SD card reads corrupted (JMicron card reader)

[Mikko Vinni <mmvinni@yahoo.com>]

Hi,

I have an HP Pavilion dv5 laptop, which has an integrated memory card reader
(labeled with "SD*MS/Pro*MMC*XD) and appearing with lspci as:

0a:00.1 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. SD/MMC Host Controller
0a:00.2 SD Host controller: JMicron Technology Corp. Standard SD Host Controller
0a:00.3 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. MS Host Controller
0a:00.4 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. xD Host Controller

I have mainly used a 1 GB SD card from puremedia, but I have seen the problem
with another card as well. Basically, if I try to read image files from the card 
using the
card reader, the images come out corrupted (having the card inside a Canon Ixus 
camera and reading the images via a USB cable works).

The logs don't seem to contain anything suspicious:

[ 1262.957504] sdhci: Secure Digital Host Controller Interface driver
[ 1262.957511] sdhci: Copyright(c) Pierre Ossman
[ 1262.962070] sdhci-pci 0000:0a:00.1: SDHCI controller found [197b:2382] (rev 
0)
[ 1262.962105] sdhci-pci 0000:0a:00.1: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 
18
[ 1262.962275] sdhci-pci 0000:0a:00.1: setting latency timer to 64
[ 1262.963721] Registered led device: mmc0::
[ 1262.964075] mmc0: SDHCI controller on PCI [0000:0a:00.1] using DMA
[ 1262.964110] sdhci-pci 0000:0a:00.2: SDHCI controller found [197b:2381] (rev 
0)
[ 1262.964137] sdhci-pci 0000:0a:00.2: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 
18
[ 1262.964158] sdhci-pci 0000:0a:00.2: Refusing to bind to secondary interface.
[ 1262.964170] sdhci-pci 0000:0a:00.2: PCI INT A disabled
[ 1266.834763] mmc0: new SD card at address 1234
[ 1266.924222] mmcblk0: mmc0:1234 SD01G 972 MiB 
[ 1266.925586]  mmcblk0: p1
[ 2575.746579] mmc0: card 1234 removed
[ 3544.629621] loop: module loaded
[ 4747.394461] mmc0: new SD card at address 1234
[ 4747.394793] mmcblk0: mmc0:1234 SD01G 972 MiB 
[ 4747.396090]  mmcblk0: p1
[ 5075.523021] mmc0: card 1234 removed

I transferred some text files to the card and back to see if there's some 
regularity
in the corruption, but it varies. For example, of 100 files of varying sizes 
(largest 98KB),
at one point 11 files might be corrupted, and after umount/mount maybe 6.

I copied the memory card file system to a file; loop mounting that file system
gives one stable (but corrupted) view of the files, so I suppose it's not a file
system (vfat) issue, but something with the hardware.

Currently I am using a custom 2.6.37 kernel (on 64 bit Arch Linux up to date), 
but
I have seen corrupted images coming from the card reader on several previous
kernels as well.

Is there something I could test or some specific information I should provide?

Here is one example of the corruption I am talking about:
- the source file 49.txt consists of lines
0049-0001
0049-0002
0049-0003
...
0049-2399
0049-2400
0049-2401

The file is exactly 24010 bytes long.

After transferring that file to the SD card and back (via the card reader) and 
taking a diff, the differences are:

@@ -407,1995 +407,1992 @@
 0049-0407
 0049-0408
 0049-0409
-0049-0410
-0049-0411
-0049-0412
... (all lines in between removed; each line is 10 bytes)
-0049-2399
-0049-2400
-0049-2401
+0049-00049-0001
+0049-0002
+0049-0003
... (all lines in between added)
+0049-0408
+0049-0409
+0049-00049-0001
+0049-0002
+0049-0003
...
+0049-0408
+0049-0409
+0049-00049-0001
+0049-0002
+0049-0003
...
+0049-0407
+0049-0408
+0049-0409
+0049-00049-0001
+0049-0002
+0049-0003
...
+0049-0407
+0049-0408
+0049-0409
+0049-00049-0001
+0049-0002
+0049-0003
...
+0049-0351
+0049-0352
+0049-0353

Also the corrupted file is exactly 24010 bytes long. In this case there seems
to be a chunk of 4096 bytes repeating. I'm in no way expert, but if somebody
thinks it's good to see if the other test files also contain similar chunks of 
4096
bytes, I can go through them or post them here.


Any help would be appreciated.

Mikko