many reset USB device using ehci_hcd, keyboard & mouse unusable

[François Rey]

I have been experiencing this bug several times in the last couple years. The most visible sign is the keyboard freezing, key presses are lost, or often bounce like thiiiiis as if the key up event is not registered. Bouncing happens until another key is pressed.
I had this bug on another laptop a couple years ago and I did not migrate to Linux because of that.
I has it last week on a newer laptop (Asus U6s) with Kubuntu 9.04 64 bit Live CD (same bug if installed).
The key characteristic of this bug is the high number of usb reset messages on the dmesg log:
[ 134.708244] usb 2-2.3: reset low speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
[ 136.344233] usb 2-2.3: reset low speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
[ 137.976237] usb 2-2.3: reset low speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
[ 139.640240] usb 2-2.3: reset low speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
[ 141.328239] usb 2-2.3: reset low speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8

I have reported this on bug 91230 and bug 124406. While discussing with Rolf Leggewie and Leann Ogasawara, it's been agreed to open a new report despite the various duplicates, so that a clean starting point can be given to developers.

To better document this bug I prepared a test script for data collection. I used the Kubuntu 9.04 live CD and ran this script with different scenario (different ways to connect usb devices). While the script was running, I kept typing on the external keyboard and kept moving the mouse. The script includes usage of an external usb hard disk and usb audio. Between each single run, I did a cold boot of the machine, starting it only after devices were properly plugged in (I did not unplug any device during testing).

Test script and data collected are attached to this report in a single archive.

I have run the script 4 times:
01-kb-mouse-alone-on-separate-hub
02-mouse-hd-on-same-hub
03-kb-hd-on-same-hub
04-kb-mouse-hd-on-same-hub

Only scenario 3 and 4 reproduced the bug.
After experiencing this bug last week I removed Kubuntu from my linux partition in I'm in the process of installing Arch. So further testing on my side will be either from the live CD or from arch linux.

Many similar issues have been reported on the net for various distro, here are a few:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/91230
http://<email address hidden>/msg18199.html
http://taint.org/2006/12/13/191554a.html
http://bugs.gentoo.org/177266
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11159
...
There's plenty more if you search the net with these keywords: reset speed USB device using ehci_hcd.

Sometimes these report involve mass storage devices which may indicate a different bug but that's not necessarily true. What usually happens is that these problems do not occur when running a non-linux OS (as in my case). The most common workaround is to switch devices to other ports/hub. In my case I had to move mouse and keyboard by themselves on a separate hub. This makes me advance the theory that it's possibly related to devices with different speed connected on the same hub. It's not specific to ubuntu, and it's been there for at least a couple years (see bug 91230).

Alan Stern just submitted a patch that could resolve this issue:
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11159
However I am unable to test this at present.

[François Rey (fmjrey)]

As requested in bug 124406.

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Hello
Is this problem present with the latest updated Karmic's, Lucid's or Maverick's packages?
Thanks in advance
Fabio

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!