Mounting USB devices in ADE

To mount USB devices to ADE, they must be connected to the computer before starting ADE. Unfortunately, this requirements means that reconnecting a device requires a restart of ADE. USB devices are mounted by passing native Docker commands to ade start. e.g.:

$ ade start -- --device /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb

As described in Configuring ADE with environment variables and The .aderc File, use the ADE_DOCKER_RUN_ARGS variable to avoid typing the argument every time.

Troubleshooting USB devices

The device is available when ADE is started, but then it disappears

Check that the device is connected to a stable power source. Some PCI card and USB hubs will not provide constant power, so device will disconnect intermittently

A temporary workaround for USB problems is to mount all USB devcies:

Warning: This is not recommended as a permanent solution because it requires the --privileged flag, which gives Docker nearly all the same access to the host as processes running outside containers on the host (see the Docker documentation):

$ ade start -- --privileged -v /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb -v /dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0