powertop will set USB auto suspend for all connected devices to auto. This can be checked with head /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/control.

However, the reason this is not auto by default is because some devices does not support this properly. I'm getting the same issue as described here on my Logitech mouse, and I have confirmed that the workaround there works.

As such, let's expose postStart to allow arbitrary fixup script, since there might be other types of buggy hardware. I included an udev based example, since this is more declarative (locate device by VID and PID) than some custom bash scripts to iterate all /sys/bus/usb/devices nodes.

While we are on it, let's also expose preStart. Though I can't think of any obvious usage right now. Maybe rmmod some drivers so they won't be affected by power setting changes, and re-enable them in postStart? It is more about the completeness at this point.

As usual, I'm dogfooding this PR.

Things done

• Built on platform(s)
  • x86_64-linux
  • aarch64-linux
  • x86_64-darwin
  • aarch64-darwin
• For non-Linux: Is sandboxing enabled in nix.conf? (See Nix manual)
  • sandbox = relaxed
  • sandbox = true
• Tested, as applicable:
  • NixOS test(s) (look inside nixos/tests)
  • and/or package tests
  • or, for functions and "core" functionality, tests in lib/tests or pkgs/test
  • made sure NixOS tests are linked to the relevant packages
• Tested compilation of all packages that depend on this change using nix-shell -p nixpkgs-review --run "nixpkgs-review rev HEAD". Note: all changes have to be committed, also see nixpkgs-review usage
• Tested basic functionality of all binary files (usually in ./result/bin/)
• 25.05 Release Notes (or backporting 24.11 and 25.05 Release notes)
  • (Package updates) Added a release notes entry if the change is major or breaking
  • (Module updates) Added a release notes entry if the change is significant
  • (Module addition) Added a release notes entry if adding a new NixOS module
• Fits CONTRIBUTING.md.

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