#976123 u-boot-rpi: Unreliable USB with storage+keyboard

Package:
u-boot-rpi
Source:
u-boot
Submitter:
Elliott Mitchell
Date:
2020-12-09 03:39:02 UTC
Severity:
important
#976123#5
Date:
2020-11-30 02:14:23 UTC
From:
To:
Hopefully SSIA.

U-Boot's USB support is highly unreliable.  Trying to interact with an
advanced bootloader (GRUB) via USB-keyboard is highly troublesome if the
Raspberry PI is also booting from a USB storage device.

There is some level of magic timing needed to get U-Boot to detect both
and provide access for long enough for the bootloader (GRUB here) to
finish its job.

UEFI is very new to U-Boot, but USB is highly unreliable.
#976123#10
Date:
2020-12-09 03:36:06 UTC
From:
To:
I want to agree with the reporter that U-Boot USB detection is unreliable, at least for certain hardware. However the reporter probably needs to be more specific about any messages displayed or if/where U-Boot is stuck, and what devices are affected (USB vendor and device IDs).

In my case I am using U-Boot from recent openSUSE on Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, and certain USB PATA bridges such as 0c0b:b311 initially fail to be detected ("usb_new_device: Cannot read configuration, skipping device 0c0b:b311"). The workaround I use at the moment is to enter `usb reset` at the command prompt until the drive is detected, and then I can `boot` into GRUB2.