NUT USB setup in modern Solaris-like systems (OpenSolaris descendants)


Table of Contents

1. Change the OS driver binding: use UGEN
2. libusb version and binary

Local-media device setup for use with NUT has some nuances with numerous descendants of the OpenSolaris project, including both the commercial Sun/Oracle Solaris 11 and illumos-based open source distributions such as OpenIndiana and OmniOS. Recommendations below may also apply to other related operating systems, possibly to older releases as well.

1. Change the OS driver binding: use UGEN

Like other hardware, USB devices are interfaced to the operating system by OS drivers, and often there are several suitable drivers with different capabilities. In Solaris and related systems, this mapping is detailed in the /etc/driver_aliases file and properly managed by dedicated tools. By default, USB devices can be captured by the generic USB HID driver, or none at all; however an "UGEN" driver can behave better with the libusb library used on Solaris.

Note

Operations below would need running as root or elevating the privileges (via pfexec, sudo, etc.)

Connect the power device using its USB port to your computer.

Run prtconf -v | less to see the details of device connections, and search for its probable strings (vendor, model, serial number). Two examples follow:

In this example, no suitable driver was attached "out of the box":

```` input (driver not attached) Hardware properties: name=driver-minor type=int items=1 value=00000000 name=driver-major type=int items=1 value=00000002 name=low-speed type=boolean name=usb-product-name type=string items=1 value=Eaton 9PX name=usb-vendor-name type=string items=1 value=EATON name=usb-serialno type=string items=1 value=G202E02032 name=usb-raw-cfg-descriptors type=byte items=34 value=09.02.22.00.01.01.00.a0.0a.09.04.00.00.01.03.00.00.00.09.21.10.01.21.01.22.10.0d.07.05.81.03.08.00.14 name=usb-dev-descriptor type=byte items=18 value=12.01.10.01.00.00.00.08.63.04.ff.ff.00.01.01.02.04.01 name=usb-release type=int items=1 value=00000110 name=usb-num-configs type=int items=1 value=00000001 name=usb-revision-id type=int items=1 value=00000100 name=usb-product-id type=int items=1 value=0000ffff name=usb-vendor-id type=int items=1 value=00000463 name=compatible type=string items=9 value=usb463,ffff.100 + usb463,ffff + usbif463,class3.0.0 + usbif463,class3.0 + usbif463,class3 + usbif,class3.0.0 + usbif,class3.0 + usbif,class3 + usb,device name=reg type=int items=1 value=00000002 name=assigned-address type=int items=1 value=00000003 ````

In the following example, a "hid power" driver was attached, giving some usability to the device although not enough for NUT to interact well (at least, according to the helpful notes in the https://web.archive.org/web/20140126045707/http://barbz.com.au/blog/?p=407 blog entry):

```` input, instance #1 Driver properties: name=pm-components type=string items=3 dev=none value=NAME= hid1 Power + 0=USB D3 State + 3=USB D0 State Hardware properties: name=driver-minor type=int items=1 value=00000000 name=driver-major type=int items=1 value=00000002 name=low-speed type=boolean name=usb-product-name type=string items=1 value=USB to Serial name=usb-vendor-name type=string items=1 value=INNO TECH name=usb-serialno type=string items=1 value=20100826 name=usb-raw-cfg-descriptors type=byte items=34 value=09.02.22.00.01.01.03.80.32.09.04.00.00.01.03.00.00.04.09.21.00.01.00.01.22.1b.00.07.05.81.03.08.00.20 name=usb-dev-descriptor type=byte items=18 value=12.01.10.01.00.00.00.08.65.06.61.51.02.00.01.02.03.01 name=usb-release type=int items=1 value=00000110 name=usb-num-configs type=int items=1 value=00000001 name=usb-revision-id type=int items=1 value=00000002 name=usb-product-id type=int items=1 value=00005161 name=usb-vendor-id type=int items=1 value=00000665 name=compatible type=string items=9 value=usb665,5161.2 + usb665,5161 + usbif665,class3.0.0 + usbif665,class3.0 + usbif665,class3 + usbif,class3.0.0 + usbif,class3.0 + usbif,class3 + usb,device name=reg type=int items=1 value=00000003 name=assigned-address type=int items=1 value=00000005 Device Minor Nodes: dev=(108,2) dev_path=/pci@0,0/pci8086,7270@1d/hub@1/input@3:hid_0_1 spectype=chr type=minor dev_link=/dev/usb/hid0 ````

