How To Set Up A USB-Over-IP Server And Client With Debian Lenny
Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme
Follow me on Twitter
This tutorial shows how to set up a USB-over-IP server with Debian Lenny as well as a USB-over-IP client (also running Debian Lenny). The USB/IP Project aims to develop a general USB device sharing system over IP network. To share USB devices between computers with their full functionality, USB/IP encapsulates "USB I/O messages" into TCP/IP payloads and transmits them between computers. USB-over-IP can be useful for virtual machines, for example, that don't have access to the host system's hardware - USB-over-IP allows virtual machines to use remote USB devices.
I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!
1 Preliminary Note
This tutorial is based on AliRezaTaleghani's tutorial How To Modify Your Gnu/Linux Box To Serve As A USB Over IP Server, but I've adjusted it for Debian Lenny (server and client). If you want to use a Windows client, please take a look at AliRezaTaleghani's tutorial - that part is still the same.
In this tutorial I use the server server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.0.100 and the client client1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.0.101, both running Debian Lenny. These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.
2 Installing And Using USB/IP On The Server
server1:
There's a usbip package for Debian Squeeze (testing), but not for Lenny. To install the usbip package from Squeeze on Lenny, we modify the following three files (take a look at my tutorial A Short Introduction To Apt-Pinning to understand what I'm doing here):
vi /etc/apt/sources.list
Add the Debian Squeeze (testing) repositories at the end of the file:
[...] ## Squeeze / Testing deb http://ftp2.de.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main deb-src http://ftp2.de.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main |
vi /etc/apt/apt.conf
Put the following line into this file:
APT::Cache-Limit "100000000"; |
vi /etc/apt/preferences
Make the file look as follows:
Package: * Pin: release a=stable Pin-Priority: 700 Package: * Pin: release a=testing Pin-Priority: 650 |
Update the package database...
aptitude update
... and install usbip as follows:
aptitude install usbip usbip-source module-assistant
We need to build the usbip kernel modules for our Debian Lenny kernel, that's why we must install the usbip-source and module-assistant packages as well. We can now build the kernel modules as follows:
m-a prepare
m-a update
m-a a-i usbip-source
Afterwards we load the usbip kernel modules:
modprobe usbip
modprobe usbip_common_mod
To check if they really got loaded, run:
lsmod | grep usbip
The output should be similar to this one:
server1:~# lsmod | grep usbip
usbip 18660 0
usbip_common_mod 17672 1 usbip
server1:~#
To make sure that both modules get loaded automatically whenever you boot the system, you can add them to /etc/modules:
vi /etc/modules
[...] usbip usbip_common_mod |
Now we can start the usbip daemon:
usbipd -D
server1:~# usbipd -D
Bind usbip.ko to a usb device to be exportable!
server1:~#
Now attach a USB device that you want to export to the server - I'm using a SanDisk USB flash drive here.
Execute the command
lsusb
to find the corresponding Vendor/Device ID which is in the form of:
Bus XXX Device YYY: ID VendorID:DeviceID
The output on my server is as follows:
server1:~# lsusb
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0781:5151 SanDisk Corp. Cruzer Micro 256/512MB Flash Drive
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 058f:6362 Alcor Micro Corp. Hi-Speed 21-in-1 Flash Card Reader/Writer (Internal/External)
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
server1:~#
The Vendor/Device ID of my SanDisk USB flash drive is 0781:5151.
Now run
usbip_bind_driver --list
The output on my server is as follows:
server1:~# usbip_bind_driver --list
List USB devices
- busid 3-4 (058f:6362)
3-4:1.0 -> usb-storage
- busid 4-5 (0781:5151)
4-5:1.0 -> usb-storage
server1:~#
As you see, the Vendor/Device ID of my SanDisk USB flash drive (0781:5151) corresponds to the BUSID 4-5. We need this BUSID to attach the USB device to the server:
usbip_bind_driver --usbip 4-5
server1:~# usbip_bind_driver --usbip 4-5
** (process:7290): DEBUG: 4-5:1.0 -> usb-storage
** (process:7290): DEBUG: unbinding interface
** (process:7290): DEBUG: write "add 4-5" to /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usbip/match_busid
** Message: bind 4-5 to usbip, complete!
server1:~#
That's it, we can now use the SanDisk USB flash drive on a remote usbip client.
BTW, if you run...
netstat -tap
... you should see that the usbip daemon is listening on port 3240 so please make sure that this port isn't blocked by your firewall:
server1:~# netstat -tap
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name
tcp 0 0 *:sunrpc *:* LISTEN 2062/portmap
tcp 0 0 *:49008 *:* LISTEN 2073/rpc.statd
tcp 0 0 *:ssh *:* LISTEN 3244/sshd
tcp 0 0 localhost.localdom:smtp *:* LISTEN 2546/exim4
tcp 0 172 192.168.0.15:ssh 192.168.0.199:4176 ESTABLISHED 3204/0
tcp 0 148 server1.example.com:ssh 192.168.0.199:4177 ESTABLISHED 3245/1
tcp6 0 0 [::]:3240 [::]:* LISTEN 7254/usbipd
tcp6 0 0 [::]:ssh [::]:* LISTEN 3244/sshd
server1:~#
