3 The name "usbmon" in lowercase refers to a facility in kernel which is
4 used to collect traces of I/O on the USB bus. This function is analogous
5 to a packet socket used by network monitoring tools such as tcpdump(1)
6 or Ethereal. Similarly, it is expected that a tool such as usbdump or
7 USBMon (with uppercase letters) is used to examine raw traces produced
10 The usbmon reports requests made by peripheral-specific drivers to Host
11 Controller Drivers (HCD). So, if HCD is buggy, the traces reported by
12 usbmon may not correspond to bus transactions precisely. This is the same
13 situation as with tcpdump.
15 Two APIs are currently implemented: "text" and "binary". The binary API
16 is available through a character device in /dev namespace and is an ABI.
17 The text API is deprecated since 2.6.35, but available for convenience.
19 * How to use usbmon to collect raw text traces
21 Unlike the packet socket, usbmon has an interface which provides traces
22 in a text format. This is used for two purposes. First, it serves as a
23 common trace exchange format for tools while more sophisticated formats
24 are finalized. Second, humans can read it in case tools are not available.
26 To collect a raw text trace, execute following steps.
30 Mount debugfs (it has to be enabled in your kernel configuration), and
31 load the usbmon module (if built as module). The second step is skipped
32 if usbmon is built into the kernel.
34 # mount -t debugfs none_debugs /sys/kernel/debug
38 Verify that bus sockets are present.
40 # ls /sys/kernel/debug/usb/usbmon
41 0s 0u 1s 1t 1u 2s 2t 2u 3s 3t 3u 4s 4t 4u
44 Now you can choose to either use the socket '0u' (to capture packets on all
45 buses), and skip to step #3, or find the bus used by your device with step #2.
46 This allows to filter away annoying devices that talk continuously.
48 2. Find which bus connects to the desired device
50 Run "cat /proc/bus/usb/devices", and find the T-line which corresponds to
51 the device. Usually you do it by looking for the vendor string. If you have
52 many similar devices, unplug one and compare two /proc/bus/usb/devices outputs.
53 The T-line will have a bus number. Example:
55 T: Bus=03 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=00 Cnt=01 Dev#= 2 Spd=12 MxCh= 0
56 D: Ver= 1.10 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs= 1
57 P: Vendor=0557 ProdID=2004 Rev= 1.00
59 S: Product=UC100KM V2.00
61 Bus=03 means it's bus 3.
65 # cat /sys/kernel/debug/usb/usbmon/3u > /tmp/1.mon.out
67 to listen on a single bus, otherwise, to listen on all buses, type:
69 # cat /sys/kernel/debug/usb/usbmon/0u > /tmp/1.mon.out
71 This process will be reading until killed. Naturally, the output can be
72 redirected to a desirable location. This is preferred, because it is going
75 4. Perform the desired operation on the USB bus
77 This is where you do something that creates the traffic: plug in a flash key,
78 copy files, control a webcam, etc.
82 Usually it's done with a keyboard interrupt (Control-C).
84 At this point the output file (/tmp/1.mon.out in this example) can be saved,
85 sent by e-mail, or inspected with a text editor. In the last case make sure
86 that the file size is not excessive for your favourite editor.
88 * Raw text data format
90 Two formats are supported currently: the original, or '1t' format, and
91 the '1u' format. The '1t' format is deprecated in kernel 2.6.21. The '1u'
92 format adds a few fields, such as ISO frame descriptors, interval, etc.
93 It produces slightly longer lines, but otherwise is a perfect superset
96 If it is desired to recognize one from the other in a program, look at the
97 "address" word (see below), where '1u' format adds a bus number. If 2 colons
98 are present, it's the '1t' format, otherwise '1u'.
100 Any text format data consists of a stream of events, such as URB submission,
101 URB callback, submission error. Every event is a text line, which consists
102 of whitespace separated words. The number or position of words may depend
103 on the event type, but there is a set of words, common for all types.
105 Here is the list of words, from left to right:
107 - URB Tag. This is used to identify URBs, and is normally an in-kernel address
108 of the URB structure in hexadecimal, but can be a sequence number or any
109 other unique string, within reason.
111 - Timestamp in microseconds, a decimal number. The timestamp's resolution
112 depends on available clock, and so it can be much worse than a microsecond
113 (if the implementation uses jiffies, for example).
115 - Event Type. This type refers to the format of the event, not URB type.
116 Available types are: S - submission, C - callback, E - submission error.
118 - "Address" word (formerly a "pipe"). It consists of four fields, separated by
119 colons: URB type and direction, Bus number, Device address, Endpoint number.
120 Type and direction are encoded with two bytes in the following manner:
121 Ci Co Control input and output
122 Zi Zo Isochronous input and output
123 Ii Io Interrupt input and output
124 Bi Bo Bulk input and output
125 Bus number, Device address, and Endpoint are decimal numbers, but they may
126 have leading zeros, for the sake of human readers.