You can also check with cfgadm if the device is at least somehow visible (if not, there can be hardware issues in play). For example, if there is a physical link but no recognized driver was attached, the device would show up as "unconfigured":

```` # cfgadm | grep usb- usb8/1 usb-input connected unconfigured ok ````

If you conclude that a change is needed, you would need to unload the existing copy of the "ugen" driver and set it up to handle the device patterns that you find in compatible values from prtconf, e.g. for monitoring the devices from listings above:

```` rem_drv ugen add_drv -i "usb463,ffff.100" -m * 0666 root sys ugen ````

or

```` rem_drv ugen add_drv -i "usb665,5161.2" -m * 0666 root sys ugen ````

Note that there are many patterns in the compatible line which allow for narrower or wider catchment. It is recommended to match with the narrowest fit, to avoid potential conflict with other devices from same vendor (especially if the declared identifiers are for a generic USB chipset).

Also note that the add_drv definition above lists the POSIX access metadata for the device node files that would be generated when the device is plugged in and detected. In the examples above, it would be owned by root:sys but accessible for reads and writes (0666) to anyone on the system. On shared systems you may want to constrain this access to the account that the NUT driver would run as.

After proper driver binding, cfgadm should expose the details:

```` # cfgadm -lv … usb8/1 connected configured ok Mfg: EATON Product: Eaton 9PX NConfigs: 1 Config: 0 <no cfg str descr> unavailable usb-input n /devices/pci@0,0/pci103c,1309@1d,2:1 … ````

Usually the driver mapping should set up the "friendly" device nodes under /dev/ tree as well (symlinks to real entries in /devices/) so for NUT drivers you would specify a port=/dev/usb/463.ffff/0 for your new driver=usbhid-ups section.

For some serial-to-USB converter chips however it was noted that while the device driver is attached, and the /device/... path is exposed in the dmesg output (saved to /var/adm/messages) the /dev/... symlinks are not created. In this case you can pass the low-level name of the character-device node as the "port" option, e.g.:

```` ./mge-shut -s 9px-ser -DDDDD -d2 -u root \ -x port=/devices/pci@0,0/pci103c,1309@1a,2/device@1:0 ````

2. libusb version and binary

Until NUT release 2.7.4 the only option to build NUT drivers for USB connectivity was to use libusb-0.1 or a distribution’s variant of it; the original Sun Solaris releases and later related systems provided their customized version for example (packaged originally as SUNWlibusbugen, SUNWugen{,u} and SUNWusb{,s,u,vc}).

However, libusb-0.1 consuming programs had some stability issues reported when running with long-term connections to devices (such as an UPS), especially when using USB hubs and chips where hardware vendors had cut a few corners too many, which were addressed in a newer rewrite of the library as libusb-1.0.

Subsequently as at least the illumos-based distributions evolved to include the new library and certain patches for it, and the library itself matured, the NUT project also added an ability to build with libusb-1.0 either directly or using its 0.1-compat API.

Currently this is not part of the common codebase and thus tagged releases, but is experimented in several competing GitHub branches until one gets chosen as the best to integrate:

If your "standard" build of NUT has problems connecting to your USB UPS, consider building one of those branches using the recent library available for your distribution.

In this context, note the OpenIndiana libusb-1 package pull requests with code which was successfully used when developing this documentation:

Binaries from builds made in OpenIndiana using the recipe from PR #5382 above were successfully directly used on contemporary OmniOS CE as well.