Trivia: updating USB IDs

[Werner Almesberger]

I recently wondered how long it may take for the Qi-Hardware USB IDs
to make it into the major distributions. On my Ubuntu, which keeps
the IDs in /var/lib/usbutils/usb.ids, the date is August 2009. This
suggests that it may take a while.

Fortunately, updating the IDs is quite easy to do:

wget http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.ids.bz2
bunzip2 usb.ids.bz2 
mv usb.ids /var/lib/usbutils/        

Now, instead of cryptic numbers like

Bus 002 Device 045: ID 601a:4740  
Bus 006 Device 046: ID 20b7:1540  

lsusb will now show

Bus 002 Device 045: ID 601a:4740 Ingenic Semiconductor Ltd. XBurst Jz4740 boot mode
Bus 006 Device 046: ID 20b7:1540 Qi Hardware ben-wpan, AT86RF230-based

That'll also teach me about putting too many technical details into
those entries :) The Ben itself will still show up under the generic

Bus 002 Device 046: ID 0525:a4a2 Netchip Technology, Inc. Linux-USB Ethernet/RNDIS Gadget

- Werner