root HUB nVidia> at usbus0, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=FULL (12Mbps) pwr=SAVE
ugen1.1: <EHCI root HUB nVidia> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=SAVE
ugen1.2: <iP4500 series Canon> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON
ugen1.3: <USB2.0-CRW Generic> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON
ugen1.4: <DataTraveler 2.0 Kingston> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON
ugen1.5: <Mass Storage Generic> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON

curlew:/home/mike% ls -l /dev/da*s*
crw-rw----  1 root  operator    0, 181 27 Jan 12:28 /dev/da4s1
crw-rw----  1 root  operator    0, 190 27 Jan 12:28 /dev/da5s1

 

[avilla@]

Please, attach the output of $ lshal when then device is plugged in but not recognised. Your problem should be a known one in sysutils/hal which I'm trying to fix.

 

[rawthey]

Please, attach the output of $ lshal when then device is plugged in but not recognised. Your problem should be a known one in sysutils/hal which I'm trying to fix.

hal02.gz was created immediately after inserting the memory stick, at this stage it was not recognised.
hal03.gz was creared after using usbconfig to power the memory stick off and on, causing it to be recognised.

In case it's relevant, it looks like having "power cycled" the memory stick it continues to be recognised, even after rebooting. I had to completely power off the PC to get it back into the state where it would not detect the memory stick.