Mastering lsusb: List and Analyze USB Devices on CentOS 7

Install usbutils

CentOS 7 does not include lsusb by default. Install it with:

yum -y install usbutils

List USB devices

Run lsusb to display each device’s bus number, device number, vendor ID, product ID and description.

Bus 001 Device 010: ID 0bda:0129 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTS5129 Card Reader Controller
Bus 001 Device 055: ID 0951:1665 Kingston Technology Digital DataTraveler SE9 64GB
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0e0f:0002 VMware, Inc. Virtual USB Hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0e0f:0003 VMware, Inc. Virtual Mouse
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Field explanation

Bus 001

– identifier of the USB controller (use lspci | grep USB to list all controllers). Device 055 – system‑assigned device number. ID – vendor and product identifiers.

Text after the IDs – manufacturer and product name.

Tree view of USB topology

Use the -t option for a hierarchical display. The speed suffixes indicate the bus speed (12M = USB 1.1, 480M = USB 2.0, 5000M = USB 3.0).

/:  Bus 04.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/4p, 5000M
/:  Bus 03.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/4p, 480M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=usb-storage, 480M
/:  Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=uhci_hcd/2p, 12M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 12M
    |__ Port 2: Dev 3, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/7p, 12M
/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=ehci-pci/6p, 480M

Verbose device information

Use -v to show full descriptors (device, configuration, interface, endpoint). Pipe to less for paging: lsusb -v | less Typical fields include bLength, bDescriptorType, bcdUSB, idVendor, idProduct, class codes, max packet size, power consumption, etc.

Count connected devices

List device nodes under /dev/bus/usb to see how many devices are present:

find /dev/bus/usb

Identify mass‑storage devices

Filter verbose output for the Mass Storage class and vendor IDs: lsusb -v | grep -E 'idVendor|Mass Storage' This isolates entries such as:

idVendor           0x0951 Kingston Technology
bInterfaceClass    8 Mass Storage

Query a single device

Use the -D option with the device node path to retrieve its full descriptor set:

lsusb -D /dev/bus/usb/001/056