Credit

Originally created by NIIBE Yutaka and published to Github by Joel Dare on 31 Jan 2013.

I forked the code and stated editing as of 8 Sep 2016

Dependency

For Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install libusb-dev

Plus the GCC tool chain.

Compiling

To compile the hub-ctrl.c program run the following compile command.

gcc -o hub-ctrl hub-ctrl.c -lusb -std=c99

That results in an executable binary called hub-ctrl.

Usage

List hubs and ports (colour-coded in actual use):

$ sudo ./hub-ctrl
Hub 0 (Bus 1, Dev 4) - ganged power switching
 ├─ Port  1:  power
 ├─ Port  2:  power
 ├─ Port  3:  power connect enable
 ├─ Port  4:  power
 ├─ Port  5:  power highspeed connect enable
 ├─ Port  6:  power
 └─ Port  7:  power
Hub 1 (Bus 1, Dev 2) - individual power switching
 ├─ Port  1:  power highspeed connect enable
 ├─ Port  2: 
 ├─ Port  3:  power highspeed connect enable
 ├─ Port  4:  power
 └─ Port  5:  power
Hub 2 (Bus 1, Dev 1) - ganged power switching
 └─ Port  1:  power highspeed connect enable

Note [Hub number] or [Bus number plus Device number] and Port number of your target port/device. To control its power:

# use hub and port number to locate device/port
#   -p 0 = off; 1 = on
$ sudo ./hub-ctrl -H 0 -P 3 -p 0

or

# use bus, device and port number to locate device/port
$ sudo ./hub-ctrl -B 1 -D 4 -P 3 -p 0

A useful command to get more information of USB devices including hierarchy of chained USB hubs is:

$ lsusb -t
/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=dwc_otg/1p, 480M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/5p, 480M
        |__ Port 1: Dev 3, If 0, Class=Vendor Specific Class, Driver=smsc95xx, 480M
        |__ Port 3: Dev 4, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/7p, 480M
            |__ Port 3: Dev 25, If 0, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 12M
            |__ Port 3: Dev 25, If 1, Class=Human Interface Device, Driver=usbhid, 12M
            |__ Port 5: Dev 6, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=usb-storage, 480M

Known Issues

• No validation of command-line arguments
• Some USB ports turn back on automatically after being turned off.

TODO

• Add device description/type in port status lines. This is particularly useful in identifying chained hubs so you don't accidentally turn off an entire hub by powering off the port that it connects to. See above output of lsusb -t for an example - turning off bus 1 port 3 dev 4 will kill the 7-port hub. This relationship isn't clear in the output of sudo ./hub-ctrl.
• Convert to python script as I'm more comfortable with it.