PRS-950 not recongized even though mountable

[myudkowsky]

On my system, Calibre no longer recognizes my Sony PRS-950 reader. This did work before; I'm not certain what happened.

I've actually rebooted Linux once since the first time I've had this problem.

In order to debug this I deleted the "Sony Reader Main Memory" directory (of which there were several) in my mount area (/media on Debian Linux). I then re-created the file, mounted the device on that (and see just some installation directories there).

I re-ran the welcome wizard a couple of times. I expected the Wizard to leave some sort of token in the Sony Reader Main Memory, but it does not.

The mount debug output is:

calibre 0.9.6 
Linux-3.1.0-1-amd64-x86_64-with-debian-wheezy-sid Linux
('Linux', '3.1.0-1-amd64', '#1 SMP Mon Jan 9 02:31:47 UTC 2012')
Python 2.7.3
Linux: ('debian', 'wheezy/sid', '')
USB devices on system:
[

(trackball, keyboard, printers deleted)

 ['0x54c',
  '0x31e',
  '0x31a',
  u'Sony',
  u'Sony Digital Book Reader',
  u'08004610016EF215']]
Looking for devices of type: MTP_DEVICE
No known MTP devices connected to system
 
Looking for devices...
	USBDevice(busnum=2, devnum=3, vendor_id=0x054c, product_id=0x031e, bcd=0x031a, manufacturer=Sony, product=Sony Digital Book Reader, serial=08004610016EF215)
		Detected possible device PRS505
 
Devices possibly connected: SONY Device Interface,  
Trying to open SONY Device Interface ... failed
Opening of the following devices failed
<calibre.devices.prs505.driver.PRS505 object at 0x23dca90>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "site-packages/calibre/devices/__init__.py", line 155, in debug
  File "site-packages/calibre/devices/usbms/device.py", line 862, in open
  File "site-packages/calibre/devices/usbms/device.py", line 617, in open_linux
DeviceError: Unable to detect the PRS505 disk drive. Either the device has already been ejected, or your kernel is exporting a deprecated version of SYSFS.

When I hotplug the Sony reader, the log (dmesg) on insertion is:

[633811.077398] usb 2-4.1: new full speed USB device number 3 using ohci_hcd
[633811.176394] usb 2-4.1: not running at top speed; connect to a high speed hub
[633811.200395] usb 2-4.1: New USB device found, idVendor=054c, idProduct=031e
[633811.200408] usb 2-4.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[633811.200418] usb 2-4.1: Product: Sony Digital Book Reader
[633811.200425] usb 2-4.1: Manufacturer: Sony
[633811.200430] usb 2-4.1: SerialNumber: (deleted)
[633811.206612] scsi140 : usb-storage 2-4.1:1.0
[633812.212415] scsi 140:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Sony     PRS-950          1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[633812.219487] scsi 140:0:0:1: Direct-Access     Sony     PRS-950 MS       1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[633812.226406] scsi 140:0:0:2: Direct-Access     Sony     PRS-950 SD       1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[633812.233395] scsi 140:0:0:3: Direct-Access     Sony     PRS-950 Launcher 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[633812.234878] sd 140:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg6 type 0
[633812.235497] sd 140:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg7 type 0
[633812.235855] sd 140:0:0:2: Attached scsi generic sg8 type 0
[633812.236743] sd 140:0:0:3: Attached scsi generic sg9 type 0
[633812.319376] sd 140:0:0:0: [sdf] Attached SCSI removable disk
[633812.341380] sd 140:0:0:3: [sdi] Attached SCSI removable disk
[633812.352372] sd 140:0:0:1: [sdg] Attached SCSI removable disk
[633812.364043] sd 140:0:0:2: [sdh] Attached SCSI removable disk

Any suggestions?

[kovidgoyal]

That error means that calibre was unable to find the device node in sysfs. That means either your kernel is not populating sysfs correctly or you set a kernel option to generate the deprecated old style sysfs tree.

[myudkowsky]

Thanks for the advice.

Since the sysfs was the standard Linux version and the Sony PRS-950 were both otherwise in decent shape, I decided that the problem was probably a stuck USB bus.

I confirmed this by trying to hotplug USB flash drives, which would not mount even though they were detected by udev.

I rebooted my Linux box. When I hotplugged the reader, udev correctly created a "READER" directory and mounted the reader; and Calibre recognized the device, which is now working properly.

Thank you.