USB(4) BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual USB(4)NAMEusb — Universal Serial Bus
SYNOPSIS
To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following line in your
kernel configuration file:
device usb
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the
following line in loader.conf(5):
usb_load="YES"
USERLAND PROGRAMMING
USB functions can be accessed from userland through the libusb library.
See libusb(3) for more information.
DESCRIPTION
FreeBSD provides machine-independent bus support and drivers for USB
devices in host and device side mode.
The usb driver has three layers:
USB Controller (Bus)
USB Device
USB Driver
The controller attaches to a physical bus like pci(4). The USB bus
attaches to the controller, and the root hub attaches to the controller.
Any devices attached to the bus will attach to the root hub or another
hub attached to the USB bus.
The uhub device will always be present as it is needed for the root hub.
INTRODUCTION TO USB
The USB is a system where external devices can be connected to a PC. The
most common USB speeds are:
Low Speed (1.5MBit/sec)
Full Speed (12MBit/sec)
High Speed (480MBit/sec)
Each USB has a USB controller that is the master of the bus. The physi‐
cal communication is simplex which means the host controller only commu‐
nicates with one USB device at a time.
There can be up to 127 devices connected to an USB HUB tree. The
addresses are assigned dynamically by the host when each device is
attached to the bus.
Within each device there can be up to 16 endpoints. Each endpoint is
individually addressed and the addresses are static. Each of these end‐
points will communicate in one of four different modes: control,
isochronous, bulk, or interrupt. A device always has at least one end‐
point. This endpoint has address 0 and is a control endpoint and is used
to give commands to and extract basic data, such as descriptors, from the
device. Each endpoint, except the control endpoint, is unidirectional.
The endpoints in a device are grouped into interfaces. An interface is a
logical unit within a device; e.g. a compound device with both a keyboard
and a trackball would present one interface for each. An interface can
sometimes be set into different modes, called alternate settings, which
affects how it operates. Different alternate settings can have different
endpoints within it.
A device may operate in different configurations. Depending on the con‐
figuration, the device may present different sets of endpoints and inter‐
faces.
The bus enumeration of the USB bus proceeds in several steps:
1. Any interface specific driver can attach to the device.
2. If none is found, generic interface class drivers can attach.
SEE ALSO
The USB specifications can be found at:
http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/
libusb(3), usbdi(4), aue(4), axe(4), cue(4), ehci(4), kue(4), ohci(4),
pci(4), rue(4), ucom(4), udav(4), uhci(4), uhid(4), ukbd(4), ulpt(4),
umass(4), ums(4), uplcom(4), urio(4), uvscom(4), usbconfig(8)STANDARDS
The usb module complies with the USB 2.0 standard.
HISTORY
The usb module has been inspired by the NetBSD USB stack initially writ‐
ten by Lennart Augustsson. The usb module was written by Hans Petter
Selasky ⟨hselasky@freebsd.org⟩.
BSD May 20, 2009 BSD
