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System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems     Oracle Solaris 11 Express 11/10
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Document Information

Preface

1.  Managing Removable Media (Overview)

2.  Managing Removable Media (Tasks)

3.  Accessing Removable Media (Tasks)

4.  Writing CDs and DVDs (Tasks)

5.  Managing Devices (Overview/Tasks)

6.  Dynamically Configuring Devices (Tasks)

7.  Using USB Devices (Overview)

What's New in USB Devices?

USB Interface Association Descriptor Support

EHCI Isochronous Transfer Support

Support for CDC ACM Devices

Changed USB Device Hotpluggable Behavior

Oracle Solaris ZFS Support on USB Devices

Support for Prolific and Keyspan Serial Adapters

USB Power Budgeting

x86: Support for USB CDs and DVDs in GRUB-Based Booting

USB Virtual Keyboard and Mouse Support

Solaris Support for USB Devices

Overview of USB Devices

Commonly Used USB Acronyms

USB Bus Description

USB Devices and Drivers

USB Driver Enhancements

The EHCI, OHCI, and UHCI Drivers

Solaris USB Architecture (USBA)

About USB in the Oracle Solaris OS

USB 2.0 Features

USB 2.0 Device Features and Compatibility Issues

Bus-Powered Devices

USB Keyboards and Mouse Devices

USB Wheel Mouse Support

USB Host Controller and Hubs

USB Hub Devices

SPARC: USB Power Management

Guidelines for USB Cables

8.  Using USB Devices (Tasks)

9.  Using InfiniBand Devices (Overview/Tasks)

10.  Managing Disks (Overview)

11.  Administering Disks (Tasks)

12.  SPARC: Adding a Disk (Tasks)

13.  x86: Adding a Disk (Tasks)

14.  Configuring iSCSI Storage Devices With COMSTAR

15.  Configuring and Managing the Solaris Internet Storage Name Service (iSNS)

16.  Managing Disk Use (Tasks)

17.  The format Utility (Reference)

18.  Managing File Systems (Overview)

19.  Creating ZFS, UFS, TMPFS, and LOFS File Systems (Tasks)

20.  Mounting and Unmounting File Systems (Tasks)

21.  Configuring Additional Swap Space (Tasks)

22.  Copying Files and File Systems (Tasks)

23.  Managing Tape Drives (Tasks)

Index

What's New in USB Devices?

The following section describes new USB features in the Solaris release.

USB Interface Association Descriptor Support

Oracle Solaris 11 Express: A USB device node type, IA node, is created for Interface Association Descriptor (IAD) support. This feature means that a driver might support multiple interfaces for the same device, such as the video and audio interfaces of a webcam. If no driver is found for an IA node, a nexus driver, usb_ia, is bound to the IA node to create the interface nodes. For more information, see usb_ia(7D).

EHCI Isochronous Transfer Support

Oracle Solaris 11 Express: USB EHCI host controller driver provides isochronous transfer support for USB 2.0 or high-speed isochronous devices. For more information, see usb_isoc_request(9S).

Support for CDC ACM Devices

Oracle Solaris 11 Express: Support for CDC ACM devices is provided in this release. For more information, see USB Driver Enhancements.

Changed USB Device Hotpluggable Behavior

Oracle Solaris 11 Express: This Solaris release introduces a new device attribute, hotpluggable, to identify those devices that can be connected or disconnected without rebooting the system and configured or unconfigured automatically without user intervention. All USB and 1394 devices are identified as hotpluggable devices to gain those benefits described in Using USB Mass Storage Devices. In addition, non-removable media USB and 1394 devices are no longer identified as removable-media devices and no longer have a removable-media attribute.

The changes are primarily made at the kernel level to improve support for non-removable media USB and 1394 devices, and improve the performance for those devices. However, theses changes do not impact the use of these devices. For example, the responsibility of mounting and unmounting these devices is controlled by rmvolmgr. From a user's perspective, the only visible changes are the hotpluggable and removable-media attributes of a device.

For more information, see USB and 1394 (FireWire) Support Enhancements.

Oracle Solaris ZFS Support on USB Devices

Oracle Solaris 11 Express: You can create and mount ZFS file systems on USB mass storage devices. For information about using USB mass storage devices, see Using USB Mass Storage Devices.

For information about creating and mounting ZFS file systems, see zfs(1M) and zpool(1M).

Support for Prolific and Keyspan Serial Adapters

Oracle Solaris 11 Express: Support for Prolific and Keyspan serial adapters is provided in this release. For more information, see USB Driver Enhancements.

USB Power Budgeting

Oracle Solaris 11 Express: This Solaris release includes power budgeting of USB devices to better manage the power that is distributed to USB devices. Power budget control helps prevent over-current conditions from occurring and generally makes using USB devices safer. For more information about Solaris USB power budgeting limitations, see Bus-Powered Devices.

x86: Support for USB CDs and DVDs in GRUB-Based Booting

Oracle Solaris 11 Express: You can use the following USB features in the GRUB-based booting environment:

For more information about GRUB-based booting, see Chapter 4, Shutting Down and Booting a System (Overview), in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.

USB Virtual Keyboard and Mouse Support

Oracle Solaris 11 Express: USB virtual keyboard and mouse support enables you to hook up multiple keyboards and multiple mice, where the set of keyboards or mice behave as one virtual keyboard or mouse. This means that the input of each physical device is coalesced into a single input stream. For example, if you type SHIFT on one keyboard and A on another, the character echoed is an uppercase A.

Also supported is the ability to add a USB keyboard or mouse to a laptop and have these devices work as one device with the laptop's PS/2 keyboard and pad.

In addition, support for barcode readers is provided by the virtual keyboard and mouse feature.

For more information, refer to virtualkm(7D).