|  | * Introduction | 
|  |  | 
|  | The name "usbmon" in lowercase refers to a facility in kernel which is | 
|  | used to collect traces of I/O on the USB bus. This function is analogous | 
|  | to a packet socket used by network monitoring tools such as tcpdump(1) | 
|  | or Ethereal. Similarly, it is expected that a tool such as usbdump or | 
|  | USBMon (with uppercase letters) is used to examine raw traces produced | 
|  | by usbmon. | 
|  |  | 
|  | The usbmon reports requests made by peripheral-specific drivers to Host | 
|  | Controller Drivers (HCD). So, if HCD is buggy, the traces reported by | 
|  | usbmon may not correspond to bus transactions precisely. This is the same | 
|  | situation as with tcpdump. | 
|  |  | 
|  | * How to use usbmon to collect raw text traces | 
|  |  | 
|  | Unlike the packet socket, usbmon has an interface which provides traces | 
|  | in a text format. This is used for two purposes. First, it serves as a | 
|  | common trace exchange format for tools while most sophisticated formats | 
|  | are finalized. Second, humans can read it in case tools are not available. | 
|  |  | 
|  | To collect a raw text trace, execute following steps. | 
|  |  | 
|  | 1. Prepare | 
|  |  | 
|  | Mount debugfs (it has to be enabled in your kernel configuration), and | 
|  | load the usbmon module (if built as module). The second step is skipped | 
|  | if usbmon is built into the kernel. | 
|  |  | 
|  | # mount -t debugfs none_debugs /sys/kernel/debug | 
|  | # modprobe usbmon | 
|  |  | 
|  | Verify that bus sockets are present. | 
|  |  | 
|  | [root@lembas zaitcev]# ls /sys/kernel/debug/usbmon | 
|  | 1s  1t  2s  2t  3s  3t  4s  4t | 
|  | [root@lembas zaitcev]# | 
|  |  | 
|  | # ls /sys/kernel | 
|  |  | 
|  | 2. Find which bus connects to the desired device | 
|  |  | 
|  | Run "cat /proc/bus/usb/devices", and find the T-line which corresponds to | 
|  | the device. Usually you do it by looking for the vendor string. If you have | 
|  | many similar devices, unplug one and compare two /proc/bus/usb/devices outputs. | 
|  | The T-line will have a bus number. Example: | 
|  |  | 
|  | T:  Bus=03 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=00 Cnt=01 Dev#=  2 Spd=12  MxCh= 0 | 
|  | D:  Ver= 1.10 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs=  1 | 
|  | P:  Vendor=0557 ProdID=2004 Rev= 1.00 | 
|  | S:  Manufacturer=ATEN | 
|  | S:  Product=UC100KM V2.00 | 
|  |  | 
|  | Bus=03 means it's bus 3. | 
|  |  | 
|  | 3. Start 'cat' | 
|  |  | 
|  | # cat /sys/kernel/debug/usbmon/3t > /tmp/1.mon.out | 
|  |  | 
|  | This process will be reading until killed. Naturally, the output can be | 
|  | redirected to a desirable location. This is preferred, because it is going | 
|  | to be quite long. | 
|  |  | 
|  | 4. Perform the desired operation on the USB bus | 
|  |  | 
|  | This is where you do something that creates the traffic: plug in a flash key, | 
|  | copy files, control a webcam, etc. | 
|  |  | 
|  | 5. Kill cat | 
|  |  | 
|  | Usually it's done with a keyboard interrupt (Control-C). | 
|  |  | 
|  | At this point the output file (/tmp/1.mon.out in this example) can be saved, | 
|  | sent by e-mail, or inspected with a text editor. In the last case make sure | 
|  | that the file size is not excessive for your favourite editor. | 
|  |  | 
|  | * Raw text data format | 
|  |  | 
|  | The '0t' type data consists of a stream of events, such as URB submission, | 
|  | URB callback, submission error. Every event is a text line, which consists | 
|  | of whitespace separated words. The number of position of words may depend | 
|  | on the event type, but there is a set of words, common for all types. | 
|  |  | 
|  | Here is the list of words, from left to right: | 
|  | - URB Tag. This is used to identify URBs is normally a kernel mode address | 
|  | of the URB structure in hexadecimal. | 
