Linux USB driver probe not called if device already plugged

Question

If I use a modified usb skeleton driver on Linux and I insmod the module with the USB device already plugged in, the probe function doesn't get called. I need to unplug and replug the device in order for the driver to be activated. This is not the case for e.g. the serial drivers, I made some tests. Is there a reason for this? How do I get the probe function to get called?

Answer 1

Almost all USB HID devices are automatically managed by usbhid driver. Try the following:

sudo rmmod usbhid
sudo insmod your_driver
sudo insmod usbhid

Answer 2

You probably need to unbind your device from usbhid and bind it to your driver:

• try to find the thief driver in : /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usbhid/
• unbind it : echo -n "1-1:1.0" > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usbhid/unbind
• bind your device :
  • echo <vendor> <product> > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/my_driver/new_id or if you already have a bus id :
  • echo -n "1-1:1.0" > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/my_driver/bind

see http://www.ha19.no/usb/ see http://lwn.net/Articles/143397/

Answer 3

Some software from us was opening the device from /proc/bus/usb and the device was claimed by the usbfs driver, so the new driver couldn't claim the device.