Are all of your usb devices disconnecting periodically, for seemingly no reason? Here’s the fix

Turns out this happened due to some well-meaning but ill-conceived code which made it to the linux kernel. The idea is that it saves power by disabling usb devices. The reality is, it wreaks havok for desktop users.

To see if this is affecting you, execute this command:

cat /sys/module/usbcore/parameters/autosuspend 

If you get back a

2 

then you're affected. If you don't notice anything wrong, you don't need to do anything. But if, like me, your keyboard and mouse, etc stop working sometimes, you can disable it for now by simply writing a -1 to that file, as root:

echo -1 > /sys/module/usbcore/parameters/autosuspend 

to make the change permanent, edit

/etc/default/grub 

and add

usbcore.autosuspend=-1 

to the end of the command in

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT