usb_modeswitch command not found

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

usb_modeswitch: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: usb_modeswitch: command not found

Solutions to usb_modeswitch: command not found

How To Fix usb_modeswitch: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu usb_modeswitch is provided by usb-modeswitch package.

usb-modeswitch is:

Several new USB devices have their proprietary Windows drivers onboard, especially WAN dongles. When plugged in for the first time, they act like a flash storage and start installing the driver from there. If the driver is already installed, the storage device vanishes and a new device, such as an USB modem, shows up. This is called the “ZeroCD” feature.

On Debian, this is not needed, since the driver is included as a Linux kernel module, such as “usbserial”. However, the device still shows up as “usb-storage” by default. usb-modeswitch solves that issue by sending the command which actually performs the switching of the device from “usb-storage” to “usbserial”.

This package contains the binaries and the brother scripts.

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install usb-modeswitch

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install usb-modeswitch.

sudo apt -y install usb-modeswitch

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install usb-modeswitch

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix usb_modeswitch command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.