How do I reset an USB device without unplugging it in Linux?

Question

Every now and then there might come a need to reset a USB device, is there a way to perform the reset in software without unplugging the device itself and then pluggin it back in?

More specifically I have a webcam which gets confused when playing too much with the settings in guvcapture and then needs a reset to get back on track.

Answer 1

You can restart the hardware abstraction layer: sudo /etc/init.d/hal restart

Answer 2

http://ubuntu.stackexchange.com/questions/645/how-do-you-reset-a-usb-device-from-the-command-line