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I have a Dell laptop (Vostro Notebook 5590) with Arch Linux installed on it. I didn't use it for around 20 days (I powered it on a few times just to update it via sudo pacman -Syu, but I never connected any USB device to it).

Today, when I've connected it up to USB devices (keyboard, webcam, headset) and powered it on, I realized the external keyboard, that used to work, didn't work.

Upon rebooting, I saw the keyboard keys flash for a moment (it's a Roccat with colored lights), but it went back off in less than a second, as soon as entering GRUB.

So I checked lsusb in a terminal, but upon plugging/unplugging the keyboard, nothing changed in the output, which looked like this:

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0bda:565a Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Integrated_Webcam_HD
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 8087:0aaa Intel Corp. Bluetooth 9460/9560 Jefferson Peak (JfP)
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub

Furthermore, now I see, not even if I plug/unplug the webcam and the headphones I see any difference.

In short, no USB device seems to be detected.

However, if I reboot and go to the BIOS by hitting F12, then I do see the keyboard lighting up and working!

So I assume that all USB devices are fine, and that it's just my Arch Linux installation that for some reason is not sending power to the ports anymore.

A couple of details that might be relevant:

  • I have Arch Linux in dual-boot with Windows 10; now, I haven't booted the latter for a very long time, so I might have become blind to it being listed by GRUB; however, one of the times I powered up Arch Linux in the last 20-ish "inactivity" days, I did realize Windows was not listed by GRUB; didn't spend any time on that, but now I wonder if maybe something has gone wrong with Arch Linux update in a way that caused Windows to disappear from GRUB's list and USBs to stop working.
  • I've just finished air travel, and during the flight the laptop was with another one in my bag. I don't think it received any physical shock, not from my spine when the backpack was on my shoulders, nor during the flight, in the overhead locker.
  • When I opened the lid, the laptop seemed to wake up from sleep, even if I'm sure I had turned it off before the flight. It wasn't hot, at all. Maybe it's possible the pressure between the content of my backpack and my back has pressed the monitor against the keyboard strong enough to actually press the power button, which is just another key in the numeric keypad.
  • This question on Stack Overflow could be relevant; specifically, this answer seems to give a simple fix: add usbcore.autosuspend=-1 to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub, run update-grub, reboot; I've tried it (except that I have to run grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg instead of update-grub, as I don't have the latter wrapper on Arch Linux), but it didn't work.
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  • maybe your laptop was examined by customs/security agents
    – jsotola
    Commented Jan 1 at 17:58
  • Nope, it just passed through.
    – Enlico
    Commented Jan 1 at 18:32

1 Answer 1

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I got help from the Arch Linux forum.

The solution was to "Enable external USB ports" from the BIOS.

That box was checked some time ago (because I've been writing using my USB keyboard for years), and I definitely had not changed it (I didn't even know what that checkbox was for), so I'm not sure how it got turned off.

But that was the solution.

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