[SWLUG] Scanners

[Paul G. Richardson]

Hi guys,

As you referred to, installation of scanners was a breeze using Fedora 
Core 1 and the 2.4 kernel. It was rather nice because I did little 
research as to the type of scanner as I picked it up in PCWorld on a 
wim. It was a Managers Special been given away cheaply due to no driver 
disc included. Thankfully Linux had no need of such driver disks.

The scanner was a Packard Bell Diamond 2400 Plus and USB. These were the 
notes I wrote myself to remind me of the config (gathered off the net 
and results of my tinkering). Note the gt68xx driver is for my scanner 
but digging around on the web site / net should show you your correct 
driver.

<NOTES>
Scanner installation - Suspiciously easier than one thought!!

Install the xsane, sane and gimp-print, gimp-sane rpms
Run xsane off the command line which fails but gives a message on where 
the scanner driver should go (yes Paul you dont necessarily have the 
driver yet)

Go to http://www.meier-geinitz.de/sane/gt68xx-backend and download the 
driver that the error message suggested

Place the driver in the appropriate directory and Robert is your 
Mother's brother!!

OCR requires separate installation of gocr. Install this and to use ocr 
just ensure the program is in the xsane setup and ask to save the file 
as TEXT. Does OCR automatically.
</NOTES>

However upgrading to FC2 (2.6 kernel) produced problems similar to those 
Phil encountered. Yet after a couple of days head scratching the 
problems were all ironed out and I can use my scanner just like FC1.

My Notes are below that point to problems encountered, things I checked 
and their solutions. I would stress that if there is a problem with only 
the root user using sane then examine the permissions of the USB devices 
in /dev as a possible avenue of investigation.

<MORE NOTES>
In addition to the Scanner documentation, the 2.6 kernel
uses usblib as the module for dealing with scanners. This means that all 
versions below of sane-backend below 1.14 will not work correctly out of 
the box becuase the hotplug usb script mounts the device as root and 
thus no user can see the
scanner device.

There is a fix for this in 1.14

Installing 1.14 on its own I used /etc as the config directory. However, 
unless
the environment variable SANE_CONFIG_DIR specifies the /etc/sane.d 
directory scanimage will not find the scanner unless you are in 
/etc/sane.d (using .) or the
backend was installed using /usr/local/etc/sane.d.
So this env variable needs to be set in order to use the scanner.

Also in the gt68xx.conf file specify the following:
firmware "path to firmware" -> eg. /usr/share/sane/gt68xx/*.usb
/dev/usb/scanner0 -> path to the scanner device just under the firmware 
entry. Otherwise scanimage just does not find anything.

Steps to follow:
1. install package or tar
2. run sane-find-scanner to locate scanner. If usb then ensure hotplug 
stuff sorted
3. add 2 lines to gt68xx.conf file about dev location and fireware
4. place firmware in appropriate location
5. create env variable SANE_CONFIG_DIR.
6. run scanmagic -L and this should list the scanner
</MORE NOTES>

Hope this helps.

Regards

Paul

phantompgr at btopenworld.com



Philip Barnes wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-12-29 at 08:26 +0000, Nick Condon wrote: 
> 
>>I've decided it's time to get myself a scanner, but I know next to nothing. I 
>>understand I need to use SANE, and from what I can see, linux-compatibility 
>>in the scanner world is less than stellar.
>>
>>So perhaps I need to tap the wisdom of the lug. For a cheap, linux-compatible, 
>>flatbed scanner: What are you all using? Any recommendations, suggestions, 
>>do-not-touch-with-a-barge-pole war stories?
>>
> 
> Hi Nick
> I have an Epson Perfection 610, a basic USB scanner. It was working
> perfectly with the 2.4 kernel, however the 2.6 kernel seemed to break
> them all. 
> 
> I am using fedora core 3 and had not been able to use the scanner, other
> than by using an ubuntu live disc since core 2. There has been a lot of
> fixing between the kernel people and epson which now means I can scan,
> as root at the moment, using both xsane and iscan. 
> 
> Epson have a linux support/software site at
> http://www.epkowa.co.jp/english/linux_e/index.html.
> 
> To get where I am I have done a complete reinstall of FC3, as I think I
> had made a complete mess of the config trying different fixes. Before I
> even tied the scanner I upgraded to a testing kernel (2.6.9-1.715_FC3),
> the latest update one does not work. To get iscan working I had to
> edit /etc/sane.d/epkowa.conf to change the scanner line to USB.
> 
> HTH Phil
> 
> 
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