USBIP: cannot attach devices (Raspbian Stretch)

Question

I have USBIP installed, and it seems to be working in so much as I list USB devices, but attempts to connect fail. I have tried with the raspberry pi (zero W) configured as server and as client, but neither works.

Setup: Raspberry Pi running Raspbian Stretch Lite from raspberrypi.org (version June 2018).
Desktop system running Ubuntu 16.04 (18.04 also tried with identical results)

My scenario: I want to share a USB device connected to my raspberry pi with my Ubuntu system. I have tested sharing devices between two ubuntu systems, and that works fine, but when it comes to raspbian, I can list the USB devices that are bound with usbip on the raspberry pi from my Ubuntu machine, but I can't connect to any of them.

I have used modprobe to add usbip-core, usbip-host, and vhci-hcd on all machines in question.

I tried the steps listed here, but it looks like the June 2018 kernel and modules are already compiled with the options listed in that answer, and recompiling made no difference.

Like I said, listing files works just fine: from my Ubuntu PC, I run the following, where 10.10.10.139 is the IP address of my PiZeroW

$ usbip list -r 10.10.10.139
Exportable USB devices
======================
 - 10.10.10.139
        1-1: GreenAsia Inc. : unknown product (0e8f:2517)
           : /sys/devices/platform/soc/20980000.usb/usb1/1-1
           : (Defined at Interface level) (00/00/00)


$ sudo usbip --debug attach -r 10.10.10.139 -b 1-1
usbip: debug: usbip.c:141:[run_command] running command: `attach'
usbip: debug: usbip_network.c:199:[usbip_net_recv_op_common] request failed at peer: 1
usbip: error: recv op_common
usbip: error: query

For kicks, I tried the opposite of what I'm trying to accomplish (connect to a USB device hosted by the Ubuntu system from the PiZeroW). This resulted in the following (run from the PiZeroW), where 10.10.10.138 is the IP of my Ubuntu PC.

$ usbip list -r 10.10.10.138
Exportable USB devices
======================
 - 10.10.10.138
        1-1: Alcor Micro Corp. : Multi Flash Reader (058f:6366)
           : /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-1
           : (Defined at Interface level) (00/00/00)
           :  0 - Mass Storage / SCSI / Bulk-Only (08/06/50)


$ lsmod | grep -P "(usbip|vhci_hcd)"
vhci_hcd               20998  0
usbip_host             15036  0
usbip_core             10550  2 vhci_hcd,usbip_host


$ sudo usbip --debug attach -r 10.10.10.138 -b 1-1
usbip: debug: usbip.c:141:[run_command] running command: `attach'
libusbip: error: udev_device_new_from_subsystem_sysname failed
usbip: error: open vhci_driver
usbip: error: query

As you can see, the modules are all loaded, but I'm still getting errors that don't quite make sense. Is something wrong with the modules that I've added? How can I fix this?

On a separate note: For what it's worth, I dumped Kali Linux on the SD card and installed usbip, and it works like a charm. I'd really like to have this working in Raspbian though.

Answer 1

After some consideration and some time away from the problem, I've found my solution. Thanks to RubberStamp's comments on my original post, I discovered that everything worked just fine in Debian Buster.

Ubuntu 18.04 does not have a usbip package, but the executable is included in the linux-tools-generic package. Furthermore, the usbip application provided by this package works when used between two Ubuntu 18.04 systems.

I got everything to work with the Raspberry Pi by removing the linux-tools-*generic packages from my Ubuntu machine and then installing the usbip package for Debian Buster, available here (amd64 architecture). With this package installed, I went through the typical setup that I described in my question above, and I was able to attach from my Ubuntu 18.04 machine to USB devices connected to my Raspberry Pi!

Answer 2

Well I had exactly this problem but between ubuntu 18.04 client to RasPi-4 server with an Eaton UPS, but usbip_2.0+4.19.132-1_amd64.deb won't install on my system, usbip is in linux-tools-generic 4.15.0.166.155 and it's the one in there that won't work. On the client, list works ok by attach fails, eventually. Temporarily fix was on the server, unbind and bind UPS then try attach from client, this worked but then failed ie list immediately after attach, fail. Do list works again, list works, attach then fails - still no solution