[gentoo-user] Intermittent USB device failures

["Mike Edenfield" <kutulu@kutulu.org>]

I've recently taken an old Windows XP system and rebuilt it to run Gentoo.
Since then, I've been having issues using any type of USB input device
(which is particularly bad, since it has no PS/2 input ports).

After some indeterminate period of time, the input device simply stops
responding. Typically, I can use the console for a few days at a time before
the keyboard dies, but if I load up a GUI and start using the mouse it takes
less than a few hours. I'm fairly sure this problem is USB-related, since I
believe I've eliminated everything downstream of that: I've tried using both
evdev and legacy mouse and keyboard drivers in both the kernel and X and all
of them work the same way. evtest shows no activity from the device once it
breaks, nor do the legacy /dev driver files. 

Most notably, removing and re-plugging the device doesn't register as a
device attachment. If, for example, I take a working USB mouse and swap USB
ports, I get this:

[ 1219.418050] usb 2-8: USB disconnect, device number 3
[ 1225.258011] usb 2-7: new low-speed USB device number 4 using ohci-pci
[ 1225.449627] usb 2-7: New USB device found, idVendor=046d, idProduct=c044
[ 1225.449946] usb 2-7: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2,
SerialNumber=0
[ 1225.450240] usb 2-7: Product: USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse
[ 1225.450740] usb 2-7: Manufacturer: Logitech
[ 1225.464165] input: Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse as
/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0b.0/usb2/2-7/2-7:1.0/input/input6
[ 1225.464666] hid-generic 0003:046D:C044.0003: input,hidraw1: USB HID v1.10
Mouse [Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse] on usb-0000:00:0b.0-7/input0

If I do the same thing after the device has stopped functioning, I get the
disconnect message but that's it:

[199729.451060] i2c i2c-3: sendbytes: NAK bailout.
[199733.215303] usb 2-7: USB disconnect, device number 4
[199814.495204] type=1006 audit(1394381639.494:3): pid=5861 uid=0 old
auid=4294967295 new auid=1000 old ses=4294967295 new ses=2 res=1

(the i2c errors, I believe, are unrelated; they seem to be caused by the
nouveau driver I'm using).

I've gone through at least 6 different kernel versions and they all exhibit
this same behavior. At this point I'm not even sure what else I can do to
troubleshoot this problem, so any advice would be appreciated!

Thanks,

--Mike