[NTLUG:Discuss] Rev USB drive on Fedora Core 3?

[Burton Strauss]

Not always.  

Sometimes the specialized driver comes from within the community, perhaps
written by somebody under an NDA who gets permission to release it.

And sometimes the specialized driver comes from the company but is of enough
interest to get accepted into the tree.  e.g. wacom.c:

/*
 *  USB Wacom Graphire and Wacom Intuos tablet support
 *
 *  Copyright (c) 2000-2004 Vojtech Pavlik      <vojtech at ucw.cz>
 *  Copyright (c) 2000 Andreas Bach Aaen        <abach at stofanet.dk>
 *  Copyright (c) 2000 Clifford Wolf            <clifford at clifford.at>
 *  Copyright (c) 2000 Sam Mosel                <sam.mosel at computer.org>
 *  Copyright (c) 2000 James E. Blair           <corvus at gnu.org>
 *  Copyright (c) 2000 Daniel Egger             <egger at suse.de>
 *  Copyright (c) 2001 Frederic Lepied          <flepied at mandrakesoft.com>
 *  Copyright (c) 2004 Panagiotis Issaris
<panagiotis.issaris at mech.kuleuven.ac.be>
 *  Copyright (c) 2002-2004 Ping Cheng          <pingc at wacom.com>
...

So when you come up against a new USB device, what you need to do is to

(1) Check the mfg web site.

(2) See if it (or a close relative) is already supported in the kernel.
    * Figure out the internal IDs for the device
    * grep in the source tree for those ids.

You sometimes find it's just a new version of something that exists, or it
may be similar to something else, or even rebranded from something Linux
already knows.  If those are the cases, simple tweaks to the driver may
suffice.

How do you check this out?  You need the USB info.  For example, my UPS:

Device Descriptor:
bcdUSB:             0x0110
bDeviceClass:         0x00
bDeviceSubClass:      0x00
bDeviceProtocol:      0x00
bMaxPacketSize0:      0x08 (8)
idVendor:           0x051D (American Power Conversion)
idProduct:          0x0002
bcdDevice:          0x0106
iManufacturer:        0x03
iProduct:             0x01
iSerialNumber:        0x02
bNumConfigurations:   0x01

ConnectionStatus: DeviceConnected
Current Config Value: 0x01
Device Bus Speed:      Low
Device Address:       0x01
Open Pipes:              1

Endpoint Descriptor:
bEndpointAddress:     0x81
Transfer Type:   Interrupt
wMaxPacketSize:     0x0006 (6)
bInterval:            0x0A

Looking in /usr/src/linux/drivers/usb for 0x051D gives no hits.  That makes
it unlikely to be supported in the kernel.

So:

(3) Start looking for 3rd party non kernel drivers, e.g. Google for linux
apc usb find apcupsd, "a daemon for controlling APC UPSes" at
http://www.apcupsd.com/.  Will it work for me?  Don't know - takes more
digging.

But that's the process...

-----Burton
-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at ntlug.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at ntlug.org] On Behalf
Of Terry
Sent: Friday, July 29, 2005 8:13 AM
To: NTLUG Discussion List
Subject: Re: [NTLUG:Discuss] Rev USB drive on Fedora Core 3?

On 7/29/05, Burton Strauss <Burton_Strauss at comcast.net> wrote:
> On 7/29/05, Neil Aggarwal <neil at jammconsulting.com> wrote:
> > Hello:
> >
> > I have a server running Fedora Core 3.  I am interested in buying a 
> > REV USB drive to use with it, but Iomega's site only lists Windows 
> > as supported.
> >
> > Does this drive work on Fedora Core 3?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >         Neil
> >
> 
> N:
> 
> It's not likely.  While there are some generic USB drivers available 
> for a few types of devices under Linux, the more complex a device, the 
> more it needs a specialized driver.

Which should be provided by the manufacturer.

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