New install of weewx 5 fails to claim USB

[Mary Ann Horton]

I'm having a similar problem to what I see others are having, but the solutions I see here don't seem to work for me.

I had weewx 4 running on xubuntu 20.04 for years with a Acurite USB weather station - it worked great. Then my PC died. I got a new PC, a fresh xubuntu 22.04 installation, and a fresh "apt install weewx". I'm getting the permission error:

CRITICAL weewx.drivers.acurite: Unable to claim USB interface 0: [Errno 13] Access denied (insufficient permissions)

The documentation says a fresh install will create the rule in /etc/udev/rules.d. It did not.

I found the acurite line in /etc/weewx/udev, and copied it into /etc/udev/rules.d/71-weewx.rules. Ran udevadm control --reload. service weewx restart. Same error.

I also found by unplugging the USB cable that the associated device is /dev/hidraw0. I've chowned it to weewx:weewx and chmodded it to 660. No joy.

What am I missing? How do I track this down?

[vince]

Try adding the weewx user to group plugdev if I recall correctly. Basically the user weewx runs has to be in a group that is permitted to access the hardware.

[vince]

Sorry can’t find where I wrote it up. 
https://groups.google.com/g/weewx-user/c/xCQlL3XPXhg/m/bHPnFWVLAQAJ At the bottom might help

[Mary Ann Horton]

Thank you! I added weewx to the weewx group and rebooted - that got it working.

The wiki page is also very helpful. It would be nice if the doc and the faq pointed there.

[vince]

 Found it. The bottom section of the understanding permissions page has the details of which group can do what.