Installing USB Redirector for Linux

USB Redirector for Linux box shot

USB Redirector for Linux works on the following Linux distributions:

  • Debian 5 and newer
  • Fedora 5 and newer
  • Gentoo 10.1 and newer
  • openSUSE 10.3 and newer
  • Mandriva 2007 and newer
  • RedHat 5 and newer
  • Ubuntu 6.06 and newer
  • others, which meet the following requirements:

    • kernel version from 2.6.27 to 6.10
    • udev subsystem
    • read-write file system (not read only)
    • kernel source code or kernel headers are required for installation

Supported architectures:

  • x86
  • x86_64(amd64)
  • arm
  • mips

Installing

Before installing USB Redirector for Linux, you need to download and extract the installation package which corresponds to your system and CPU. Download links for all supported systems are available in the Downloads section.

wget https://www.incentivespro.com/usb-redirector-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
tar -zxf ./usb-redirector-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
cd ./usb-redirector-linux-x86_64


To install USB Redirector for Linux in USB server mode, use the following command:

sudo ./installer.sh install-server


To install USB Redirector for Linux in USB client mode, use the following command:

sudo ./installer.sh install-client


To install USB Redirector for Linux in combined USB server and USB client mode, use the following command:

sudo ./installer.sh install

Uninstalling

To uninstall USB Redirector for Linux, please run uninstall.sh script. It is located in the directory where USB Redirector was installed. By default, it is located in /usr/local/usb-redirector directory.

sudo /usr/local/usb-redirector/uninstall.sh uninstall

Uninstaller script will remove all installed components of USB Redirector from your computer.

Installation Troubleshooting

If you've got an error saying Kernel sources or kernel headers directory not found during installation of USB Redirector for Linux, you may need to install kernel headers or kernel source code. It is a package that contains files required to compile USB Redirector kernel module.

The command to install this package will differ, depending on your Linux distro:

Ubuntu, Debian

sudo apt-get install make gcc linux-headers-`uname -r`

Raspbian (Raspberry Pi)

sudo apt-get install make gcc raspberrypi-kernel-headers-`dpkg-query -f='${Version}' --show raspberrypi-kernel`

Note that kernel-headers package is relased with delay, so it may not be available for the newest Raspbian kernels. In this case you have to roll-back to previous kernel to install USB Redirector. See Installing USB Redirector on Raspberry Pi topic on our Forum for more details.

RedHat, Fedora, CentOS, Scientific

yum install make gcc chkconfig kernel-devel-`uname -r`

SuSE

sudo zypper in make gcc kernel-devel

Arch Linux, Manjaro Linux

sudo pacman -Syu make gcc linux-headers

Proxmox VE

apt-get install build-essential pve-headers-`uname -r`

Other systems

Please install kernel headers (the package may be named as "kernel-headers", "kernel-devel", "linux-headers", etc.) or kernel source code package for your system. You need to install the version that exactly corresponds to your kernel version. In addition, you will need to install make and gcc, required to build USB Redirector kernel module.

If your kernel is updated after USB Redirector installtaion, you may need to re-install the program to re-compile its kernel module!
This is because kernel modules in Linux are tied to a particular kernel version, thus they need to be re-compiled for each new kernel to work correctly.

Note for Linux Kernel Versions From 2.6.25 to 2.6.28.8

Kernels versions 2.6.25 through 2.6.28.8 have a bug in USB EHCI controller driver that leads to large memory leaks with isochronous devices like webcams or audio devices.

If you have patched your kernel against this bug - please manually recompile the driver executing 'make USE_EHCI_FIX=n' command. Otherwise USB Redirector will try to automatically workaround this bug (without guaranties).

See http://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/13428/ for more information.

Please do not worry about this warning if you are not going to use USB 2.0 isochronous devices on your system.

Automatic Startup of USB Redirector at Boot

The installer will normally set USB Redirector daemon for auto-start. If it was not able to do this, please use rc.usbsrvd script that is installed in /etc/rc.d (or /etc/init.d) directory to start USB Redirector automatically.