Create an USB port link to an USB/IP server

[soundmanbe]

Hi,
Do you have any ideas to link an USB port to an USB/IP server adaptator ? (Startech USB1000IP). Startech don't have any idea how do it -except in windows . The server is found and show all the details on a web interface connected with the server adress. But I don't find any solution to create a new USB device connected to this server adaptator. Thank's in advance.

[doktor5000]

What yoou probably need is something like http://usbip.sourceforge.net/ or http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-set-up ... bian-lenny

[soundmanbe]

Thank's for your answer. The solutions you found are not made for that There are many ways to create and share an USB connection from a linux server to a client (software to software). My problem is: the server is not configurable, this is not a linux server, this is a hardware usb>IP server . I try to find a solution to make a link like we do with the ip printers in autodetection or manually. Just tell to linux that this IP adress is an USB connection.....
But thank's again for your suggestion.

[doktor5000]

Just for clarification, what's the exact use case, why do you need exactly that device? What data are you trying to transfer, and why USB?
What device are you attaching, a printer, a flash drive, a sound card, a webcam or any special device ... ?

[soundmanbe]

Any devices. Now it's an epson Scanner V600 (USB scanner). We share this scanner on many windows computers thru this USB/IP adaptator with a windows software who link the IP adress to a virtual USB and the system find the scanner as if it is connected directly to an USB port, it will do the same with all kind of USB devices. But we have some computers in Linux (Mageia, Mandriva) and we want to have the same acces to this Scanner. If there is a solution, we may connect some others devices (Programmators with USB control... etc) with the same kind of adaptator to share the devices on the network and have acces to the informations/material with all the computers. The devices are connected directly at a switch and not a computer.That's why. PS: We want to use this Scanner with the wonderfull linux photo programs and picture editors. We have try with the direct USB connection and it works perfectly....so why not on the network.

[jiml8]

I had to look up usb/ip servers because I didn't know what it was. Essentially, it is an encapsulation of the USB I/O device calls within an IP framework and transport over ethernet.

To put it succinctly, you need a driver. If Startech does not provide one and the usbip project that doktor5000 linked for you won't work, and you can't find a driver someplace else, you're screwed.

I think that the usbip project IS what you need, but if Startech is not using the "standard" protocol as defined in the project, you would have to modify the project. The modifications would be straightforward, once you knew exactly what you needed to do, but figuring that out could be challenging.

Basically, you need a piece of code (which probably is a kernel driver) that looks to all of userspace on Linux like a USB controller. However this driver does not talk to USB hardware, it talks to an ethernet device (which it would take over for the purpose). It will take incoming USB requests from the system, package them in IP and then an ethernet frame, and ship them out the ethernet hardware. It will take incoming ethernet packets, strip the ethernet and the IP, and route the resulting USB package to the required destination. The usbip project provides this driver, but there is no guarantee that the packaging format it uses is the same as the startech scheme.

Good luck with this one; a quick google search turned up startech KVM to IP solutions that work with linux, but nothing for a USB/IP solution.

[soundmanbe]

I know that I'm nearly screwed ... so I'll try your suggestion:
Compiling USBLIB
After many corrections in the configure.ac and Makefile.am due to a lot of compilation errors, I still have a problem when starting ./configure

...
....
configure: error: Missing /usr/include/sysfs/libsysfs.h

but

urpmi libsysfs
Le paquetage lib64sysfs2-2.1.0-16.mga3.x86_64 est déjà installé (allready installed)

Any ideas?

[jiml8]

You need libsysfs-devel which contains the headers you need. Also, more than likely, if you are making significant changes to the automake files, you are missing other dependencies.

[doktor5000]

Hmmm, seems it's not developed anymore since 2009, it may not even compile anymore properly ...

[soundmanbe]

thank's to follow the job...
autoconf : OK (With my changes)
./configure : OK (With some changes and the devel lib)
make not yet : working on

...
...
...
libtool: Version mismatch error. This is libtool 2.4, but the
libtool: definition of this LT_INIT comes from libtool 2.4.2.
libtool: You should recreate aclocal.m4 with macros from libtool 2.4
libtool: and run autoconf again.
make[2]: *** [libusbip_la-names.lo] Erreur 63
make[2] : on quitte le répertoire « /data/***/usbip-0.1.7/src/lib »
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Erreur 1
make[1] : on quitte le répertoire « /data/***/usbip-0.1.7/src »
make: *** [all] Erreur 2

The libtool installed is the 2.4.2 ... maybe if I install the 2.4 version of libtool ...??
Hard to find the solution to update this old program (2009).