I have a USB device (a modem) that is really finicky. Sometimes it works fine, but other times it refuses to connect. The only solution I have found to fix it once it gets into a bad state is to physically unplug the device and plug it back in. However, I don't always have physical access to the machine it is plugged in on, so I'm looking for a way to do this through the command line.

This post suggests running:

$ sudo modprobe -w -r usb_storage; sudo modprobe usb_storage

However I get an "unknown option -w" output. This slightly modified command:

$ sudo modprobe -r usb_storage

Fails with the message FATAL: Module usb_storage is in use. If I try to kill -9 the processes marked [usb-storage] before running they refuse to die (I think because they are deeply tied to the kernel).

Anyone know of a way to do this?

NOTE: I cross-posted this on serverfault as I didn't know which was more appropriate. I will delete and/or link whichever one is answered first.