29

I have a USB scale, a USB HID. Currently, when it is plugged in, the permissions only allow the superuser to access it. How can I configure udev to let anybody access this device? I have the vendor and product IDs, but I would like to match it based on the HID type instead.

Right now, I'm having trouble finding any existing rule that applies to this (I grepped for "hidraw" in /lib/udev/rules.d and /etc/udev/rules.d, among other things).

moberley
  • 962
erjiang
  • 864

6 Answers6

31

Normally, this is done by adding to /etc/udev/rules.d a file maybe named 50-usb-scale.conf with contents like this:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="HEX1", ATTR{idProduct}=="HEX2", MODE="0666"

Where HEX1 and HEX2 are replaced with the vendor and product id respectively.

To match on the Interface type instead, you could try replacing ATTR{idVendor}=="HEX1", ATTR{idProduct}=="HEX2" with a match for bInterfaceClass being 03 (HID):

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{bInterfaceClass}=="03", MODE="0666"

But be warned, that will catch mice and keyboards too.

Kees Cook
  • 17,473
  • 5
    On ubuntu 14.04 you have to use MODE:="0666", without the colon, the rule does nothing. – EdwinW Jul 26 '14 at 14:00
  • 3
    On 14.04 this file has to have a .rules extension. A file with a .conf extension won't work. – cherno Jun 26 '15 at 05:02
  • 2
    use lsusb -vvv to get the idProduct and idVendor – Xavier13 May 21 '16 at 15:26
  • 4
    Since this question is quite popular in google output... I think it should be ATTRS, not ATTR - at least this change fixed it for me. – infthi Jun 16 '16 at 18:45
  • 3
    On 14.04.5 LTS I found: lsusb is a good start to see what's connected and IDs. idVendor and idProduct matches seem case-sensitive, so ID DA77 doesn't work for me but da77 does. (Handy diagnostic: udevadm info --attribute-walk /dev/bus/usb/008/023, bus 008 device 023 my example; lsusb for yours.) After adding a rule, sudo udevadm control --reload-rules and then sudo udevadm trigger avoids reboot: changes are seconds after that. ATTR vs ATTRS made no odds. My .rules file reads: SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="da77", ATTR{idProduct}=="d12e", GROUP="users", MODE="0666". – El Zorko Aug 29 '16 at 12:40
  • On 16.04 LTS, ATTR works fine (another poster said to use ATTRS) and I did not need a colon after MODE. This was for a delcom led: SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0fc5", ATTR{idProduct}=="b080", MODE="0666" – Evan de la Cruz May 11 '17 at 20:39
10

Just for the summary:

You may filter for:

  • idVendor
  • idProduct
  • serial

And use:

== Compare for equality.

!= Compare for inequality.

= Assign a value to a key. Keys that represent a list are reset and only this single value is assigned.

+= Add the value to a key that holds a list of entries.

:= Assign a value to a key finally; disallow any later changes.

You may give a specific device a specific new path in /dev/...
Example:

KERNEL=="hiddev*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="16c0", ATTRS{idProduct}=="05df", ATTRS{serial}=="1234567", GROUP="cdrom", OWNER="user28", MODE="0640", SYMLINK+="myhid"

Results in:

You can access the device via '/dev/hiddevx' or via '/dev/myhid' easyly, every user in group 'cdrom' may read from the device. Owner 'user28' may read and write.

or simplest:

KERNEL=="hiddev*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="16c0", MODE="0666"

Results in: Every user may access every hiddevice from Vendor 0x16c0

For details see: Docs

rundekugel
  • 553
8

In case you need to change (like me) ttyACM0 permissions, this are my settings:

KERNEL=="ttyACM0", MODE="0777"

It failed when I tried to specify the vendor and product ID. I am not sure why.

Peachy
  • 7,117
  • 10
  • 38
  • 46
Rodo
  • 181
5

Ubuntu 18.04 update/clarification:

Kees Cook's answer is close but requires 2 changes to work in 18.04 (the current release and only one I've tested this on).

  1. Find your idVendor and idProduct with lsusb.
    • This will be the 2 hex values after "ID", separated by a colon. I'm adding a scanner. lsusb gave me: 
      Bus 001 Device 011: ID 04b8:014a Seiko Epson Corp.
  2. As root add a file to /etc/udev/rules.d
    • Something like 50-usb-epsonscanner.rules
    • The extension must be ".rules"  
  3. In that file add:
    SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="04b8", ATTR{idProduct}=="014a", MODE="0666"
    But with your idVendor and idProduct hex values.
    • Note it's "ATTRS" not "ATTR".
  4. Re-login. No need to reboot.
gatohaus
  • 61
  • ATTRS both for vendor and product ID? Then your code sample is wrong (just as you state two lines later). – neo post modern Apr 23 '19 at 21:27
  • Just the second one is ATTR. Works here. Am guessing it's an error that could change without warning. – gatohaus May 04 '19 at 22:11
  • 1
    I think what's happening is that the second one is just getting ignored. So it seems to work because you don't have a second device with the same vendor ID. – David C. Jul 22 '21 at 20:12
3

If its a HIDRAW device, you have to 

chmod 0666 /dev/hidrawX

where X is the hid device number, e.g hidraw0. you can do 

ls /dev/hid*

to see a list :) Or just do 

sudo chmod 0666 /dev/hidraw*

to set for all hidraw devices, probably not recommended.

Muriuki David
  • 168
  • 3
    That gets the job done as a quick hack, but the setting won't persist across a reboot or even hot-plugging the device. The UDEV rule is the way to go if you want your settings to persist. – David C. Jul 22 '21 at 20:09
2

For a USB tty device, I needed to do:

SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="10c4", ATTRS{idProduct}=="ea60", MODE="0666", GROUP="bkg"

The accepted answer was good - but needed the SUBSYSTEM to be tty

The thing that helped be debug, was to be able to see what UDEV was doing by doing a:

udevadm test $(udevadm info -q path -n /dev/ttyUSB0)

Brad
  • 121
  • 3
  • Solved my problem after several days of frustration, thank you! There was nothing at all to show that my USB deice was being used in tty mode, but I tried it and it worked! – Richard Whitehead Jun 28 '23 at 13:56