The Waters of Mars

( Just a little comment on the episode... )

Silence

No sound came out of thalassa when I tried to play an MP3. I checked the speakers and cables; everything was fine. There was just nothing coming out of thalassa, either from the speaker socket on the back or the headphone socket on the front. No errors had been logged to syslog, and there was no evidence that the onboard audio was no longer being detected. Just silence.

In time-honoured tradition, I turned it off and on again. It started working.

Better keep an eye on this.

(Or perhaps thalassa just wants me to get some better music. Heh).

System failure

All the ATMs at the bank were out of order when I went in today. An assistant told me that the network was down across the country, and I wouldn't even be able to withdraw from my account using a machine at a different bank.

My bank's really been losing the plot lately. They recently changed my current account's terms and conditions to favour themselves (lowering the interest rate and charging a fee on arranged overdrafts). My mortgage will be up for renegotiation soon; if they try to charge me an extortionate rate, it'll be time to change banks.

I made it back from town before the weather closed in. It's pretty nasty out there.

I am an anachronism

I bought a new tea-strainer. They're getting difficult to find. I sometimes think I'm the only person left in the world who still uses loose tea.

Spend! Prove your devotion to the god of capitalism!

We're only just past Guy Fawkes' Night, but the shops have been carrying Christmas goods for a while already. Retailers are using their TV advertising spots to push their Christmas ranges. Today, I heard Christmas music being played in a shop for the first time this year.

We should just rename it "Mammonmas" and have done with it.

</cynic>

This guy are (still) sick

I'd feel a lot better after a quiet day at home followed by a good night's sleep, I thought. 'Twas not to be. The good night's sleep didn't happen and I woke up feeling arguably worse than yesterday.

My colleagues who have had this virus had to take two days to recover, so at least I'm not being a total lightweight.

Sick day

On balance, I could probably have made it in, but felt rough enough this morning to call in sick. I was in full-on cold mode at work yesterday, so the boss wasn't expecting me today anyway.

I'm more achy than anything else.

hub 1-5:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 3

thalassa has two USB ports on the front panel. Internally, these are actually part of a four-port hub. The other two ports don't have any sockets and aren't connected to anything, but the hub still looks like a four-port hub to the operating system.

For reasons unknown (loose connection? dry joint?) the third port seems to generate bogus signals that Linux interprets as being evidence of some connected device. It tries to communicate with the device, fails, and spams my system log:

usb 1-5.3: new low speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 22
usb 1-5.3: device descriptor read/64, error -32
usb 1-5.3: device descriptor read/64, error -32
usb 1-5.3: new low speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 23
usb 1-5.3: device descriptor read/64, error -32
usb 1-5.3: device descriptor read/64, error -32
usb 1-5.3: new low speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 24
usb 1-5: clear tt 3 (0000) error -32
usb 1-5.3: device not accepting address 24, error -71
hub 1-5:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 3

It's harmless apart from occasionally on startup when the initialization of my keyboard is delayed due to the system trying repeatedly to initialize a nonexistent device.

This has been going on for ages, but I finally got around to hacking Linux to work around the problem. Here's my patch against Linux 2.6.30:

--- a/drivers/usb/core/hub.c	2009-06-10 04:05:27.000000000 +0100
+++ b/drivers/usb/core/hub.c	2009-11-01 11:50:56.000000000 +0000
@@ -2751,6 +2751,12 @@ static void hub_port_connect_change(stru
 	struct usb_device *udev;
 	int status, i;
 
+	if ((port1 == 3) &&
+	    (strcmp(dev_name(hub_dev), "1-5:1.0") == 0)) {
+		/* shonky workaround: ignore the dodgy port */
+		return;
+	}
+
 	dev_dbg (hub_dev,
 		"port %d, status %04x, change %04x, %s\n",
 		port1, portstatus, portchange, portspeed (portstatus));

It's near the top of hub_port_connect_change(), so the machine wastes as few cycles as possible.

The correct solution would be to perform some minor surgery on thalassa to completely disconnect the nonexistent port, if that's possible. But at least this workaround keeps the logs and error console clear.

And so it begins

Two people at work called in sick. Their GPs have confirmed that it's 'flu. Lots of other people are coughing and sneezing all over the place.

It's only a matter of time before I succumb to something nasty.

Hooray

I found a dead wasp in my bath.