Tech Info 100: USB dongle problem on SuSE Linux 10.1

Vertriebspartner finden

HELIOS Tech Info #100

Tue, 27 Jun 2006

USB dongle problem on SuSE Linux 10.1

With SUSE Linux 10.1 Novell introduces a new path for USB devices. The USB devices are not longer accessible via “/proc/bus/usb”, the new path “/dev/bus/usb” is used now. As a result the “machid” program does not display the machine ID of a connected HELIOS USB dongle anymore.
The consequence is that HELIOS services will not be able to check the license and will quit or run in demo mode.
A simple workaround is to mount the “/dev/bus/usb” path to “/proc/bus/usb”. This can be done by adding the mount point to “/etc/fstab” with the following line: 
usbfs   /proc/bus/usb   usbfs   defaults 0 0
To test and enable the new mount point immediately, enter in a shell “mount /proc/bus/usb” after adding the line in “fstab”, otherwise it will be activated when rebooting the machine.

Note:

In the default SuSE 10.1 installation, the mount point is pre-defined as “noauto” in “/etc/fstab” with the following line:
usbfs   /proc/bus/usb   usbfs   noauto 0 0
If the file already contains this line, change the mount options from “noauto” to “defaults”. If not, add the usbfs line after the mount entry for “/proc”.
Other Linux distributions and SuSE distributions before 10.1 should not be affected.

Update 27 Nov 2006:

This TechInfo is also valid for Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10.

Update 23 Feb 2007:

Update u0601 makes this TechInfo obsolete.