attack-shark-ctl: High-Performance Linux Driver & Daemon in Rust

attack shark ctl: High-Performance Bare-Metal Linux Driver & Background Daemon for Gaming Mice

Overview

A native, lightweight Linux driver CLI and systemd background service engineered for the Attack Shark gaming mouse series. It brings complete 1:1 hardware control to Linux without relying on heavy Electron wrappers or Wine emulation.

The Challenge

Attack Shark produces high-grade competitive gaming mice featuring high-precision PixArt optical sensors and 1000 Hz wireless polling rates. However, the manufacturer only distributes proprietary Windows software (.exe). The objective was to create

a fast, robust, and native Linux utility with zero overhead, enabling Linux users to configure their hardware seamlessly.

Technical Implementation & Engineering:

- Clean Room Reverse Engineering: Sniffed and analyzed raw USB/HID packets to uncover the vendor's unified communication protocol across 18 distinct hardware profiles.

- Low-Level Kernel Communication: Built with pure Rust using direct `/dev/hidraw` kernel ioctls and non-blocking I/O (no heavy third-party runtime dependencies).

- Zero-Latency Wireless: Created automated udev rules that prevent Linux runtime USB autosuspend, eliminating wake-up lag and sleep stutters over 2.4G wireless.

- Resource Efficiency: The background daemon operates under 2.5 MB of RAM and maintains 0.0% CPU usage as an unprivileged user-level systemd service.

Key Features:

- Dual-Mode Hot-Swap: Automatically detects and switches between USB-C wired mode and 2.4G wireless dongle connections dynamically.

- Polling Rate Configuration: Instant switching across 125 Hz, 250 Hz, 500 Hz, and 1000 Hz.

- Granular Optical DPI Management: Full access to all 6 onboard DPI stages with hardware register math in exact 50-DPI steps.

- Live Physical Sync: On-the-fly synchronization between the daemon and physical mouse button clicks.

- Battery Monitoring: Live fuel-gauge percentage polling with charge/discharge state detection.

- Persistence & OSD: Retains custom profile settings across system reboots and triggers native desktop OSD notifications upon button presses.

Technologies & Tools:

- Languages: Rust (Low-level Systems Programming, libc, ioctls)

- Platform & APIs: Linux Kernel (HIDRAW API, Udev Rules, Systemd Daemons)

- Scripting & Version Control: Bash, Git, GitHub