USB(4)

USB(4) | Device Drivers Manual | USB(4)

# NAME

`usb` —
Universal Serial Bus driver

# SYNOPSIS

`ehci* at cardbus? function ?`
`ehci* at pci? dev ? function ?`
`ohci* at cardbus? function ?`
`ohci* at pci? dev ? function ?`
`xhci* at pci? dev ? function ?`
`slhci* at isa? port ? irq ?`
`slhci* at pcmcia? function ?`
`uhci* at cardbus? function ?`
`uhci* at pci? dev ? function ?`
`usb* at ehci?`
`usb* at ohci?`
`usb* at uhci?`
`usb* at slhci?`
`uhub* at usb?`
`uhub* at uhub? port ? configuration ? interface ? vendor ? product ? release ?`
`XX* at uhub? port ? configuration ? interface ? vendor ? product ? release ?`

`options USBVERBOSE`

`#include <dev/usb/usb.h>`
`#include <dev/usb/usbhid.h>`

# DESCRIPTION

NetBSD provides machine-independent bus support and drivers for USB devices.

The NetBSD `usb` driver has three layers (like scsi(4) and pcmcia(4)): the controller, the bus, and the device layer. The controller attaches to a physical bus (like pci(4)). The USB bus attaches to the controller and the root hub attaches to the bus. Further devices, which may include further hubs, attach to other hubs. The attachment forms the same tree structure as the physical USB device tree. For each USB device there may be additional drivers attached to it.

The `uhub` device controls USB hubs and must always be present since there is at least a root hub in any USB system.

NetBSD supports the following machine-independent USB drivers:

## Storage devices

umass(4)
  USB Mass Storage Devices, e.g., external disk drives

## Wired network interfaces

aue(4)
  ADMtek AN986/ADM8511 Pegasus family 10/100 USB Ethernet device
axe(4)
  ASIX Electronics AX88172/AX88178/AX88772 10/100/Gigabit USB Ethernet device
axen(4)
  ASIX Electronics AX88178a/AX88179 10/100/Gigabit USB Ethernet device
cdce(4)
  USB Communication Device Class Ethernet device
cue(4)
  CATC USB-EL1201A USB Ethernet device
kue(4)
  Kawasaki LSI KL5KUSB101B USB Ethernet device
mos(4)
  MosChip MCS7730/7830/7832 10/100 USB Ethernet device
mue(4)
  Microchip LAN75xx/LAN78xx 10/100/Gigabit USB Ethernet device
udav(4)
  Davicom DM9601 10/100 USB Ethernet device
ure(4)
  Realtek RTL8152/RTL8153 10/100/Gigabit USB Ethernet device
url(4)
  Realtek RTL8150L 10/100 USB Ethernet device
urndis(4)
  USB Remote NDIS Ethernet device
usmsc(4)
  SMSC LAN95xx 10/100 USB Ethernet device

## Wireless network interfaces

atu(4)
  Atmel AT76C50x IEEE 802.11b wireless network device
ral(4)
  Ralink Technology USB IEEE 802.11b/g wireless network device
rum(4)
  Ralink Technology USB IEEE 802.11a/b/g wireless network device
run(4)
  Ralink Technology USB IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n wireless network device
ubt(4)
  USB Bluetooth dongles
upgt(4)
  Conexant/Intersil PrismGT SoftMAC USB 802.11b/g wireless network device
urtwn(4)
  Realtek RTL8188CU/RTL8192CU USB IEEE 802.11b/g/n wireless network device
zyd(4)
  ZyDAS ZD1211/ZD1211B USB IEEE 802.11b/g wireless network device

## Serial and parallel interfaces

uark(4)
  Arkmicro Technologies ARK3116 based USB serial adapters
ubsa(4)
  Belkin USB serial adapter
uchcom(4)
  WinChipHead CH341/340 based USB serial adapter
ucom(4)
  USB tty support
ucycom(4)
  Cypress microcontroller based USB serial adapter
uftdi(4)
  FT8U100AX USB serial adapter
ugensa(4)
  USB generic serial adapter
uipaq(4)
  iPAQ USB units
ukyopon(4)
  USB Kyocera AIR-EDGE PHONE device
ulpt(4)
  USB printer support
umct(4)
  MCT USB-RS232 USB serial adapter
umodem(4)
  USB modem support
uplcom(4)
  Prolific PL-2303 USB serial adapter
uslsa(4)
  Silicon Laboratories CP2101/CP2102 based USB serial adapter
uvisor(4)
  USB Handspring Visor
uvscom(4)
  SUNTAC Slipper U VS-10U USB serial adapter
uxrcom(4)
  Exar XR21V141x USB serial adapter

