How to prevent a USB mouse auto-suspending in Linux when a laptop’s power supply is disconnected

I found that my USB mouse (and external USB keyboard) went to sleep when the mains power supply was disconnected from my laptop. This was annoying because I had to click a mouse button and wait a couple of seconds in order to wake up the mouse. You can see from the console output below that several USB devices were being auto-suspended when I unplugged the laptop PSU:

# # PSU is currently connected.
# for d in /sys/bus/usb/devices/[0-9]* ; do if [[ -e $d/product ]] ; then echo -e "`basename $d`\t`cat $d/power/control`\t`cat $d/speed`\t`cat $d/product`" ; fi ; done
1-1.2 on 1.5 USB Laser Mouse
1-1.3 on 12 BCM2046 Bluetooth Device
2-1.2 on 12 Fingerprint Sensor
2-1.3 on 480 USB 2.0 Camera
2-1.6 on 1.5 USB Keyboard
# # Now I will disconnect the PSU...
# # PSU is currently disconnected.
# for d in /sys/bus/usb/devices/[0-9]* ; do if [[ -e $d/product ]] ; then echo -e "`basename $d`\t`cat $d/power/control`\t`cat $d/speed`\t`cat $d/product`" ; fi ; done
1-1.2 auto 1.5 USB Laser Mouse
1-1.3 auto 12 BCM2046 Bluetooth Device
2-1.2 auto 12 Fingerprint Sensor
2-1.3 auto 480 USB 2.0 Camera
2-1.6 auto 1.5 USB Keyboard
#

I found out the Vendor ID (046d) and Product ID (c052) of my Logitech NX50 USB portable/travel mouse by unplugging then reconnecting the USB mouse and using the dmesg command:

[13628.909728] usb 1-1.2: USB disconnect, device number 5
[13634.454132] usb 1-1.2: new low-speed USB device number 6 using ehci_hcd
[13634.535107] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=046d, idProduct=c052
[13634.535111] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[13634.535113] usb 1-1.2: Product: USB Laser Mouse
[13634.535115] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Logitech
[13634.540168] input: Logitech USB Laser Mouse as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2:1.0/input/input17
[13634.540582] hid-generic 0003:046D:C052.0005: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [Logitech USB Laser Mouse] on usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.2/input0

First I tried creating a local Udev rule:

# cat /etc/udev/rules.d/91-local.rules
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{product}=="USB Laser Mouse", ATTR{power/control}="on"

That didn’t stop the mouse from auto-suspending (and neither did “Logitech USB Laser Mouse” instead of “USB Laser Mouse”), so I tried creating a Udev rule specifying the Vendor ID and Product ID of the mouse:

# cat /etc/udev/rules.d/91-local.rules
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="046d", ATTR{idProduct}=="c052", TEST=="power/control", ATTR{power/control}="on"

That didn’t stop the mouse from auto-suspending either.

Then I remembered that laptop-mode-tools is installed on my laptop:

# eix laptop-mode-tools
[I] app-laptop/laptop-mode-tools
Available versions: 1.60-r1 (~)1.62-r1 {(+)acpi apm bluetooth scsi}
Installed versions: 1.62-r1(18:10:15 11/01/13)(acpi bluetooth -apm -scsi)
Homepage: http://www.samwel.tk/laptop_mode/
Description: Linux kernel laptop_mode user-space utilities

So then I tried adding the mouse model to the blacklist in /etc/laptop-mode/conf.d/usb-autosuspend.conf by making AUTOSUSPEND_USBID_BLACKLIST="046d:c052" as shown below:

#
# Configuration file for Laptop Mode Tools module usb-autosuspend.
#
# For more information, consult the laptop-mode.conf(8) manual page.
#


###############################################################################
# USB autosuspend settings
# ------------------------
#
# If you enable this setting, laptop mode tools will automatically enable the
# USB autosuspend feature for all devices.
#
# NOTE: Some USB devices claim they support autosuspend, but implement it in a
# broken way. This can mean keyboards losing keypresses, or optical mice turning
# their LED completely off. If you have a device that misbehaves, add its USB ID
# to the blacklist below and complain to your hardware vendor.
################################################################################

