Posted by hh on 2018-10-18 17:04

I’m not on a Mac (on Linux); I’ve seen that a few times.

Mostly it’s because you have an OpenOCD zombie process hanging around (kill process, or reboot machine)

Sometimes it’s because your OS has lost the plot in regard to USB devices (ie: unplug ST-Link, re-plug)

The other day, it was driving me nuts and I realised that my USB hub had crashed (!); unplugged the hub and re-plugged and everything was good again.

Posted by pagliere on 2018-10-18 19:58

Thanks, hh. I guess I didn’t mention the many ... many times I have unplugged and replugged the USB cable, the many times I’ve restarted SW4STM32, the many times I’ve rebooted the Mac.

I’ve looked over ps output (and used Mac’s Activity Monitor) to see what process might be zombied that I might kill .... I’ve looked for obvious ones, but really I don’t know what an OpenOCD process might actually be called in the ps output. Any hints there would be helpful. Then again, you’d think reboots would kill zombies.

In any case, no luck yet.

Posted by hh on 2018-10-19 03:37

Well, it’s good to get the obvious stuff out of the way first.
Yes, a reboot would solve the zombie process thing.

I take it you have checked the device is actually available on USB? On Linux I would use the ‘lsusb’ command, I think on MacOS you’d have to use the System Profiler tool.
If you can’t see it you are back to cables and connectors (or a dead ST-Link)

If that works, next step is try a tool that doesn’t use OpenOCD - eg: the STMCubeProgrammer tool which will try and discover the device and, very usefully, upgrade the software in the ST-Link interface itself (there’s a little STM32 that does the USB to ST-Link task separate to the STM32H743ZI on your Nucleo board.

Posted by pagliere on 2018-10-19 22:15

hh,
Thanks once again.
I got the STM32CubeProgrammer ...

I can tell you that
- I know the USB port itself works because I can plug in my Arduino (with a non micro USB cable) and it shows up under the Mac’s System Profiler. The NUCLEO does not with its micro USB cable.
- Using any of four different USB to Micro USB cables, the NUCLEO board does not show up. (Hard to imagine all four cables are bad)
- Using the STM32CubeProgrammer, no ST-LINK configuration even shows up … I take that to mean that either the cable is bad or somehow the NUCLEO’s own ST-LINK is somehow dead as you mentioned.

However, I don’t really know what it means for the ST-LINK on the NUCLEO to be “dead” ... or how to revive it, if indeed it is, if STM32CubeProgrammer doesn’t even recognize it.

Posted by hh on 2018-10-20 06:11

I guess it’s not impossible for your four cables to be bad, but it is unlikely; if they work with some other peripheral then it’s pretty much looking like your NUCLEO...

Looking at the data sheet for your board, it doesn’t appear there are jumpers that could be causing this.

I would guess that the two most likely things are either you cracked the tracks on the USB connector on the NUCLEO (just physical wear and tear) _or_ you zapped it somehow (ESD)
The software wouldn’t just die, and anyway as I mentioned the micro that does the ST-Link isn’t the STM32H743 that you are programming.

Can’t do much about ESD damage but the cracked tracks would be discoverable and repairable if you have a multimeter and a fine soldering iron... but personally I’d triple check maybe with a fifth cable and another computer (eg: linux box with lsusb) that you’re sure it’s not something simple before going at it with the tools...