128 - URB Status word. This is either a letter, or several numbers separated
129 by colons: URB status, interval, start frame, and error count. Unlike the
130 "address" word, all fields save the status are optional. Interval is printed
131 only for interrupt and isochronous URBs. Start frame is printed only for
132 isochronous URBs. Error count is printed only for isochronous callback
135 The status field is a decimal number, sometimes negative, which represents
136 a "status" field of the URB. This field makes no sense for submissions, but
137 is present anyway to help scripts with parsing. When an error occurs, the
138 field contains the error code.
140 In case of a submission of a Control packet, this field contains a Setup Tag
141 instead of an group of numbers. It is easy to tell whether the Setup Tag is
142 present because it is never a number. Thus if scripts find a set of numbers
143 in this word, they proceed to read Data Length (except for isochronous URBs).
144 If they find something else, like a letter, they read the setup packet before
145 reading the Data Length or isochronous descriptors.
147 - Setup packet, if present, consists of 5 words: one of each for bmRequestType,
148 bRequest, wValue, wIndex, wLength, as specified by the USB Specification 2.0.
149 These words are safe to decode if Setup Tag was 's'. Otherwise, the setup
150 packet was present, but not captured, and the fields contain filler.
152 - Number of isochronous frame descriptors and descriptors themselves.
153 If an Isochronous transfer event has a set of descriptors, a total number
154 of them in an URB is printed first, then a word per descriptor, up to a
155 total of 5. The word consists of 3 colon-separated decimal numbers for
156 status, offset, and length respectively. For submissions, initial length
157 is reported. For callbacks, actual length is reported.
159 - Data Length. For submissions, this is the requested length. For callbacks,
160 this is the actual length.
162 - Data tag. The usbmon may not always capture data, even if length is nonzero.
163 The data words are present only if this tag is '='.
165 - Data words follow, in big endian hexadecimal format. Notice that they are
166 not machine words, but really just a byte stream split into words to make
167 it easier to read. Thus, the last word may contain from one to four bytes.
168 The length of collected data is limited and can be less than the data length
169 reported in the Data Length word. In the case of an Isochronous input (Zi)
170 completion where the received data is sparse in the buffer, the length of
171 the collected data can be greater than the Data Length value (because Data
172 Length counts only the bytes that were received whereas the Data words
173 contain the entire transfer buffer).
177 An input control transfer to get a port status.
179 d5ea89a0 3575914555 S Ci:1:001:0 s a3 00 0000 0003 0004 4 <
180 d5ea89a0 3575914560 C Ci:1:001:0 0 4 = 01050000
182 An output bulk transfer to send a SCSI command 0x5E in a 31-byte Bulk wrapper
183 to a storage device at address 5:
185 dd65f0e8 4128379752 S Bo:1:005:2 -115 31 = 55534243 5e000000 00000000 00000600 00000000 00000000 00000000 000000
186 dd65f0e8 4128379808 C Bo:1:005:2 0 31 >
188 * Raw binary format and API
190 The overall architecture of the API is about the same as the one above,
191 only the events are delivered in binary format. Each event is sent in
192 the following structure (its name is made up, so that we can refer to it):
194 struct usbmon_packet {
195 u64 id; /* 0: URB ID - from submission to callback */
196 unsigned char type; /* 8: Same as text; extensible. */
197 unsigned char xfer_type; /* ISO (0), Intr, Control, Bulk (3) */
198 unsigned char epnum; /* Endpoint number and transfer direction */
199 unsigned char devnum; /* Device address */
200 u16 busnum; /* 12: Bus number */
201 char flag_setup; /* 14: Same as text */
202 char flag_data; /* 15: Same as text; Binary zero is OK. */
203 s64 ts_sec; /* 16: gettimeofday */
204 s32 ts_usec; /* 24: gettimeofday */
205 int status; /* 28: */
206 unsigned int length; /* 32: Length of data (submitted or actual) */
207 unsigned int len_cap; /* 36: Delivered length */
209 unsigned char setup[SETUP_LEN]; /* Only for Control S-type */
210 struct iso_rec { /* Only for ISO */
215 int interval; /* 48: Only for Interrupt and ISO */
216 int start_frame; /* 52: For ISO */
217 unsigned int xfer_flags; /* 56: copy of URB's transfer_flags */
218 unsigned int ndesc; /* 60: Actual number of ISO descriptors */
219 }; /* 64 total length */
221 These events can be received from a character device by reading with read(2),
222 with an ioctl(2), or by accessing the buffer with mmap. However, read(2)
223 only returns first 48 bytes for compatibility reasons.
