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I have a libusb-based program that can't open USB devices on a freshly installed Ubuntu because it lacks permissions.

This solution will probably work for me, but it requires manually specifying each and every device - and I have quite a few. So I tried this (in a file /etc/udev/rules.d/41-cvs-permissions.rules):

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", MODE:="0666"

I've omitted VID and PID, hoping that it will simply apply the rule to ALL devices. It definitely has some effect, but the effect is rather weird: instead of detecting 5 devices that it can't open, libusb only detects 2 now - both are USB host controllers, not actual devices.

How to achieve what I want?

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  • 2
    IMHO udev is frustratingly opaque and poorly documented: I think you may need to use attribute SUBSYSTEMS (plural) rather than SUBSYSTEM (singular). Someone might be able to give a better analysis if you edit your question to include the output of udevadm info --attribute-walk /dev/xxx where /dev/xxx is the actual devpath of your device.
    – steeldriver
    Mar 12, 2015 at 12:15
  • @steeldriver: I don't see my device having a /dev/ entry, so I don't know how to invoke udevadm on it. All I have is bus, dev. number, VID and PID as shown by lsusb (and name).
    – Violet Giraffe
    Mar 12, 2015 at 12:55
  • @steeldriver: SUBSYSTEMS instead of SUBSYSTEM seems to make no difference at all.
    – Violet Giraffe
    Mar 12, 2015 at 13:00

3 Answers 3

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The way I deal with USB devices is to give a specific group access to all of them.

As root:

echo 'SUBSYSTEM=="usb", MODE="0660", GROUP="plugdev"' > /etc/udev/rules.d/00-usb-permissions.rules
udevadm control --reload-rules

Essentially what this does is grant read and write access for any usb device to members of the plugdev group.

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  • I'll have to find out what a group is, but thanks :)
    – Violet Giraffe
    Jun 30, 2017 at 8:11
  • Every linux user is a member of at least one, and possibly more groups. So if for instance your username was violetg you could do: sudo usermod -a -G plugdev violetg to add yourself to the plugdev group, which would in turn give you access to usb devices (after logging out and back in again).
    – Justin Buser
    Jul 13, 2017 at 21:44
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I agree that making rule match using VID/PID is not a definite solution. But you can much multiple devices in same rule without targeting blindly all USB devices the way you did. Example using DRIVER name (usb-storage, usbhid,..) or KERNEL name (tty*, sd*,..) even using minimal regex (sd[a-z][0-9]*, usb*).

You should look for similarities in their attributes.

  1. Remove all those devices

  2. Save the current list of devices in /dev

    ls /dev > /tmp/dev_list0.txt

  3. Plug one of the target devices

  4. Save the list of devices in another file

    ls /dev > /tmp/dev_list.txt

  5. Compare files, > added device, < removed device

    $ colordiff /tmp/dev_list0.txt /tmp/dev_list.txt
85a86,87
> sdc
> serial
89a92,93
> sg4
> sg5
93a98
> sr1
194a200,201
> ttyUSB0
> ttyUSB1

    This is a 3G modem.

  6. Check the attribute for all interfaces you need, example:

    udevadm info --attribute-walk --name=/dev/ttyUSB0

Do the same for all devices you want. If you can't figure out how, please upload their udevadm info --attribute-walk --name=... output and link them to your question.

Note that, not all USB devices create a node in /dev. Some you have look for them in SYSFS tree /sys. Then check their attributes using --path

udevadm info --attribute-walk --path=...

Using same steps as above you can check which device nodes created by monitoring udev events:

udevadm monitor
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1

Here's the easiest solution to unlock access to your hardware:

sudo chmod -R 777 /dev/bus/usb/

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