Periodically whilst in the field, USB devices would stop being detected by the system. This was bad because we relied upon it for backup.
Fortunately, the failure mode wasn't that devices wouldn't show up, but that the whole USB bus would no longer be detected by the system - which at least means we can detect the problem.
There was no solution for this as far as I could tell, but what I ended up doing was writing a script that just checked for the existence of /dev/bus/usb (I think) and if it didn't exist, telling the user that they needed to turn off the power, unplug the USB OTG cable, and then turn the server back on again.
I thought that it might've been a charge buildup issue / static electricity issue, but I can't know for sure.
Periodically whilst in the field, USB devices would stop being detected by the system. This was bad because we relied upon it for backup.
Fortunately, the failure mode wasn't that devices wouldn't show up, but that the whole USB bus would no longer be detected by the system - which at least means we can detect the problem.
There was no solution for this as far as I could tell, but what I ended up doing was writing a script that just checked for the existence of
/dev/bus/usb(I think) and if it didn't exist, telling the user that they needed to turn off the power, unplug the USB OTG cable, and then turn the server back on again.I thought that it might've been a charge buildup issue / static electricity issue, but I can't know for sure.