Linksys WRT3200ACM USB 3

Hello community,

lately I have noticed an increase of the disk read/write request response times (some times going >250ms) and I started to investigate a bit.
I came across this article: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/storage/usb-installing
Especially the section ** Diagnostics using lsusb** was of interest for me and I started to wonder, whether I even have USB 3 support on the LinkSys WRT3200ACM - according to LinkSys I do (https://www.linksys.com/us/support-article/?articleNum=208662#h6):
The Linksys WRT3200ACM has one (1) USB 2.0 / eSATA port and one (1) USB 3.0 port which is also backward-compatible with older versions.

Alright, so I started to check the lsusb output:

root@OpenWrt.home:~$ lsusb 
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0781:5583 SanDisk Corp. Ultra Fit
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
root@OpenWrt.home:~$ lsusb -t
/:  Bus 03.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci-hcd/1p, 5000M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=usb-storage, 5000M
/:  Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci-hcd/1p, 480M
/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=orion-ehci/1p, 480M

According to the openwrt article it is necessary to install kmod-usb3 in order to have USB 3 support (if I'm not mistaken) - so i checked whether I do have the package installed:

root@OpenWrt.home:~$ opkg list-installed | grep -i usb
kmod-usb-core - 4.14.95-1
kmod-usb-ohci - 4.14.95-1
kmod-usb-storage - 4.14.95-1
kmod-usb-uhci - 4.14.95-1
libusb-1.0 - 1.0.22-1
usbutils - 007-9
root@OpenWrt.home:~$ 

Seems like I don't - as I don't really understand the output of lsusb -t and whether xhci-hcd is an USB3 capable driver not, following my questions:

  • Is USB3 supported for the LinkSys WRT3200ACM from OpenWrt?
  • I am unsure, whether I need to install the packages mentioned or if the support for USB 3 is already built-in into OpenWrt - do I have to install the packages?
  • Is it "safe" to install the packages? As I currently don't have a "staging device" I would need to try it out on the "production device", which is running on extroot. If the driver for USB 3 is failing to load (for whatever reason), is there a fallback to the currently working driver (I guess USB 2)?

Thanks!

It is, from what i understand it's been included in the default images for mvebu (new linksys wrt series) since OpenWrt 15 (chaos calmer), the driver is xhci-hcd as you pointed out, so no need to install kmod-usb3. You can install kmod-usb-storage-uas, which adds some extra functionalities for usb3, i've never bothered to look into it, so i can't say what those functionalities are, but it's safe to install.

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