USB serial driver

[corge]

I have a USB serial device which presents itself as:

Bus 002 Device 004: ID 067b:2303 Prolific Technology, Inc. PL2303 Serial Port

This is a MSR505C magnetic stripe card reader.

I know this device is supposed to work as a character device in GNU/Linux because there is a library called "libmsr" to use it with.

However, the device will not map to any device on my /dev filesystem.

I have compiled the usbserial module, loaded it, created the special character files with mknod, then connected the physical USB device, which then presents the kernel system messages (by dmesg):

usb 2-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 4
usb 2-2: default language 0x0409
usb 2-2: New USB device found, idVendor=067b, idProduct=2303
usb 2-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
usb 2-2: Product: USB-Serial Controller D
usb 2-2: Manufacturer: Prolific Technology Inc. 
usb 2-2: uevent
usb 2-2: usb_probe_device
usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
usb 2-2: adding 2-2:1.0 (config #1, interface 0)
usb 2-2:1.0: uevent
usbserial_generic 2-2:1.0: usb_probe_interface
usbserial_generic 2-2:1.0: usb_probe_interface - got id
drivers/usb/core/inode.c: creating file '004'
hub 2-0:1.0: state 7 ports 2 chg 0000 evt 0004

Even though the device is obviously detected, I cannot open any of the /dev/ttyUSB* devices to access it.

I even tried accessing it using the libmsr utility on ALL 256 ttyUSB* devices as such:

for i in $(seq 0 255); do ./msr /dev/ttyUSB${i}; done

However, all of them give the error:

msr: Serial open of /dev/ttyUSB253 failed: No such device

With the two last giving me:

msr: Serial open of /dev/ttyUSB254 failed: No such device or address
msr: Serial open of /dev/ttyUSB255 failed: No such device or address

[gustavo-serra]

Which kernel version are you using? Maybe an upgrade would help.

Maybe the driver created a different entry in /dev. I use the command:

ls -l /dev | wc -l

before and after plugging the device to see any changes in /dev.

[corge]

Which kernel version are you using? Maybe an upgrade would help.

Maybe the driver created a different entry in /dev. I use the command:

ls -l /dev | wc -l

before and after plugging the device to see any changes in /dev.

Great tip, thanks!

I found four new devices that show up upon connecting the device; although, I still get:

x86_1# ./msr /dev/usbdev2.3_ep00 
msr: Serial open of /dev/usbdev2.3_ep00 failed: No such device or address
x86_1# ./msr /dev/usbdev2.3_ep02 
msr: Serial open of /dev/usbdev2.3_ep02 failed: No such device or address
x86_1# ./msr /dev/usbdev2.3_ep81
msr: Serial open of /dev/usbdev2.3_ep81 failed: No such device or address
x86_1# ./msr /dev/usbdev2.3_ep83
msr: Serial open of /dev/usbdev2.3_ep83 failed: No such device or address

My kernel version is 2.6.30, custom compiled by myself, USB works perfectly fine and I do have the USB serial module loaded which apparently detects something as per the dmesg output I posted at the start.

[gustavo-serra]

Well, since you configured and compiled your own kernel, did you remember to enable the option USB_SERIAL_PL2303? It seems that there is a specific kernel module for Prolific. The module name is pl2303. The module usbserial_generic should only be loaded when no specific module is found.

[corge]

Well, since you configured and compiled your own kernel, did you remember to enable the option USB_SERIAL_PL2303? It seems that there is a specific kernel module for Prolific. The module name is pl2303. The module usbserial_generic should only be loaded when no specific module is found.

Oh wow, I didn't know that; thank you very much!

That really explains a lot, I thought the support for my device was through the generic serial module!

And yes, it does indeed work now.

[gustavo-serra]

Glad I could help.

One way to discover which module the kernel muse use is to use a default kernel from a large distribution (Slackware, Ubuntu) or to include almost everything in your custom kernel as a module (in the category Device Drivers). Let the kernel load the module and use lsmod to verify which one was loaded.