lk2.4 problems with secure USB

From: Daniel Miller (dan_at_invalid.com)
Date: 05/28/04 

Date: 27 May 2004 18:08:53 -0500

We are developing a USB tester, running on Linux 2.4.21. We recently have
received some 'secure USB' devices, which do some quirky things with
partition tables and the internal controller. Windows XP can read these
devices with no problem. Linux 2.4, however, is completely baffled...
/proc/partitions shows, for example, the following:

   8 0 63360 sda 2971 186309 378560 176870 0 0 0 0 0 87160 176870
   8 1 272218546 sda1 984 61912 125792 22070 0 0 0 0 0 10680 22070
   8 2 269488144 sda2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
   8 3 699181456 sda3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
   8 4 10668 sda4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

The size of the main drive is more-or-less correct, but you can see that
the sizes of the partitions are thousands of times larger than the total
device. Also, I used fdisk to look at the partitions, and it also shows
complete garbage.

In doing some research, I've found that if I read sector 0 on these
devices, I don't get the MBR (with the partition tables in it), but rather
I get the first boot sector, and the partition-table offsets into that
sector (446, etc) are just pointing to text messages.

What can I do to resolve this issue??

If I switch to a kernel 2.6 distribution, is it going to understand these
secure devices better?? If not, what can I do to get correct partition
data from these devices?? If Windows can do it, it must be a solvable
problem, but I don't know enough so far to manage it...

            Dan Miller

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