Hello, I apologize if this has already been discussed. The sourceforge page with the archive for this mailing list seems to be down.
Apparently libusb silently ignores at least some permission errors, and there is nothing in the API which allows such errors to be reported back to applications. As a result applications, like lsusb, which report on usb devices must be run as root lest some devices be silently omitted from the report. I can understand having some devices be entirely invisible, as are files in a directory to which the user has no permissions, but that is not the case here. The devices are visible in the /proc or /dev filesystems, presumably because the usb bus itself, which plays a role similar to a directory, is always readable. Applications should be able to deliver informative error messages regarding permissions rather than behaving as if the device does not exist. I understand that this is not a problem which can be immediately resolved. I write to be sure that t his problem is not forever unnoticed and unresolved. Whatever design is chosen it would be nice if it was consistent with the pci bus interface. (FYI, lspci(8) says: Access to some parts of the PCI configuration space is restricted to root on many operating systems, so the features of lspci available to normal users are limited. However, lspci tries its best to display as much as available and mark all other information with <access denied> text. ) See Debian Bug #440763 for more detail than is comfortable. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=440763 Regards, Karl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Free Software: "You don't pay back, you pay forward." -- Robert A. Heinlein