# Enable debug mode for this module
# Set to 1 if you want to debug this module
DEBUG=0

# Enable USB autosuspend feature?
# Set to 0 to disable
CONTROL_USB_AUTOSUSPEND="auto"

# Set this to use opt-in/whitelist instead of opt-out/blacklist for deciding
# which USB devices should be autosuspended.
# AUTOSUSPEND_USE_WHITELIST=0 means AUTOSUSPEND_*_BLACKLIST will be used.
# AUTOSUSPEND_USE_WHITELIST=1 means AUTOSUSPEND_*_WHITELIST will be used.
AUTOSUSPEND_USE_WHITELIST=0

# The list of USB IDs that should not use autosuspend. Use lsusb to find out the
# IDs of your USB devices.
# Example: AUTOSUSPEND_USBID_BLACKLIST="046d:c025 0123:abcd"
AUTOSUSPEND_USBID_BLACKLIST="046d:c052"

# The list of USB driver types that should not use autosuspend.  The driver
# type is given by "DRIVER=..." in a USB device's uevent file.
# Example: AUTOSUSPEND_USBID_BLACKLIST="usbhid usb-storage"
AUTOSUSPEND_USBTYPE_BLACKLIST=""

# The list of USB IDs that should use autosuspend. Use lsusb to find out the
# IDs of your USB devices.
# Example: AUTOSUSPEND_USBID_WHITELIST="046d:c025 0123:abcd"
AUTOSUSPEND_USBID_WHITELIST=""

# The list of USB driver types that should use autosuspend.  The driver
# type is given by "DRIVER=..." in a USB device's uevent file.
# Example: AUTOSUSPEND_USBTYPE_WHITELIST="usbhid usb-storage"
AUTOSUSPEND_USBTYPE_WHITELIST=""

# Trigger auto-suspension of the USB deivce under conditional circumstances
BATT_SUSPEND_USB=1
LM_AC_SUSPEND_USB=0
NOLM_AC_SUSPEND_USB=0

# USB Auto-Suspend timeout in seconds
# Number of seconds after which the USB devices should suspend
AUTOSUSPEND_TIMEOUT=2

And now the mouse no longer suspends when I unplug the PSU:

# # PSU is currently connected.
# for d in /sys/bus/usb/devices/[0-9]* ; do if [[ -e $d/product ]] ; then echo -e "`basename $d`\t`cat $d/power/control`\t`cat $d/speed`\t`cat $d/product`" ; fi ; done
1-1.2 on 1.5 USB Laser Mouse
1-1.3 on 12 BCM2046 Bluetooth Device
2-1.2 on 12 Fingerprint Sensor
2-1.3 on 480 USB 2.0 Camera
2-1.6 on 1.5 USB Keyboard
# # Now I will disconnect the PSU...
# # PSU is currently disconnected.
# for d in /sys/bus/usb/devices/[0-9]* ; do if [[ -e $d/product ]] ; then echo -e "`basename $d`\t`cat $d/power/control`\t`cat $d/speed`\t`cat $d/product`" ; fi ; done
1-1.2 on 1.5 USB Laser Mouse
1-1.3 auto 12 BCM2046 Bluetooth Device
2-1.2 auto 12 Fingerprint Sensor
2-1.3 auto 480 USB 2.0 Camera
2-1.6 auto 1.5 USB Keyboard
# # Now I will reconnect the PSU...
# # PSU is currently connected.
# for d in /sys/bus/usb/devices/[0-9]* ; do if [[ -e $d/product ]] ; then echo -e "`basename $d`\t`cat $d/power/control`\t`cat $d/speed`\t`cat $d/product`" ; fi ; done
1-1.2 on 1.5 USB Laser Mouse
1-1.3 on 12 BCM2046 Bluetooth Device
2-1.2 on 12 Fingerprint Sensor
2-1.3 on 480 USB 2.0 Camera
2-1.6 on 1.5 USB Keyboard
#

So configuring laptop-mode-tools solved the problem with the mouse. Mind you, I will probably simply make CONTROL_USB_AUTOSUSPEND="no" in /etc/laptop-mode/conf.d/usb-autosuspend.conf, as I don’t want the internal USB devices in my laptop (Bluetooth adapter, fingerprint sensor and Webcam) to auto-suspend either.

UPDATE October 22, 2014: Version 1.65 and upwards of Laptop Mode Tools functions in a different way to earlier versions, so please see my post Laptop Mode Tools revisited due to a change in its functionality regarding the new way of configuring Laptop Mode Tools to stop USB devices auto-suspending.