## Cellular WAN interfaces

u3g(4)
  USB 3G modems
uhmodem(4)
  Huawei 3G wireless modems
uhso(4)
  Option N.V. Wireless WAN modems
umb(4)
  USB Mobile Broadband Interface Model (MBIM) devices

## Audio devices

uaudio(4)
  USB audio devices
umidi(4)
  USB MIDI devices

## Radio receiver devices

slurm(4)
  Silicon Labs USB FM radios
udsbr(4)
  D-Link DSB-R100 USB radio device

## Human Interface Devices

uatp(4)
  Apple trackpads
uep(4)
  eGalax touch panel controllers
uhid(4)
  Generic driver for Human Interface Devices
uhidev(4)
  Base driver for all Human Interface Devices
uintuos(4)
  Wacom Intuos drawing tablets
ukbd(4)
  USB keyboards that follow the boot protocol
ums(4)
  USB mouse devices
uthum(4)
  TEMPer and TEMPerHUM temperature and humidity sensors
uts(4)
  Generic driver for touchscreens and touch digitizers

## Miscellaneous devices

stuirda(4)
  Sigmaltel 4116/4220 USB-IrDA bridge
ualea(4)
  USB Araneus Alea I/II random number generators
uberry(4)
  Battery charging RIM BlackBerry phones via USB
udl(4)
  DisplayLink DL-1x0/1x5 USB display devices
ugen(4)
  USB generic devices
uipad(4)
  Battery charging iOS devices via USB
uirda(4)
  USB IrDA bridges
upl(4)
  Prolific based host-to-host adapters
usscanner(4)
  SCSI-over-USB scanners
ustir(4)
  SigmaTel STIr4200 USB IrDA bridges
utoppy(4)
  Topfield TF5000PVR range of digital video recorders

# INTRODUCTION TO USB

The USB 1.x is a 12 Mb/s serial bus with 1.5 Mb/s for low speed devices. USB 2.x handles 480 Mb/s. Each USB has a host controller that is the master of the bus; all other devices on the bus only speak when spoken to.

There can be up to 127 devices (apart from the host controller) on a bus, each with its own address. The addresses are assigned dynamically by the host when each device is attached to the bus.

Within each device there can be up to 16 endpoints. Each endpoint is individually addressed and the addresses are static. Each of these endpoints will communicate in one of four different modes: control, isochronous, bulk, or interrupt. A device always has at least one endpoint. This endpoint has address 0 and is a control endpoint and is used to give commands to and extract basic data, such as descriptors, from the device. Each endpoint, except the control endpoint, is unidirectional.

The endpoints in a device are grouped into interfaces. An interface is a logical unit within a device; e.g., a compound device with both a keyboard and a trackball would present one interface for each. An interface can sometimes be set into different modes, called alternate settings, which affects how it operates. Different alternate settings can have different endpoints within it.

A device may operate in different configurations. Depending on the configuration the device may present different sets of endpoints and interfaces.

Each device located on a hub has several config(1) locators:

`port`
  this is the number of the port on closest upstream hub.
`configuration`
  this is the configuration the device must be in for this driver to attach. This locator does not set the configuration; it is iterated by the bus enumeration.
`interface`
  this is the interface number within a device that an interface driver attaches to.
`vendor`
  this is the 16 bit vendor id of the device.
`product`
  this is the 16 bit product id of the device.
`release`
  this is the 16 bit release (revision) number of the device.

The first locator can be used to pin down a particular device according to its physical position in the device tree. The last three locators can be used to pin down a particular device according to what device it actually is.

The bus enumeration of the USB bus proceeds in several steps:

1. Any device specific driver can attach to the device.
2. If none is found, any device class specific driver can attach.
3. If none is found, all configurations are iterated over. For each configuration all the interface are iterated over and interface drivers can attach. If any interface driver attached in a certain configuration the iteration over configurations is stopped.
4. If still no drivers have been found, the generic USB driver can attach.

# USB CONTROLLER INTERFACE

Use the following to get access to the USB specific structures and defines.

    #include <dev/usb/usb.h>

The /dev/usbN can be opened and a few operations can be performed on it. The poll(2) system call will say that I/O is possible on the controller device when a USB device has been connected or disconnected to the bus.

