Linux NFC Device Driver Installation

Communicating with NFC hardware in the Linux operating system requires a few generic drivers to be installed on the system as well as the device’s manufacturer-provided drivers. In addition to the generic and device drivers, the Linux generic “PN533_USB” driver needs to be disabled.

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Installing Generic Linux NFC Hardware Dependencies

In order for the Linux operating system to communicate with NFC hardware, there are four dependencies that need to be installed on the system:

Open a terminal and install the above dependencies as sudo.

For example, running the below will install the first dependency.

    • sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0-dev  

Repeat until all four dependencies have been successfully installed.

Disabling PN533_USB Generic Linux NFC Drivers

The Linux operating system has a generic driver to communicate with NFC hardware. However, this generic driver is outdated and interferes with current NFC hardware communication.

Run the following command in a terminal in order to permanently disable this generic driver.

    • echo “blacklist pn533_usb” | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-libnfc.conf

This will add the PN533_USB driver to a “blacklist” that is checked during system start-up and will prevent the driver from being loaded into the Linux kernel.

Installing Device Specific Linux NFC Hardware Drivers

Many NFC Hardware requires manufacturer-supplied drivers to communicate with the device without limitation. Drivers for readers supported by the Desktop App can be found in the GoToTags Public GitLab project.