HOWTO: Find Out if Linux Recognizes my USB Device.
First understand that ‘recognize’ is different from ’supports’. Your GNU/Linux box may recognize your USB device, but that doesn’t mean it has the drivers to run it.
But don’t despair, recognizing a device is the first step to determining whether you can use said device.
Plug the device in and then in a terminal window, type:
lsusb
The terminal window should respond with a list of all detected USB devices. When I do this on my laptop with my cheapo $10 keychain digital camera plugged in I see:
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 2770:9120 NHJ, Ltd Che-ez! Snap / iClick Tiny VGA Digital Camera
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 04fc:0003 Sunplus Technology Co., Ltd CM1092 Optical Scroller Mouse
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
As you can see, both my USB mouse and cheap-o digital camera are listed. That means Linux recognizes them and may be able to deal with them as is. In my case, both my mouse and camera are usable without any further work on my part.
Damn, I could have used this information yesterday trying to diagnose a bad USB hdd enclosure problem. Good to know, Thanks.
Damn! If only we had launched one day earlier!
Everyone else who reads this, click on Craig’s name to get to his blog. Then read the post on adopting a penguin. Then adopt one. Do it.
You know you wanna…
wow … that was a really good piece of information …
only that I found it a bit too late … anyways please keep up the good work …
Holy shit ! Didn’t think it was THAT easy. I thought I had to look for some type of application to tell me what USB devices are hooked up to my PC.
lsusb
I’ll remember that for the rest of my life. Thank you for sharing with us.
Thanks, this is great news but now how do I translate this information into something like: mount -t usbfs /dev??? /mnt/usb1
??
thanks,
Ray
That’s a very good piece of info.
But what if the machine DOESN’T list the device?
I replaced my printer with a new one, but the new one is not recognised. What do i do???