Re: [usb-storage] Re: [PATCH] usb-storage: Add quirks to make G-Technology "G-Drive" work

[Alan Stern]

On Thu, 17 May 2018, Alexander Kappner wrote:

> Hi Alan,
> 
> thanks for reviewing. (This is my first contribution that touches 
> usb-storage, so please bear with me.)
> 
> > That's kind of weird.  Does the drive work under Windows in UAS mode?  
> 
> On the Windows 10 VM that I just spun up for testing this, access to the 
> drive uses "usbstor.inf" (rather than "uaspstor.sys"). So I believe the 
> answer is no. 
> 
> > If so, why are the WRITE(16) commands failing under Linux?
> 
> I don't know exactly why they're failing, but another entry in the 
> unusual_uas.h shows another SimpleTech device (only with a slightly 
> different product ID) needing the same UAS quirk (see 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1124119). So my guess is those 
> drives are just buggy. 

Okay, that's quite possible.

> > That doesn't quite make sense.  Since you prevent the uas driver from 
> > binding to this device, it will end up using usb-storage no matter how 
> > the kernel was built.  Therefore the second quirk flag has to go into 
> > unusual_devs.h no matter what.
> 
> Yes that's what I was trying to get at. So even though the UAS flag would 
> conceptually belong into unusual_uas, I'm putting both into unusual_devs to 
> avoid having to create two separate entries for the same device.
> 
> > You don't describe the second quirk flag at all.  Are you sure it is 
> > needed?
> 
> Yes. Without this flag, the device keeps throwing similar errors on 
> usb-storage. That's the same result I get on a host that doesn't have UAS 
> compiled in. Here's a dmesg:
> 
> [    2.183472] usb 3-1: New USB device found, idVendor=4971, idProduct=8024, bcdDevice=24.03
> [    2.184285] usb 3-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
> [    2.184980] usb 3-1: Product: G-DRIVE
> [    2.185447] usb 3-1: Manufacturer: HGST
> [    2.185829] usb 3-1: SerialNumber: AA015010004C
> [    2.195509] usb-storage 3-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
> [    2.198668] Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 2.88M AMI BIOS
> [    2.202981] scsi host2: usb-storage 3-1:1.0
> ...
> [    3.233085] scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access     G-DRIVE                   2403 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
> [    3.234514] sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
> [    3.235465] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
> [    3.236847] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] 7814037168 512-byte logical blocks: (4.00 TB/3.64 TiB)
> [    3.237794] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] 4096-byte physical blocks
> [    3.241255] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
> [    3.242096] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 47 00 10 08
> [    3.243595] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, supports DPO and FUA
> [    3.257893]  sda: sda1 sda9
> [    3.261402] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
> ...
> [   92.433428] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
> [   92.434759] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] 
> [   92.435637] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 Add. Sense: Invalid field in cdb
> [   92.436401] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 CDB: Write(16) 8a 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00
> [   92.437493] print_req_error: critical target error, dev sda, sector 0
> [   92.438211] Buffer I/O error on dev sda, logical block 0, lost sync page write
> [   92.516692] EXT4-fs (sda): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
> [  101.449311] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
> [  101.450598] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] 
> [  101.451401] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 Add. Sense: Invalid field in cdb
> [  101.452041] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 CDB: Write(16) 8a 08 00 00 00 00 e8 c4 00 18 00 00 00 08 00 00
> [  101.452906] print_req_error: critical target error, dev sda, sector 3905159192
> [  101.453593] print_req_error: critical target error, dev sda, sector 3905159192
> [  101.454889] Aborting journal on device sda-8.
> [  101.457103] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
> [  101.457988] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] 
> [  101.458637] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 Add. Sense: Invalid field in cdb
> [  101.459250] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] tag#0 CDB: Write(16) 8a 08 00 00 00 00 e8 c4 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00

That's bizarre too.  Even though the only difference is a MODE SENSE 
command, the command that actually failed was WRITE(16).

> Source code comments describe this as a known problem (scsiglue.c:182):
> 
>                 /*
>                  * Some devices don't like MODE SENSE with page=0x3f,
>                  * which is the command used for checking if a device
>                  * is write-protected.  Now that we tell the sd driver
>                  * to do a 192-byte transfer with this command the
>                  * majority of devices work fine, but a few still can't
>                  * handle it.  The sd driver will simply assume those
>                  * devices are write-enabled.
>                  */
>                 if (us->fflags & US_FL_NO_WP_DETECT)
>                         sdev->skip_ms_page_3f = 1;

Yeah, but that comment referred to driver that fail when they receive 
the MODE SENSE.

Have you tried using uas _and_ setting the sdev->skip_ms_page_3f flag?

Alan Stern