Question

I have two different USB devices based on the same USB-RS232 chips.
When I plug those in the USB they are mounted to /dev/ttyUSB0…3

My problem is how, inside a script, I can find out which one is on what tty?

Using lsusb I can differentiate them:

$> lsusb | grep 0403:f850
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0403:f850 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd
$> lsusb | grep 0403:6001
Bus 004 Device 003: ID 0403:6001 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd FT232 USB-Serial (UART) IC

And using dmesg I can tell where they were mounted:

$> dmesg | grep 'FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached'
[36051.393350] usb 4-2: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB1
[36061.823513] usb 4-1: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0

But “usb 4-1” does not seem to correspond to “Bus 004 Device 002”.

Can I assume that “Bus 004 Device 001” will always be an “USB root hub” and thus dmesg will count from 1 onwards and lsusb from 2 onwards?

Or do you have another suggestion on how to correlate device ID to mount point (inside a script)?

I’m using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

Answer 1

Find more info using sysfs:

$ ls /sys/bus/usb-serial/devices/ -ltrah

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2012-02-07 22:17 ttyUSB0 -> ../../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0f.4/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/ttyUSB0

$ ls -ltrad /sys//devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0f.4/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/ttyUSB0
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 0 2012-02-07 22:17 /sys//devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0f.4/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/ttyUSB0

$ ls -ltrad /dev/ttyUSB0 
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 188, 0 2012-02-01 00:17 /dev/ttyUSB0

Of course, the linked devices/… node contains a lot of information

Adding information based on the OP’s comment:

The device number keeps growing if devices are removed/inserted. lsusb -t can be used to correlate the device numbers with usb bus/port.

Then, ‘lsusb -d devID’ can determine what device is on which port.
Finally ‘ls /sys/bus/usb-serial/devices/ -ltrah’ will list (by bus/port) where it was mounted.

Not very convenient, but it ‘works‘