The following ioctl(2) commands are supported on the controller device:

`USB_DEVICEINFO` struct usb_device_info
  This command can be used to retrieve some information about a device on the bus. The addr field should be filled before the call and the other fields will be filled by information about the device on that address. Should no such device exist an error is reported.

      struct usb_device_info {
      	uint8_t	udi_bus;
      	uint8_t	udi_addr;
      	usb_event_cookie_t udi_cookie;
      	char		udi_product[USB_MAX_ENCODED_STRING_LEN];
      	char		udi_vendor[USB_MAX_ENCODED_STRING_LEN];
      	char		udi_release[8];
      	char		udi_serial[USB_MAX_ENCODED_STRING_LEN];
      	uint16_t	udi_productNo;
      	uint16_t	udi_vendorNo;
      	uint16_t	udi_releaseNo;
      	uint8_t	udi_class;
      	uint8_t	udi_subclass;
      	uint8_t	udi_protocol;
      	uint8_t	udi_config;
      	uint8_t	udi_speed;
      #define USB_SPEED_LOW  1
      #define USB_SPEED_FULL 2
      #define USB_SPEED_HIGH 3
      	int		udi_power;
      	int		udi_nports;
      	char		udi_devnames[USB_MAX_DEVNAMES][USB_MAX_DEVNAMELEN];
      	uint8_t	udi_ports[16];
      #define USB_PORT_ENABLED 0xff
      #define USB_PORT_SUSPENDED 0xfe
      #define USB_PORT_POWERED 0xfd
      #define USB_PORT_DISABLED 0xfc
      };

  The product, vendor, release, and serial fields contain self-explanatory descriptions of the device.

  The class field contains the device class.

  The config field shows the current configuration of the device.

  The lowspeed field is set if the device is a USB low speed device.

  The power field shows the power consumption in milli-amps drawn at 5 volts, or zero if the device is self powered.

  If the device is a hub the nports field is non-zero and the ports field contains the addresses of the connected devices. If no device is connected to a port one of the USB_PORT_* values indicates its status.

`USB_DEVICESTATS` struct usb_device_stats
  This command retrieves statistics about the controller.

      struct usb_device_stats {
      	u_long	uds_requests[4];
      };

  The requests field is indexed by the transfer kind, i.e. UE_*, and indicates how many transfers of each kind have been completed by the controller.

`USB_REQUEST` struct usb_ctl_request
  This command can be used to execute arbitrary requests on the control pipe. This is DANGEROUS and should be used with great care since it can destroy the bus integrity.

The include file `<dev/usb/usb.h>` contains definitions for the types used by the various ioctl(2) calls. The naming convention of the fields for the various USB descriptors exactly follows the naming in the USB specification. Byte sized fields can be accessed directly, but word (16 bit) sized fields must be access by the `UGETW`(field) and `USETW`(field, value) macros to handle byte order and alignment properly.

The include file `<dev/usb/usbhid.h>` similarly contains the definitions for Human Interface Devices (HID).

# USB EVENT INTERFACE

All USB events are reported via the /dev/usb device. This devices can be opened for reading and each read(2) will yield an event record (if something has happened). The poll(2) system call can be used to determine if an event record is available for reading.

The event record has the following definition:

    struct usb_event {
            int                                 ue_type;
    #define USB_EVENT_CTRLR_ATTACH 1
    #define USB_EVENT_CTRLR_DETACH 2
    #define USB_EVENT_DEVICE_ATTACH 3
    #define USB_EVENT_DEVICE_DETACH 4
    #define USB_EVENT_DRIVER_ATTACH 5
    #define USB_EVENT_DRIVER_DETACH 6
            struct timespec                     ue_time;
            union {
                    struct {
                            int                 ue_bus;
                    } ue_ctrlr;
                    struct usb_device_info      ue_device;
                    struct {
                            usb_event_cookie_t  ue_cookie;
                            char                ue_devname[16];
                    } ue_driver;
            } u;
    };

The ue_type field identifies the type of event that is described. The possible events are attach/detach of a host controller, a device, or a device driver. The union contains information pertinent to the different types of events.

The ue_bus contains the number of the USB bus for host controller events.

The ue_device record contains information about the device in a device event event.

The ue_cookie is an opaque value that uniquely determines which device a device driver has been attached to (i.e., it equals the cookie value in the device that the driver attached to). The ue_devname contains the name of the device (driver) as seen in, e.g., kernel messages.

Note that there is a separation between device and device driver events. A device event is generated when a physical USB device is attached or detached. A single USB device may have zero, one, or many device drivers associated with it.

# KERNEL THREADS

For each USB bus, i.e., for each host controller, there is a kernel thread that handles attach and detach of devices on that bus. The thread is named usbN where N is the bus number.

In addition there is a kernel thread, usbtask, which handles various minor tasks that are initiated from an interrupt context, but need to sleep, e.g., time-out abort of transfers.

# SEE ALSO

usbhidaction(1), usbhidctl(1), cardbus(4), ehci(4), isa(4), ohci(4), pci(4), pcmcia(4), slhci(4), uhci(4), xhci(4), usbdevs(8)

Universal Serial Bus Specifications Documents, http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/.

# HISTORY

The `usb` driver appeared in NetBSD 1.4.

# BUGS

There should be a serial number locator, but NetBSD does not have string valued locators.

July 10, 2022 | NetBSD 10.0