[Debian-eeepc-devel] Debian EEE, the 701, and SD card reader kernel bug

[mpb]

> mpb <mpb.mail at gmail.com> writes:
>> In mid December I installed Debian EEE on an Asus EEE 701.  The
>> installation was successful, but the Debian testing distribution had
>> upgraded to a new kernel version that contained a bug that prevented
>> the 701's SD card from functioning.

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 2:05 AM, Robert Epprecht <epprecht at solnet.ch> wrote:
> This is not true: the SD card reader worked fine for most people through
> the different kernel versions we have seen. There *have* been reports about
> difficulties with the internal reader on different distributions (including
> the default Xandros os) and some people made the experience that their reader
> worked with one kernel or distribution and not with others.
>
> Another thing is, when you try to mount the reader through /etc/fstab when
> booting, then the reader is often not ready yet. Mounting the card later on
> (or booting from the card) works fine for most people.

I installed Debian EEE.  Everything worked except the card reader.

When I tried to manually mount /dev/sdb1 to /mnt/sdcard, the mount
command would block for several minutes.  Eventually, the mount would
exit (claiming success), but /mnt/sdcard would be unreadable (I forget
whether reading from it would result in blocking or immediate error
messages).  Aside: the SD card is LUKS encrypted, so maybe the
problems I am describing were with cryptsetup luksOpen instead of with
mount.  I did not take notes at the time as I needed the system to
work, so I just switched to Ubuntu EEE.

The same SD card containing the same LUKS encrypted data in the same
701 worked fine both with:
1) Ubuntu 8.04.1 immediately prior to installing Debian EEE, and with
2) Ubuntu EEE 8.04.1 immediately after uninstalling Debian EEE.

So it seems highly likely to me that something about Debian EEE (or
perhaps something about the way I installed Debian EEE) caused the SD
card glitch.  (I do not believe it was a LUKS error, as I am familiar
with resolving them, and LUKS (cryptsetup) has always returned errors
immediately instead of blocking for several minutes.)

Perhaps I should try installing Debian EEE onto a spare USB stick to
test the 701 again?  I have no desire to uninstall Ubuntu EEE from the
internal 4GB flash storage space until I am certain the replacement OS
can correctly use the SD Card.

Or perhaps I should just use the normal Debian Lenny installer, and
not the Debian EEE version?

Thanks!

-mpb