Remove USB Guard From Ubuntu

remove_usb_guard.md

Remove USB Guard From Ubuntu

If you're a sucker like me and installed usbguard on a Ubuntu variant you may find that you will have access to none of your usb devices at all, because F you. The installer automatically sets up the daemon which has no rules so will just block all of your devices. Doing a basic apt remove usbguard may fail at 25%, because also F you.

My kernel is version 4.15.0-47-generic, not sure if this stopped working at some point or what.

Regain Access

sudo echo "allow id *:*" > /etc/usbguard/rules.conf
sudo sed -i 's/PresentDevicePolicy=apply-policy/PresentDevicePolicy=allow/' /etc/usbguard/usbguard-daemon.conf
sudo reboot

Reboot may hang at stopping usbguard, again, because F you. Power off or wait. You'll hopefully have access to your devices when your machine comes back up.

Stop & Disable Services

sudo systemctl stop usbguard.service
sudo systemctl disable usbguard.service
sudo systemctl stop usbguard-dbus.service
sudo systemctl disable usbguard-dbus.service

Uninstall and Purge

sudo apt remove usbguard -y
sudo apt purge usbguard -y

Remove Conf Files

sudo rm -rf /etc/usbguard/

Reboot

I had issues until I rebooted for whatever reason.

 sudo reboot

Now you're free!

thank you , and thanks for proving the instructions. It was necessary to use apt-get purge to fully remove it, which is not obvious.

man, you captured my sentiments to the T. Did this on a raspberry pi so had to take sd card out, put in usb adapter behind my machine on a usb-c port, and crawl my fat ass back out 2x. I kept the install and fixed it once back in tho, well see how that turns out :D

Good fucking day to us all

This article talks about the hilariousness of the problem, but also details a safe way to install USBGuard by first disabling systemd's ability to start the service: https://roussos.cc/2019/08/19/usbguard/

TL;DR Run sudo ln -s /dev/null /etc/systemd/system/usbguard.service before installing USBGuard from apt