Please read post #9. This doesn't feel like "unexpected success". So this report doesn't add much to the progress of the thread's topic

/j

I took my N900 with me to my skying holiday as an "offload device" for my photos, when the card of my camera would fill up.

This is the first time where I really "stressed out" USB host-mode.

The first day, I had around 100 Megs of photos to transfer (using gphoto), and midway through the transfer, the phone suddenly became very slow, until the transfer broke up. I rebooted, and continued (with a USB card reader that I had with me, fortunately).

Eventually, the same thing happened (slower, and slower transfer). Eventually, the light on the card reader went off, just as if VBUS power had been cut (but this was not the case).

After quitting and relaunching h-e-n, and removing zero-sized files, I could finish the copy.

The other days, I already started with the card reader, but same thing kept happening, as long as there was a big enough amount of photos.

It looks as if there might be some resource (memory buffer?) starvation issue. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Alain

A known flaw/bug of maemo. Probably related to swap usage. You run into it as well when copying from uSD to eMMC, no matter if via cp in xterm or via USB mass storage mode and desktop PC.
Somebody suggested rsync with bandwidth limit, another suggestion is to reduce swappiness (see swapolube ?)

Anyway I am glad to say it's for sure unrelated to h-e-n

cheers
jOERG

What does "unable to connect, no file system available" mean? I've managed to succesfully mount a card reader once but it didn't stay connected for long. Now i just get that message. Whats the deal my friends?

Installed swappolube, and now was able to copy all 1.3 Gigs off the camera without any slowdown or interruption.

Thanks for the hint,

Alain

Will this adapter serve?

http://www.amazon.de/Adapter-USB-fem...4535639&sr=8-7

Electrically yes.
Mechanically - it's discouraged to use this type of rigid adapters. Very risky for your N900's USB receptacle. You heard they come off easily, didn't you?

/j

For me the wired stuff appears more dangerous. But I guess it depends on the user. Sitting on the charger cable and then making rapid movements for instance

Indeed, it has been mentioned that these rigid adapters act as a lever, such that the weight of the unit itself, plus any USB stick plugged in there would be enough to tear the N900's USB port from the board without even needing a kick or a "sudden movement".

However... is this actually true? Has anybody used such adapters and can contribute any "war stories"?

Because they do look convenient: a lot less cabling lying around on the desk, and lots less to take with you when traveling.

Maybe a good compromise would be a Micro-USB-to-A adapter which has a short (just 2-3 centimenters) length of flexible cable between both ends. That would be almost as compact as this one, yet still flexible enough to cancel that evil USB-Port eating leverage.

Does anybody know whether such a beast exist, and, if so, where to find it?

check the threads related to USB. There are all sorts of adapters mentioned, also a short CA-101.
And then there's the N8 OTG adapter that you can file to shape.
If somebody would post a collection of stable links to all the posts about adapters, that would probably be appreciated by a lot of users.
/j