I've noticed that gnubbies make me reauth for the purposes of SSH if I unplug them while the device is in S3 and later re-plug them before resuming. Would powering them down as suggested here cause the same issue?

+marius

Yeah, we don't really want to do that with Gnubbies. Gnubbies don't wake the system, but they use standby power to remember some small amount of state.

I think you'll find it very hard to figure out what kind of USB devices you can pull power to completely to...

A better question would be to ask why USB standby is so much power in this situation...

According to the USB spec, in sleep mode (barring things like BC 1.2 ports, Type-C power, etc) USB 2.0 devices are required to go to a state that consumes no more than 2.5mA http://www.usbmadesimple.co.uk/ums_2.htm

If we identify devices that draw more than this for some reason, especially if they're our own, we should aim to fix that instead of pulling power, which is a real big hammer.

Agreed then since gnubby has a job to perform (keeping state) we can't turn it off.  Next step I suppose is to get a measurement of its consumption to make sure its meeting the spec.  

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