225 The character device is usually called /dev/usbmonN, where N is the USB bus
226 number. Number zero (/dev/usbmon0) is special and means "all buses".
227 Note that specific naming policy is set by your Linux distribution.
229 If you create /dev/usbmon0 by hand, make sure that it is owned by root
230 and has mode 0600. Otherwise, unpriviledged users will be able to snoop
233 The following ioctl calls are available, with MON_IOC_MAGIC 0x92:
235 MON_IOCQ_URB_LEN, defined as _IO(MON_IOC_MAGIC, 1)
237 This call returns the length of data in the next event. Note that majority of
238 events contain no data, so if this call returns zero, it does not mean that
239 no events are available.
241 MON_IOCG_STATS, defined as _IOR(MON_IOC_MAGIC, 3, struct mon_bin_stats)
243 The argument is a pointer to the following structure:
245 struct mon_bin_stats {
250 The member "queued" refers to the number of events currently queued in the
251 buffer (and not to the number of events processed since the last reset).
253 The member "dropped" is the number of events lost since the last call
256 MON_IOCT_RING_SIZE, defined as _IO(MON_IOC_MAGIC, 4)
258 This call sets the buffer size. The argument is the size in bytes.
259 The size may be rounded down to the next chunk (or page). If the requested
260 size is out of [unspecified] bounds for this kernel, the call fails with
263 MON_IOCQ_RING_SIZE, defined as _IO(MON_IOC_MAGIC, 5)
265 This call returns the current size of the buffer in bytes.
267 MON_IOCX_GET, defined as _IOW(MON_IOC_MAGIC, 6, struct mon_get_arg)
268 MON_IOCX_GETX, defined as _IOW(MON_IOC_MAGIC, 10, struct mon_get_arg)
270 These calls wait for events to arrive if none were in the kernel buffer,
271 then return the first event. The argument is a pointer to the following
275 struct usbmon_packet *hdr;
277 size_t alloc; /* Length of data (can be zero) */
280 Before the call, hdr, data, and alloc should be filled. Upon return, the area
281 pointed by hdr contains the next event structure, and the data buffer contains
282 the data, if any. The event is removed from the kernel buffer.
284 The MON_IOCX_GET copies 48 bytes to hdr area, MON_IOCX_GETX copies 64 bytes.
286 MON_IOCX_MFETCH, defined as _IOWR(MON_IOC_MAGIC, 7, struct mon_mfetch_arg)
288 This ioctl is primarily used when the application accesses the buffer
289 with mmap(2). Its argument is a pointer to the following structure:
291 struct mon_mfetch_arg {
292 uint32_t *offvec; /* Vector of events fetched */
293 uint32_t nfetch; /* Number of events to fetch (out: fetched) */
294 uint32_t nflush; /* Number of events to flush */
297 The ioctl operates in 3 stages.
299 First, it removes and discards up to nflush events from the kernel buffer.
300 The actual number of events discarded is returned in nflush.
302 Second, it waits for an event to be present in the buffer, unless the pseudo-
303 device is open with O_NONBLOCK.
305 Third, it extracts up to nfetch offsets into the mmap buffer, and stores
306 them into the offvec. The actual number of event offsets is stored into
309 MON_IOCH_MFLUSH, defined as _IO(MON_IOC_MAGIC, 8)
311 This call removes a number of events from the kernel buffer. Its argument
312 is the number of events to remove. If the buffer contains fewer events
313 than requested, all events present are removed, and no error is reported.
314 This works when no events are available too.
318 The ioctl FIONBIO may be implemented in the future, if there's a need.
320 In addition to ioctl(2) and read(2), the special file of binary API can
321 be polled with select(2) and poll(2). But lseek(2) does not work.
323 * Memory-mapped access of the kernel buffer for the binary API
325 The basic idea is simple:
327 To prepare, map the buffer by getting the current size, then using mmap(2).
328 Then, execute a loop similar to the one written in pseudo-code below:
330 struct mon_mfetch_arg fetch;
331 struct usbmon_packet *hdr;
334 fetch.offvec = vec; // Has N 32-bit words
335 fetch.nfetch = N; // Or less than N
336 fetch.nflush = nflush;
337 ioctl(fd, MON_IOCX_MFETCH, &fetch); // Process errors, too
338 nflush = fetch.nfetch; // This many packets to flush when done
339 for (i = 0; i < nflush; i++) {
340 hdr = (struct ubsmon_packet *) &mmap_area[vec[i]];
341 if (hdr->type == '@') // Filler packet
343 caddr_t data = &mmap_area[vec[i]] + 64;
344 process_packet(hdr, data);
348 Thus, the main idea is to execute only one ioctl per N events.
350 Although the buffer is circular, the returned headers and data do not cross
351 the end of the buffer, so the above pseudo-code does not need any gathering.