Rescan for USB Devices

newmanium2001 · 09-13-2009, 07:00 PM

Hi all,

I've been searching pretty furiously for the answer to this question, but to no avail. (distro is Fedora 11 btw)

When I log onto my Gnome session, about 30% of the time my mouse doesn't work. If I unplug it and plug it back in, it works again, but needless to say, reaching all the way behind my desktop and doing this is not very convenient.

All I think I would need to do is rescan the USB bus to "redetect" the mouse so to speak, but I can't figure out how this is done. Obviously the OS does some sort of command like this when Linux boots, right? Or is USB just all magic?

w1k0 · 09-13-2009, 07:56 PM

Sorry! I copied from the editor and pasted here by mistake the reply to the another question from the another thread. Now I removed it.

lutusp · 09-13-2009, 10:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by newmanium2001

Hi all,

I've been searching pretty furiously for the answer to this question, but to no avail. (distro is Fedora 11 btw)

When I log onto my Gnome session, about 30% of the time my mouse doesn't work. If I unplug it and plug it back in, it works again, but needless to say, reaching all the way behind my desktop and doing this is not very convenient.

All I think I would need to do is rescan the USB bus to "redetect" the mouse so to speak, but I can't figure out how this is done. Obviously the OS does some sort of command like this when Linux boots, right? Or is USB just all magic?

I just Googled this issue, and it appears that issuing the "lsusb" command will rescan for USB devices. You could create a new desktop icon that, when clicked ... oh, crap. I guess that won't work.

I guess you will have to press Ctrl+Alt+F2, log in as root, and issue the "lsusb" command from there. Then press Ctrl+Alt+F7 (on an up-to-date distribution) to go back to X Windows.

And this might not work, depending on what "lsusb" actually does. A better solution might be to connect your mouse to a better USB port. Test your USB ports -- connect the mouse to different USB ports, see if there's one that doesn't disable your mouse when you log off. And don't attach either your keyboard or your mouse to a peripheral USB extension box.