|  | - Timestamp in microseconds, a decimal number. The timestamp's resolution | 
|  | depends on available clock, and so it can be much worse than a microsecond | 
|  | (if the implementation uses jiffies, for example). | 
|  | - Event Type. This type refers to the format of the event, not URB type. | 
|  | Available types are: S - submission, C - callback, E - submission error. | 
|  | - "Pipe". The pipe concept is deprecated. This is a composite word, used to | 
|  | be derived from information in pipes. It consists of three fields, separated | 
|  | by colons: URB type and direction, Device address, Endpoint number. | 
|  | Type and direction are encoded with two bytes in the following manner: | 
|  | Ci Co   Control input and output | 
|  | Zi Zo   Isochronous input and output | 
|  | Ii Io   Interrupt input and output | 
|  | Bi Bo   Bulk input and output | 
|  | Device address and Endpoint number are decimal numbers with leading zeroes | 
|  | or 3 and 2 positions, correspondingly. | 
|  | - URB Status. This field makes no sense for submissions, but is present | 
|  | to help scripts with parsing. In error case, it contains the error code. | 
|  | In case of a setup packet, it contains a Setup Tag. If scripts read a number | 
|  | in this field, they proceed to read Data Length. Otherwise, they read | 
|  | the setup packet before reading the Data Length. | 
|  | - Setup packet, if present, consists of 5 words: one of each for bmRequestType, | 
|  | bRequest, wValue, wIndex, wLength, as specified by the USB Specification 2.0. | 
|  | These words are safe to decode if Setup Tag was 's'. Otherwise, the setup | 
|  | packet was present, but not captured, and the fields contain filler. | 
|  | - Data Length. This is the actual length in the URB. | 
|  | - Data tag. The usbmon may not always capture data, even if length is nonzero. | 
|  | Only if tag is '=', the data words are present. | 
|  | - Data words follow, in big endian hexadecimal format. Notice that they are | 
|  | not machine words, but really just a byte stream split into words to make | 
|  | it easier to read. Thus, the last word may contain from one to four bytes. | 
|  | The length of collected data is limited and can be less than the data length | 
|  | report in Data Length word. | 
|  |  | 
|  | Here is an example of code to read the data stream in a well known programming | 
|  | language: | 
|  |  | 
|  | class ParsedLine { | 
|  | int data_len;		/* Available length of data */ | 
|  | byte data[]; | 
|  |  | 
|  | void parseData(StringTokenizer st) { | 
|  | int availwords = st.countTokens(); | 
|  | data = new byte[availwords * 4]; | 
|  | data_len = 0; | 
|  | while (st.hasMoreTokens()) { | 
|  | String data_str = st.nextToken(); | 
|  | int len = data_str.length() / 2; | 
|  | int i; | 
|  | int b;	// byte is signed, apparently?! XXX | 
|  | for (i = 0; i < len; i++) { | 
|  | // data[data_len] = Byte.parseByte( | 
|  | //     data_str.substring(i*2, i*2 + 2), | 
|  | //     16); | 
|  | b = Integer.parseInt( | 
|  | data_str.substring(i*2, i*2 + 2), | 
|  | 16); | 
|  | if (b >= 128) | 
|  | b *= -1; | 
|  | data[data_len] = (byte) b; | 
|  | data_len++; | 
|  | } | 
|  | } | 
|  | } | 
|  | } | 
|  |  | 
|  | This format may be changed in the future. | 
|  |  | 
|  | Examples: | 
|  |  | 
|  | An input control transfer to get a port status. | 
|  |  | 
|  | d5ea89a0 3575914555 S Ci:001:00 s a3 00 0000 0003 0004 4 < | 
|  | d5ea89a0 3575914560 C Ci:001:00 0 4 = 01050000 | 
|  |  | 
|  | An output bulk transfer to send a SCSI command 0x5E in a 31-byte Bulk wrapper | 
|  | to a storage device at address 5: | 
|  |  | 
|  | dd65f0e8 4128379752 S Bo:005:02 -115 31 = 55534243 5e000000 00000000 00000600 00000000 00000000 00000000 000000 | 
|  | dd65f0e8 4128379808 C Bo:005:02 0 31 > | 
|  |  | 
|  | * Raw binary format and API | 
|  |  | 
|  | TBD |