iAudio and Debian

[Jim McCloskey <mcclosk@ucsc.edu>]

I recently bought an iAudio M5 digital audio player---because of the
range of file-formats it supports and because the manufucterer claims
that it works fine under Linux. In fact, Google reveals scores of
reports of these players `just working' under Linux.

Not for me, though. It is supposed to be simply a USB Mass storage
device. What I thought would happen was that when I plugged it in to
the USB port, it would be detected, the necessary modules loaded
(usb_core, usb_storage, sd_mod and so on) and udev would then create
/dev/sda[1,2 ...n] or whatever.

All of this works fine with a SONY camera and with my Sandisk memory
disks. When I plug one of those in, I get:

  kernel: usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
  kernel: SCSI subsystem initialized
  kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
  kernel: scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
  kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
  kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered.
  kernel:   Vendor: SanDisk   Model: Cruzer Micro      Rev: 0.2
  kernel:   Type:   Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
  kernel: SCSI device sda: 2001888 512-byte hdwr sectors (1025 MB)
  kernel: sda: Write Protect is off
  kernel: SCSI device sda: 2001888 512-byte hdwr sectors (1025 MB)
  kernel: sda: Write Protect is off
  kernel:  sda: sda1
  kernel: Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0

And I can access the thing though /dev/sda1 and its symlinks.

But when I plug in the iAudio player, all that happens is:

  kernel: usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5

That is, the player is detected, but the SCSI subsytem is not
initialized, the thing is not recognized as a Mass Storage device, the
necessary modules are not loaded, and the appropriate device node is
not created. It's completely inaccessible.

This is a hand-compiled kernel 2.16.3. Udev is version .081 from
testing.

What is it about the iAudio that makes it not work, when the sandisks
and the camera work perfectly? Is there some funky kernel config
option that I don't know about but which is necessary? Is there anyone
who has one of these working?

I'd be very grateful for any pointers or ideas,

Jim