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I have a number of USB ports on my computer, some USB 2 and some USB 3. I want to plug a device into a USB 3 port. Unfortunately, they're all black so I can't use the usual "USB 3.0 ports are blue" rule of thumb.
This is a Linux box, so is there any way to know if I've plugged the device into a USB 3 port, maybe using some command line utility or by inspecting some kernel messages?
You can determine the USB version by running lsusb
Try using something like:
lsusb -D /dev/bus/usb/002/005
The USB 2.00/3.00 corresponds to USB 2.0 / 3.0
Perhaps even try using lsusb -t
The first conversion chart will help you determine the USB version.
Take a look at THIS link for more examples.
As @MarkHu and @Matthew noted, the currently accepted answer (lsusb -D) has the potential to be misleading, since it lists the speed(s) which are supported by the device, not the actual speed. Or, at least I couldn't use its output to find current device speed.
Does it matter whether it's a USB 3 port if it doesn't negotiate USB 3 speeds?
Looking at the actual speed on a Linux box is a bit of an hassle; lsusb doesn't seem to offer, right now, a solution out of the box. That's what I found to be working. First, list all your connected devices and hubs to identify your device:
> lsusb
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0424:2660 Microchip Technology, Inc. (formerly SMSC) Hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1058:25ee Western Digital Technologies, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 051d:0002 American Power Conversion Uninterruptible Power Supply
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
In my case, I'm looking at the speed for my external WD MyBook disk. Hence the interesting line is:
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1058:25ee Western Digital Technologies, Inc.
But, it seems that the "Bus 001 Device 004" part isn't useful to us in order to find the current device speed. Instead, we need the two colon-separated numbers 1058:25ee, the vendor id and product id for such device.
You should now check the /sys/devices directory for the contents of the idVendor file, looking for the vendor id from above (replace 1058 with your own vendor id)
> find /sys/devices/ -name idVendor -print -exec cat {} \; | grep -B 1 1058
./pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.6/idVendor
1058
Now take the output path above here and replace idVendor with speed and look at its contents:
> cat ./pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.6/speed
480
This way you're discovering a 480Mbps USB 2.0 connection.
If you've got multiple connected devices, you may check idProduct contents as well. If you've got multiple identical devices, look for the contents of serial as well.
My experience is that the lsusb -D command can be a misleading if it reports "capabilities" not currently enabled by the type of jack into which your device is plugged. See below example of filtered output (the entire output of sudo lsusb -D ${USB_DEVICE_PATH} was 80+ lines). In the this example, I deduce bcdUSB 3.00 should imply Device can operate at SuperSpeed (5Gbps) --though that line was still present when I plugged in my drive to a USB 2 jack for comparison.
$ lsusb -D /dev/bus/usb/007/003 | egrep -i 'usb|speed|version|Mbps|gbps|id|speed'
Device: ID 174c:1153 ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM2115 SATA 6Gb/s bridge
bcdUSB 3.00
idVendor 0x174c ASMedia Technology Inc.
idProduct 0x1153 ASM2115 SATA 6Gb/s bridge
SuperSpeed USB Device Capability:
wSpeedsSupported 0x000e
Device can operate at Full Speed (12Mbps)
Device can operate at High Speed (480Mbps)
Device can operate at SuperSpeed (5Gbps)
Lowest fully-functional device speed is Full Speed (12Mbps)
Note also that the idProduct line contained some advisory/marketing text about 6Gb/s which should not be interpreted as an attainable speed.
Alternate short command that might be more useful:
$ sudo lsusb -t | egrep -i "storage" -B1
/: Bus 07.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/2p, 5000M
|__ Port 1: Dev 3, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=usb-storage, 5000M
If you want to find out the actual speed of the connection (as opposed to the capacities reported by lsusb), you can read the "speed" files from /sys/devices. Assuming you can connect and disconnect the device freely, you can use the following script to make the process semi-automatic. Another script to get a full list is described below.
