dmesg/syslog spam for usb device (carl9170 wifi-dongle, not related to driver, though)

Question

So, I'm getting spammed hardcorely by my kernel (note that this is the log for only 1 second):

Feb  9 00:35:05 vanaheimr kernel: [26761.862104] usb 1-4: link qh0-00ff/f529e540 start 0 [2/0 us]
Feb  9 00:35:05 vanaheimr kernel: [26761.862509] usb 1-4: unlink qh0-00ff/f529e540 start 0 [2/0 us]
Feb  9 00:35:05 vanaheimr kernel: [26761.957174] usb 1-4: link qh0-00ff/f529e540 start 0 [2/0 us]
Feb  9 00:35:05 vanaheimr kernel: [26761.957514] usb 1-4: unlink qh0-00ff/f529e540 start 0 [2/0 us]
Feb  9 00:35:05 vanaheimr kernel: [26762.123130] usb 1-4: link qh0-00ff/f529e540 start 0 [2/0 us]
Feb  9 00:35:05 vanaheimr kernel: [26762.123412] usb 1-4: unlink qh0-00ff/f529e540 start 0 [2/0 us]
Feb  9 00:35:05 vanaheimr kernel: [26762.198121] usb 1-4: link qh0-00ff/f529e540 start 0 [2/0 us]
Feb  9 00:35:05 vanaheimr kernel: [26762.198419] usb 1-4: unlink qh0-00ff/f529e540 start 0 [2/0 us]
Feb  9 00:35:05 vanaheimr kernel: [26762.318154] usb 1-4: link qh0-00ff/f529e540 start 0 [2/0 us]
Feb  9 00:35:05 vanaheimr kernel: [26762.318432] usb 1-4: unlink qh0-00ff/f529e540 start 0 [2/0 us]
Feb  9 00:35:05 vanaheimr kernel: [26762.418130] usb 1-4: link qh0-00ff/f529e540 start 0 [2/0 us]
Feb  9 00:35:05 vanaheimr kernel: [26762.418446] usb 1-4: unlink qh0-00ff/f529e540 start 0 [2/0 us]

This repeats endlessly ever since I boot into my Gentoo Linux computer. And usb 1-4 is the only device which produces it (this would be my wifi-dongle, a carl9170-based TP-Link TL-WN821N device). To be honest, I have no idea on what could be producing the errors: I've always had problems with getting it to work previously in Gentoo, Ubuntu, Arch, and Debian, but I never had this kind of thing going on.

Also, I have this feeling that this may be related to the device suddenly turning unresponsive (or at least starting to drop my packets all of sudden, while still being connected to the router).

Any help will be appreciated,

Julian.

Answer 1

Those are not errors, they are messages which indicate that the device is being activated to perform an operation. They are just debug messages, and so disabling USB_DEBUG as already stated will stop them from showing up without hindering the performance of the device in any way.

See http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/USB_DEBUG.html for more information on what USB_DEBUG does.

Answer 2

What about disabling USB_DEBUG in kernel config? At least this must stop the spam (but not affect the source) and save you a couple of bytes in syslog.