USB-storage and CF reader oddness

kernel 2.5.52 & 53

ASUS P4S533 (SiS645DX chipset)
P4 2GHz
1G PC2700 RAM
SanDisk SDDR-77 ImageMate CF reader

First - I really have no clue how to use this device in linux.

scsi, scsi disk, scsi CD and scsi generic builtin.
USB and OHCI-HCD builtin (required for ps/2 mouse - no idea why) USB-storage as a module with all devices selected.

insert a card, modprobe usb-storage.
lsmod shows usb-storage with 0 usage
ls /dev shows sda and sda1
mount returns "no media found"
remove card, modprobe -r usb-storage
get "kernel cannot handle paging request" from process drakupdate-fsta lsmod shows nothing
ls /dev shows no sda or sda1
insert card, modprobe usb-storage
lsmod shows usb-storage with usage 0
ls /dev shows sda and sda1
mount spews hundreds of lines of debug messages, but appears to mount the card. ls /mnt/disk shows the contents of the card
umount hangs
lsmod in another term hangs
ls /dev hangs
rmmod -f usb-storage unloads usb-storage
ls /dev doesn't hang (except the one that was already hung)
lsmod hangs
modprobe usb-storage hangs

I guess at this point I've totally mangled things and reboot. These steps always work the same way.

I can also cause modprobe and lsmod to hang by doing modprobe usb-storage
rmmod usb-storage
a few times

Any hints on what I should be REALLY doing to be able to read more than one card per boot?
hotplug doesn't work at all - Mandrake's initscripts only work if everything is a module.

Murray J. Root
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DISCLAIMER: http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/
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Mandrake on irc.freenode.net:
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New experiments have yielded:
Mandrake's initscript leaves "/bin/true" in /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug. According to man hotplug the path "/sbin/hotplug" should be there. Putting "/sbin/hotplug" in there seems to stop the hanging.

Making sd-mod a module and then doing
modprobe usb-storage
modprobe sd-mod
after inserting a card and
modprobe -r sd-mod
modprobe -r usb-storage
after taking the card out seems to work, except in ps I get lines like
1671 ? SW 0:00 scsi_eh_3
where the X in scsi_eh_X gets larger each time and the old ones remain forever.

Murray J. Root
------------------------------------------------
DISCLAIMER: http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/
------------------------------------------------
Mandrake on irc.freenode.net:
  #mandrake & #mandrake-linux = help for newbies 
  #mdk-cooker = Mandrake Cooker 
  #cooker = moderated Mandrake Cooker