Ubuntu – My card reader doesn’t show up at all, but previously did in 10.10

10.10card-reader

I bought a pin-based-USB powered internal media card reader and it worked perfectly when I first installed Ubuntu 10.10 a month ago. I used it a few times since and today I booted up the computer and it's not working.

Here's how it used to work:

  • In nautilus->computer, 5 "drives" would display even when no card was inserted.
  • One for each slot (SD, XD, CF/MS, etc).
  • Opening one w/o a card would initiate a "Please insert card." dialog.
  • Inserting a card would automatically open nautilus.

Now:

  • No drives display at all whether cards are inserted or not.

  • lsusb lists the following (which seems to indicate that it's not being detected)

    Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub  
Bus 007 Device 002: ID 046d:c52e Logitech, Inc.   (my keyboard/mouse)
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub  
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub  
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)  
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub  
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub  
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub  
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub  
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

  • (Side note: all of my USB ports are 2.0 + 1 USB port which is 3.0, why does everything say 1.1/2.0?)

I tried using ubuntu-bug but for USB devices it expects you to be able to remove and insert them while the computer is running (obviously this is something you probably shouldn't be doing when you're dealing with devices plugged straight into the USB pins).

Best Answer

It's a hardware error, either the device is broken or the connector has come out from inside your computer.

When the device doesn't appear in lsusb then you're in serious trouble because that means the most basic detection has failed and it's rarely a software issue. To double check that it's not a software issue use a liveCD and boot from that, test if it works there.

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