Hi everyone. I have a USB modem and a large C++ application that needs to detect whether that device is present or not. I was hoping to get advice for what the best method to do so would be. The only solution I've thought of is to parse the output of lsusb and look for the vendor and product ID of my device, but that seems a little hack-ish and inefficient.


Is there a command or program that I can provide it a vendor/product ID for a USB device and it can tell me whether or not such a device is present in the system? Or another, better way to detect the device than parsing the lsusb output that I've been thinking? Thanks.

At least on Fedora/RedHat you can use udev (and run custom rule for your USB modem) to create device with a name you like. Then your application should only open device with known name.

Thanks. I took a brief look at udev and it seems to be something that runs when a device is connected/disconnected, which isn't quite what I'm looking for. But I've only skimmed the surface so I'll keep investigating. I also realized yesterday that the driver for this modem creates a device file at /dev/tty***USBModem, so I may just decide to check for the existence of that file to determine if the USB device is plugged in or not.

(FYI, this application is on an embedded system that won't be changed/reconfigured on site)