how to attach a USB device to ubuntu 20 running on WSL

This article will tackle the steps needed to attach a usb device to ubuntu through WSL on windows 10

for this tutorial you will nedd

- Ubuntu 20.xx on wsl2

- mobixterm

to start the process you need to run ubuntu

and type the following on your terminal

pc:~$ sudo apt install linux-tools-5.4.0-77-generic hwdata
pc:~$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/local/bin/usbip usbip /usr/lib/linux-tools/5.4.0-77-generic/usbip 20

Attaching a device

First ensure a WSL command prompt is open. This will keep the WSL 2 lightweight VM active.

From an administrator command prompt on Windows, run this command. It will list all the USB devices connected to Windows.

pc:cmdadmin> usbipd wsl list

Select the bus ID of the device you’d like to attach to WSL and run this command. You’ll be prompted by WSL for a password to run a sudo command.

pc:cmdadmin> usbipd wsl attach --busid <busid>

From within WSL, run lsusb to list the attached USB devices. You should see the device you just attached and be able to interact with it using normal Linux tools. Note that depending on your application, you may need to configure udev rules to allow non-root users to access the device.

Once you are done using the device in WSL, you can either physically disconnect the device or run this command from an administrator command prompt on Windows.

pc:cmdadmin> usbipd wsl detach --busid <busid>

it is possible for the USB not to work due to rules issue for example if you want to link serial communicaiton with ubuntu

in this case its posible to use this command

pc:~$ ls /dev/tty* | grep USB

pc:~$ sudo chown user: /dev/ttyUSB0

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