usb seems hung

[Gary Aitken]

My usb subsystem seems to be hung.

When I plug a usb memory stick into a usb port, nothing shows up in dmesg and
there are no devices listed in /dev/da*

"usbconfig dump_all_desc" just sits there, as if hung

camcontrol devlist shows only disks:
# camcontrol devlist
<TSSTcorp CD-RW TS-H292B DE03> at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (cd0,pass0)
<ST1000DM003-1CH162 CC49> at scbus4 target 0 lun 0 (pass1,ada0)
<ST3250820NS 3.AEG> at scbus5 target 0 lun 0 (pass2,ada1)

13.5-RELEASE-p10 FreeBSD 13.5-RELEASE-p10 GENERIC amd64

Any ideas what might be going on and how to resurrect without a reboot?

Gary

[Andrea Venturoli]

On 3/19/26 16:57, Gary Aitken wrote:

> Any ideas what might be going on and how to resurrect without a reboot?

Once I was able to get out of this by issuing "usbconfig reset".
Don't if that's your case and I take no responsibility :)

bye
av.

[Gary Aitken]

Thanks, Andrea.

That didn't work.
Not sure what it was.
I finally tried restarting, and that seemed to fix it, although I turned power off
and reseated all the cables also. They all seemed fine so I'm not sure what was
going on. BIOS seemed to be reset somehow also, as the primary boot device was
wrong... gremlins. grrr...

Gary

[Tomek CEDRO]

On Sat, Mar 21, 2026 at 11:10 PM Gary Aitken <fre...@dreamchaser.org> wrote:
> Not sure what it was.
> I finally tried restarting, and that seemed to fix it, although I turned power off
> and reseated all the cables also. They all seemed fine so I'm not sure what was
> going on. BIOS seemed to be reset somehow also, as the primary boot device was
> wrong... gremlins. grrr...

That may indicate hardware failure or low level integration during runtime.

Some boards defend themselves against power spikes that way. Normally
when USB over-current/voltage is detected only port is disabled,
sometimes it can be reset, but sometimes machine needs hard power off
before it is usable again (I have some laptops that work that way).
Maybe some BIOS internals handled this situation by resetting settings
to default?

If the computer has some years you may want to replace CMOS battery -
usually 3V CR2032 that have 5 years lifespan starting from production
it is good to verify expected life span it should be printed on the
battery.

If the machine is relatively recent I would suggest re-flashing BIOS
with all possible components (management engine, microcodes, whatever
is available) just to make sure nothing was replaced under the hood
(there are many levels below ring 0 today). Modern BIOS are multiple
part packages, usually a ZIP file, that contain BIOS executable and
some additional components like management engine etc. It is best to
provide full ZIP package on update so all components are in sync.
Additional disadvantage here is that you need to reset all settings to
defaults after each update and then set them back by hand,
configuration profiles can be wiped out, so it is good to note down
crucial settings before the update.

Good luck :-)

--
CeDeROM, SQ7MHZ, http://www.tomek.cedro.info

[Gary Aitken]

On 3/21/26 17:20, Tomek CEDRO wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 21, 2026 at 11:10 PM Gary Aitken <fre...@dreamchaser.org> wrote:
>> Not sure what it was.
>> I finally tried restarting, and that seemed to fix it, although I turned power off
>> and reseated all the cables also. They all seemed fine so I'm not sure what was
>> going on. BIOS seemed to be reset somehow also, as the primary boot device was
>> wrong... gremlins. grrr...
>
> That may indicate hardware failure or low level integration during runtime.

<snip>

> If the computer has some years you may want to replace CMOS battery -
> usually 3V CR2032 that have 5 years lifespan starting from production
> it is good to verify expected life span it should be printed on the
> battery.

That may well be the case; says here it's going on 7 years or so.

Thanks,

Gary