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-2/speed 480
Or:
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-3/2-3.3/2-3.3.1/speed 5000
Here are the possible speeds, in Mbit/s:
And here is the script. I call it usbspeed-get:
#!/bin/bash
set -e
LIST1=`mktemp`
LIST2=`mktemp`
echo "Getting list of current devices..."
find /sys/devices -name speed | sort > "$LIST1"
echo -n "Now plug the relevant USB device and press ENTER..."
read dummy
find /sys/devices -name speed | sort > "$LIST2"
comm -3 "$LIST1" "$LIST2" | while read f ; do
echo -n "$f" " "
cat "$f"
done | column -t -s' '
rm "$LIST1" "$LIST2"
If you prefer to have an overview of all devices and according speeds, you can use the following script. I call it usbspeed-list.
#!/bin/bash
sep="|"
find /sys/devices -name speed | grep usb | while read f ; do
dir=`dirname "$f"`
for name in speed manufacturer product ; do
cat "$dir/$name" 2>/dev/null | tr '\n' ' '
echo -n "$sep"
done
echo -n "$dir$sep"
echo
done | column -t --separator "$sep"
By default it will output the devices in the order they are found in /sys/devices. If you want to sort them by speed, you can combine it with sort -n:
usbspeed-list | sort -n
1.5 Keyboard /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-3/1-3.4/1-3.4.4/1-3.4.4.2
1.5 Texas Instruments TPS65983B /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-3/1-3.3/1-3.3.2
12 Silicon Laboratories EFM8 HID ISP /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-3/1-3.3/1-3.3.3
12 /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-14
480 GenesysLogic USB2.0 Hub /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-3/1-3.4/1-3.4.4
480 GenesysLogic USB2.0 Hub /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-3/1-3.4/1-3.4.4/1-3.4.4.4
480 Linux 5.19.0-38-generic xhci-hcd xHCI Host Controller /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1
480 Sonix Technology Co., Ltd. USB2.0 Camera /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-8
480 USB2.0 Hub /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-3/1-3.4/1-3.4.4/1-3.4.4.1
480 VIA Labs, Inc. USB2.0 Hub /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-3
480 VIA Labs, Inc. USB2.0 Hub /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-3/1-3.3
480 VIA Labs, Inc. USB2.0 Hub /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-3/1-3.4
1000 /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-3/2-3.1/2-3.1:1.5/net/enx806d9711f2b1
5000 DisplayLink USB-C Triple-4K Dock /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-3/2-3.1
5000 Generic USB Storage /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-3/2-3.4/2-3.4.4/2-3.4.4.4/2-3.4.4.4.4
5000 GenesysLogic USB3.0 Hub /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-3/2-3.4/2-3.4.4
5000 GenesysLogic USB3.0 Hub /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-3/2-3.4/2-3.4.4/2-3.4.4.4
5000 Prolific Technology Inc. ATAPI-6 Bridge Controller /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-2
5000 Seagate BUP Portable /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-3/2-3.2
5000 Space keys USB3.1 Storage Device /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-3/2-3.3/2-3.3.1
5000 VIA Labs, Inc. USB3.0 Hub /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-3
5000 VIA Labs, Inc. USB3.0 Hub /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-3/2-3.3
5000 VIA Labs, Inc. USB3.0 Hub /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-3/2-3.4
10000 Linux 5.19.0-38-generic xhci-hcd xHCI Host Controller /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2
Here the keyboard is connected at a very low speed (1.5), which is normal, and the USB hard disk dock (ATAPI-6 Bridge Controller) is connected at 5000MBit/s.
Another way to list the devices and their speed is the "usb-devices" script provided by usbutils and installed by default by some distributions. It is more generic but also very verbose. It reports the speed on the first line of the device description:
T: Bus=02 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=01 Cnt=01 Dev#= 44 Spd=5000 MxCh= 0
D: Ver= 3.00 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 9 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=067b ProdID=2773 Rev=01.00
S: Manufacturer=Prolific Technology Inc.
S: Product=ATAPI-6 Bridge Controller
S: SerialNumber=0123456789000000005
C: #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=c0 MxPwr=96mA
I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=06 Prot=50 Driver=usb-storage
E: Ad=01(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS=1024 Ivl=0ms
E: Ad=84(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS=1024 Ivl=0ms
Make sure that you use a recent version. The version provided with Ubuntu 22.04 does not list all devices.
