USB Watch Script (compare_usb.sh)

This script helps to monitor changes in USB devices connected to your system. It runs the lsusb command before and after a USB device is plugged or unplugged, and then shows the differences.

Requirements

You need the lsusb command to be installed on your system.

Installing lsusb on MacOS

You can install usbutils which includes lsusb however this sometimes only returns the device ids with no description

brew install lsusb

Installing lsusb on Linux

Most Linux distributions come with lsusb pre-installed. If you don't have it, you can install it using your package manager.

On Debian/Ubuntu-based systems:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install usbutils

On Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora-based systems:

sudo yum install usbutils

On Arch-based systems:

sudo pacman -S usbutils

Usage

1. Download or copy the compare_usb.sh script.
2. Make the script executable by running:

chmod +x compare_usb.sh

3. Run the script:

./compare_usb.sh

Follow the on-screen instructions to plug or unplug a USB device and press Enter when ready. The script will show the differences between the initial and final states of USB devices.

Adding to PATH

To run the script from any directory, you can add it to your PATH.

Steps:

1. Move the script to a directory that is in your system's PATH, or create a directory for user scripts:

mkdir -p ~/bin
mv compare_usb.sh ~/bin/

2. Add ~/bin to your PATH if it's not already included. Edit your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile:

echo 'export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc

3. Reload your terminal configuration:

source ~/.bashrc

Now you can run compare_usb.sh from anywhere by typing compare_usb.sh in the terminal.

License

This project is released under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.