π
2018-12-20 01:01
in Linux
Are you stuck with xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: Max number of devices this xHCI host supports is 32 ?
Wait, you're saying, but USB should support 127 devices (which include hub ports), why only 32?
Well, xhci/USB3 actually has an extra limit of 96 endpoints and each device uses 3 endpoints, which leaves you with only 32 devices. Yes, this is terrible, I agree. It's also not well documented and few people know how to get around it.
https://forums.intel.com/s/question/0D50P00004905stSAA/hardware-limitations-on-usb-endpoints-xhci?language=en_US contains more details, although apparently some further details are only available under NDA, but it looks like a mess.
Originally I found this page which explains how to connect USB3 hubs with USB2 cables to save a few USB IDs, but ultimately it does not contain the real solution which is:
If you need more than 32 devices, do not use (and disable) USB3/xhci
Yes, it is that sad, intel has actually designed a newer USB that is much much worse than the previous version as far as number of devices is concerned.
What wasn't clear to me is that xhci supports USB2 and USB1 devices, but no matter what devices you use (USB2 or USB1), you're still limited by that artificial 32 device limit that is due to the broken design of xhci as long as the xhci controller is handling those USB2/USB1 devices for you.
I've been told that some motherboards auto assign their USB ports to an ehci controller or xhci controller depending on what you plug into them. If so, this is the time to plug your USB3 hub with a USB2 cable to force the port to be routed to EHCI. This didn't work on the motherboard I tried on, however.
Now, the good news is that because motherboards try to work with older operating systems that may not support xhci, they usually provide an ehci controller too, the only issue is to get those USB ports assigned to the ehci controller(s).
How do you do this?
Turn off USB3 in the bios altogether (what I did). The supermicro motherboard I was using is old enough that it actually contains 2 ehci chips which then multiplied the number of devices you can plug in, gave me 8x more devices than when I had USB3 enabled (ehci can do close to 128 instead of 32 and 2 controllers instead of 1).
remove/blacklist the linux xhci driver modules. If the motherboard auto assigns xhci/ehci depending on what driver is loaded, this should work
If the motherboard only comes with an xhci controller, you are up a creek without a paddle, but you can still get an external USB2 PCI(-e) card: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002RL8V7E "PCIe USB 2.0 Card - PCI-E USB 2.0 Card" actually comes with 2 USB1 controllers and one USB2 controller. It's not very clear how they are assigned (maybe dynamically depending on what is plugged into the ports). In either case the USB1 and USB2 have the high device limit you're looking for, but if somehow you're needing lots of devices (past 128), you may be able to get more out of the USB1.1 controllers (although at USB1 speeds, so that's probably not what you want). This is how that external card looks like
06:04.0 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xx/62xx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 62)
06:04.1 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xx/62xx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 62)
06:04.2 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 65)
Now, I found another interesting way to do this, on some motherboards you can reroute the USB ports to the USB2 chipset without changing the bios. See https://www.systutorials.com/241533/how-to-force-a-usb-3-0-port-to-work-in-usb-2-0-mode-in-linux
In the case of my supermicro board, I didn't look at how the two EHCI (USB2) controllers were routed, but it had extra USB cables on the motherboard, so I bought USB headers installed them on the front, and moved some USB devices to them: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NMBXUXI .
Note that you likely don't want to buy a USB-3 PCI(-e) card like https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FPIMICA because it creates a new root hub but only allows a measly extra 30-ish devices to be added (vs 120+ with the USB2 card mentioned above).
Big thanks to
Alan Stern who helped me figure this out in https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-usb/msg175224.html
Ruchira Ravoori from fuchsia kernel team who explained things to me further and pointed me to https://forums.intel.com/s/question/0D50P00004905stSAA/hardware-limitations-on-usb-endpoints-xhci?language=en_US |
