Identify PCI and USB Wired and Wireless Driver in Linux - Identify USB Driver. Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, CentOS, Fedora & all Linux distro

Read full details here: Identify PCI and USB Wired and Wireless Driver in Linux - Identify USB Driver. Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, CentOS, Fedora & all Linux distro

This guide shows how you can identify USB Driver Chipset(most commonly Wireless) Information on Linux. Often users troll different forums and blogs to find out they can identify which driver their PCI or USB device is using. This guide applies to all possible scenarios. After reading and following this guide you will be able to identify the followings:

Contents 

• Examples of USB devices
• What is Universal Serial Bus or USB?
• Question: How do I identify USB driver for anything in Linux?
  • Identify USB Driver Chipset Information in Linux
    • Step 1: List all USB devices – Identify USB driver
    • Step 2: Dump the physical USB device hierarchy as a tree – Identify USB driver
    • Step 3: Get driver info for selected device – Identify USB driver
    • Step 4: More ways to Identify USB driver details
      • Step 4.1: Identify USB driver using lshw command
      • Step 4.2: Identify USB driver using GTK+ front-end for lshw
      • Step 4.3: Identify USB driver using dmesg
  • USB Driver Installation
• Summary

Examples of USB devices

1. Identify USB driver for USB Wireless Adapters
2. Identify USB driver for Mouses
3. Identify USB driver for Keyboards
4. Identify USB driver for External Hard drives
5. Identify USB driver for DVD R/W devices
6. Identify USB driver for Blueray devices
7. Identify USB driver for High Definition Audio Controller
8. Identify USB driver for VGA or graphics cards
9. Identify USB driver for Ethernet devices
10. Identify USB driver for Card readers

In short, any device drivers can be identified that is using plugged into a USB port.
This guide will work for any Linux distributions, namely -

1. Linux Mint
2. Ubuntu
3. Debian GNU/Linux
4. Mageia / Mandriva
5. Fedora
6. openSUSE / SUSE Linux Enterprise
7. Arch Linux
8. CentOS / Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9. PCLinuxOS
10. Slackware Linux
11. Puppy Linux
12. Kali Linux (my distro )

As usual, I will start with basics first. next few paragraphs are slightly boring but if you really want to understand, you might as well read them, otherwise just skip to the technical bits. Table of contents above.
So let’s start with the basics .. what is a an USB device…

What is Universal Serial Bus or USB?

Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and communications protocols used in a bus for connection, communication, and power supply between computers and electronic devices.
USB was designed to standardize the connection of computer peripherals (including keyboards, pointing devices, digital cameras, printers, portable media players, disk drives and network adapters) to personal computers, both to communicate and to supply electric power. It has become commonplace on other devices, such as smartphones, PDAs and video game consoles. USB has effectively replaced a variety of earlier interfaces, such as serial and parallel ports, as well as separate power chargers for portable devices. Source: Wikipedia

Question: How do I identify USB driver for anything in Linux?

This is a million dollar question, just how often you see a similar post in forums and blogs with vague and unreliable answers? I will try my best to answer anything and everything in this post about all devices and their drivers in here. So, stay tuned as this is going to a long a** post.

Identify USB Driver Chipset Information in Linux

lsusb which is a standard command in all Linux distribution will show you the PCI devices on your system.
LS = List
USB = Universal Serial Bus devices

Step 1: List all USB devices – Identify USB driver

root@kali:~# lsusb

This will give you a sample output like the following:

root@kali:~# lsusb
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 148f:2870 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT2870 Wireless Adapter
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 046d:c016 Logitech, Inc. Optical Wheel Mouse
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
root@kali:~# 

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