Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)

FreeBSD Manual Pages

  
 
  

home | help
USB(4)			     Kernel Interfaces Manual			  USB(4)

NAME
     usb -- Universal Serial Bus

SYNOPSIS
     To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following line in your
     kernel configuration file:

	   device usb

     Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the
     following line in loader.conf(5):

	   usb_load="YES"

USERLAND PROGRAMMING
     USB  functions  can  be  accessed from userland through the libusb library.
     See libusb(3) for more information.

DESCRIPTION
     FreeBSD provides machine-independent bus support and drivers  for	USB  de-
     vices in host and device side mode.

     The usb driver has three layers:

	   USB Controller (Bus)

	   USB Device

	   USB Driver

     The  controller  attaches	to  a physical bus like pci(4).  The USB bus at-
     taches to the controller, and the root hub attaches to the controller.  Any
     devices attached to the bus will attach to the root hub or another hub  at-
     tached to the USB bus.

     The uhub device will always be present as it is needed for the root hub.

INTRODUCTION TO USB
     The  USB  is a system where external devices can be connected to a PC.  The
     most common USB speeds are:

	   Low Speed (1.5 MBit/sec)

	   Full Speed (12 MBit/sec)

	   High Speed (480 MBit/sec)

	   SuperSpeed (5 GBit/sec)

     Each USB has a USB controller that is the master of the bus.  The	physical
     communication  is simplex which means the host controller only communicates
     with one USB device at a time.

     There can be up to 127 devices connected to an USB HUB tree.  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 indi-
     vidually  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 end-
     point 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 end-
     point, 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 af-
     fects how it operates.  Different alternate  settings  can  have  different
     endpoints within it.

     A device may operate in different configurations.	Depending on the config-
     uration, the device may present different sets of endpoints and interfaces.

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

     1.   Any interface specific driver can attach to the device.

     2.   If none is found, generic interface class drivers can attach.

SYSCTL VARIABLES
     The  following  variables	are  available	as  both sysctl(8) variables and
     loader(8) tunables:

     hw.usb.debug
	     Debug output level, where 0 is debugging disabled and larger values
	     increase debug message verbosity.	Default is 0.

SEE ALSO
     The USB specifications can be found at:

	   https://www.usb.org/documents

     libusb(3),  aue(4),  axe(4),  axge(4),  cue(4),  ehci(4),	kue(4),  mos(4),
     ohci(4),  pci(4),	rue(4),  ucom(4),  udav(4),  uhci(4),  uhid(4), ukbd(4),
     ulpt(4), umass(4), ums(4), uplcom(4), urio(4), uvscom(4),	xhci(4)  usbcon-
     fig(8), usbdi(9)

STANDARDS
     The usb module complies with the USB 3.0 standard.

HISTORY
     The  usb module has been inspired by the NetBSD USB stack initially written
     by Lennart Augustsson.  The usb module was written by Hans  Petter  Selasky
     <hselasky@FreeBSD.org>.

FreeBSD ports 15.1		September 7, 2020			  USB(4)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=usb&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+15.1-RELEASE+and+Ports>

home | help