[Wlug] Missing /dev files

[Chuck Noyes]

On Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:25:28 -0400
Mike Frysinger <vapier at gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Sunday 30 March 2008, Chuck Noyes wrote:
> > I had mounted an external usb drive /dev/sdb2 onto /media/sdb2 and
> > was coping several mega-bytes of files to it when I got some I/O
> > errors. Then I noticed that all of my /dev/sdb* files were missing
> > from /dev.
> >
> > When I do an ls -al /dev, all the files are there except the sdb
> > files.
> >
> > How can I get these back? I'm running Ubuntu 'gutsy'
> > 2.6.20-16-generic.
> 
> the device nodes only exist as the kernel thinks the device exists.
> if you got I/O errors and then the device nodes disappeared, the
> kernel probably detached the device.  so even if you made the device
> nodes by hand, it wouldnt matter as the kernel still wouldnt think
> the device was attached. review your `dmesg` and if need be,
> unplug/plug in the USB device. -mike

dmesg shows many entries like this:

new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 10
usb 5-3: device descriptor read/8, error -110
usb 5-3: device descriptor read/8, error -110

Googling this message doesn't seem to provide much help.

I have unpluged the device and even rebooted the computer. However,
after a reboot, the /dev/sdb* files are still missing.

-- 
-Chuck