[mdlug] Lethal hardware

[Ingles, Raymond]

I have a *really* cheap card reader hooked up to my Linux box at work. I
hardly ever use it, but it's come in handy a couple times.

Under Linux, it has always showed a phantom interface that takes forever
to timeout. Indeed, it would frequently hang the boot process for a
couple minutes waiting for that timeout. After that, things would be
fine. Since reboots under Linux are rare, this wasn't a big problem.

Until this morning. I'd updated the kernel and rebooted... and, after
GRUB, got nothing on the console. Zip. I could ssh in for a little
while, but then the system would freeze up. *Very* frustrating.

I finally booted with a rescue CD, and got a look at the syslog. I
noticed it complaining about USB stuff just before the freeze. So, I
yanked the card reader from the hub, and... everything booted up just
fine.

 So, a word to the wise. At some point I'll experiment with plugging the
thing in *after* the system is booted, but for now I've got work to do.
Figured I'd pass this on as a data point for others who might run into
similar mysteries...

 Sincerely,

 Ray Ingles                                            (313) 227-2317

  "We have managed to do something our enemies never could: set up
  architectures of control designed specifically to keep our society
           from correcting its errors and improving itself.

 No society that does this to itself survives even in the short term.
 Ours will be no exception, and I for one don't feel a great deal of
             lament for it anymore." - Jean-Michel Smith