Package: wnpp Severity: wishlist Owner: Aurélien GÉRÔME <ag@roxor.cx> * Package name : usb-modeswitch Version : 0.9.2 Upstream Author : Josua Dietze <digidietze@t-online.de> * URL : http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/ Licence : GPLv2 or later Programming Lang: C Description : mode switching tool for controlling "flip flop" (multiple device) USB gear Several new USB devices (especially high-speed WAN stuff, they're expensive anyway) have their MS Windows drivers onboard; when plugged in for the first time they act like a flash storage and start installing the driver from there. After that (and on every consecutive plugging) this driver switches the mode internally, the storage device vanishes (in most cases), and a new device (like an USB modem) shows up. Some call that feature "ZeroCD". Of course, nothing of this is documented in any form and there is hardly any Linux driver available. On the good side, most of the known devices work out of the box with the available Linux modules like "usb-storage" or "usbserial". That leaves the problem of the mode switching from storage to whatever the thing is supposed to do. Fortunately there are things like human intelligence, USB sniffing programs and "libusb". It is possible to eavesdrop the communication of the MS Windows driver, to isolate the command or action that does the switching, and to reproduce the same thing with Linux. USB_ModeSwitch makes the last step relatively easy by taking the important parameters from a configuration file and doing all the initialization and communication stuff. It does NOT check for success afterwards as of now. The right approach would be to consult /proc/bus/usb/devices (or the output of "lsusb") before and after execution to note any changes. Cheers, -- .''`. Aurélien GÉRÔME : :' : `. `'` Free Software Developer `- Unix Sys & Net Admin
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