Dump1090 not seeing data until after USB is unplugged

Hoping someone has run into this…

I have a Debian box running dump1090-mutability and piaware. It is running inside VMWare I have noticed that on reboot everything is starting up but no data comes in. Stats show feeder check in as being current, but Data Feed shows xx minutes ago. As far as I know this will never kick back in on it’s own. All I need to do is walk over to the box, unplug the USB dongle (RTL2832 dongle) and plug it back in. I did blacklist it so it isn’t being seen as a DVB-T dongle. I

Any thoughts as to why this is happening? Or a way to script a usb reset that would possibly make the USB stick reinitialize and recognize correctly something like 30 seconds after boot? Since this is all that is running on this box I really don’t expect to have to reboot it all too often, but we do lose power a few times a year.

I have seen odd interactions with USB while running in a VM (in one case, it was mysteriously dropping exactly 1/15th of all data…)
It’s probably worth checking what (if anything) dump1090 logs when it starts up after reboot.

I was trying to earlier but was remoted into a machine at home and then SSH into the piaware box. Below is the relevant part. Starting with when it first launched after the reboot. When it shows it lost the connection to the device is when I disconnected the dongle, followed by it reconnecting. As soon as it connected data was flowing again. Looks like it connects but just doesn’t pass data…

What I could gather from the “cb transfer status:5” pointed to a few possibilites:
1 - Low power on the USB port - possible. It’s in one of 5 or 6 ports on the back of the machine. Two other ports are in use by a usb-ethernet dongle and one by an Arduino. Ethernet one has been solid, arduino is not really in use yet but no connection issues in testing. All 3 on different VM’s, two are very similar installs of Debian 8.
2 - Bad dongle - as much as it works fine once it is running, definitely a possibility.
3 - Flaky USB port - also can’t rule it out. Recently something fell landing on the antenna wire from this, pulling down on the dongle and adding load to the port… I -think- it was already happening before then though.

Luckily I have two extra dongles, so easy enough to swap that out. And a powered USB hub that would eliminate the possibility of the power issue. I had also been thinking that since the port/dongle doesn’t power down on reboot maybe it wasn’t getting a true clean start - but it comes back to life if I just remove it from the guest configuration in VSphere and re-add it. I am leaning more towards a flaky dongle/port - or as you mentioned, just USB and virtualization not playing well together… Will have to take some time this weekend and play around with combinations and see if it stops happening

Worst case, if it continues, I can usually remote in from anywhere and remove/re-add the dongle in VMWare.

Thu Oct 8 18:37:17 2015 EDT dump1090-mutability v1.15~dev starting up.
Using sample converter: UC8, integer/table path
Found 1 device(s):
0: Generic, RTL2832U, SN: 77771111153705700 (currently selected)
Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner
Using automatic gain control.
Gain reported by device: 0.00 dB
cb transfer status: 5, canceling…
cb transfer status: 5, canceling…

(repeated a dozen or so times…)

cb transfer status: 5, canceling…
Thu Oct 8 18:40:57 2015 EDT Warning: lost the connection to the RTLSDR device.
Thu Oct 8 18:41:02 2015 EDT Trying to reconnect to the RTLSDR device…
No supported RTLSDR devices found.
Thu Oct 8 18:41:07 2015 EDT Trying to reconnect to the RTLSDR device…
No supported RTLSDR devices found.
Thu Oct 8 18:41:12 2015 EDT Trying to reconnect to the RTLSDR device…
No supported RTLSDR devices found.
Thu Oct 8 18:41:17 2015 EDT Trying to reconnect to the RTLSDR device…
No supported RTLSDR devices found.
Thu Oct 8 18:41:22 2015 EDT Trying to reconnect to the RTLSDR device…
No supported RTLSDR devices found.
Thu Oct 8 18:41:27 2015 EDT Trying to reconnect to the RTLSDR device…
Found 1 device(s):
0: Generic, RTL2832U, SN: 77771111153705700 (currently selected)
Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner
Using automatic gain control.
Gain reported by device: 0.00 dB