[Novalug] The Solution to Xsane "Scanner Not Found" error afterUbuntu Hardy to Intrepid Ugrade

Stephen McFadden isra@dfwonline.net
Thu Dec 3 15:39:10 EST 2009


Someone once needed to configure a HP scanner 
for Sane on OpenSUSE and had no idea what to do.

In the end, they plugged in the scanner and booted 
the Knoppix live CD, which autoconfigured itself, 
and fired up Sane to access the scanner, then 
hunted down all the config files and copied the 
changes, then patched the OpenSUSE config files 
to match. It ran okay.


---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Bonnie Dalzell <bdalzell@qis.net>
Date:  Thu, 3 Dec 2009 15:17:23 -0500 (EST)

This is a summary so that all the steps are in one place, hopefully 
to help others.

Thank you so much, Jon Labadie and others for helping me with this 
problem.

  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Solution to Xsane "Scanner Not Found" error after Ubuntu Hardy to 
Intrepid Upgrade (worked as of Dec 3, 2009)

I have a SCSI Epson Perfection636 flatbed scanner. I already had Xsane 
installed before I upgraded using the upgrade tool from 
System>Administration>Update Manager.

This was not a simple solution. In fact I probably devoted at least one 
full work day to learning how to fix this.

The first thing I tried - which did not work - was to use synaptic to 
completely remove Xsane and then to reinstall it.

I would not have been able to fixed Xsane without the help of Jon Labadie 
and a number of other helpful people on the Novalug mailing list. This 
solution is compiled from their instructions and suggestions and I am 
putting it all in one document to help others.

First here are some command line tools that may or may not be 
present on your Ubuntu system. They can be added using apt-get. They are 
lsscsi, scanimage.

If they are not present and you try to invoke them with sudo from the 
command line, then your system will instruct you as to how to get them via 
apt-get.

To list the SCSI devices (Linux includes your IDE and USB devices in its 
list of SCSI devices) if you have an real SCSI devices:

>lsscsi

Resulted in:

[5:0:0:0]    disk    ATA      WDC WD2500AAJB-0 01.0  /dev/sda
[5:0:1:0]    cd/dvd  IOMEGA   DVDRW4216IND-A   1.21  /dev/sr0
[6:0:0:0]    disk    ATA      WDC WD5000AAKB-0 05.0  /dev/sdb
[6:0:1:0]    disk    ATA      WDC WD800BB-22JH 05.0  /dev/sdc
[7:0:4:0]    process EPSON    Perfection636    1.14  -
[8:0:0:0]    disk    ST325082 3A                     /dev/sdd
[9:0:0:0]    disk    Memorex  TD 2C            1.00  /dev/sde
[10:0:0:0]   cd/dvd  TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-W162L LC00  /dev/sr1

So the system did know about my scanner.

So I tried:

> sudo xsane

That, after dire warnings about not using Xsane as root, Xsane would find 
my scanner and run. Of course all the scans were saved as belonging to 
root and I had to do a sudo chmod on them, which was annoying.


Then - after a suggestion from Jon Labadie I tried this:

> sudo scanimage -L

Which told me what device had the scanner mounted on it even though I 
could only access it from my root account.
Here were my results:

device `epson2:/dev/sg6' is a Epson Perfection636 flatbed scanner
device `epson:/dev/sg6' is a Epson Perfection636 flatbed scanner
device `epkowa:scsi:/dev/sg6' is a Epson Perfection636 flatbed scanner

So now I know what device the scanner is being mounted on, in fact it is 
mounted on 3 devices.

At that time in the process I was not sure what to do but found a 
suggestion at the Ubuntu Discussion Groups about trying to mount it from 
the command line:

> sudo chgrp scanner /dev/sg6
> sudo chmod 660 /dev/sg6n

This worked, allowing me as user to run Xsane, but I had to do it after 
each reboot.

As a temporary fix I wrote a little shell script to do it.

However I still would like to change the permissions for the scanner 
device to be for me the user rather than root.

Jon LaBadie told me about /etc/udev/rules and to create a file called:

/etc/udev/rules.d/45-scsi-scanner.rules

so I did:

sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/45-scsi-scanner.rules

and then to add these lines to the file:

# permissions for EPSON Perfection636 SCSI Scanner.
SUBSYSTEM=="scsi_generic",ATTRS{vendor}=="EPSON",ATTRS{model}=="Perfection636",
NAME="%k", SYMLINK="scanner%n", MODE="0660", GROUP="scanner"


Jon notes important matters in association to creating and using the udev 
rule:

<quote>
If anyone tries to use the udev rule, they will have to customize it for 
their scanner.  In this case, the lsscsi and scanimage -l commands outputs 
have important info as each report what the device reports itself as.

In this case, vendor EPSON and model Perfection636.

These are both used in any udev rule you customize and the 
SPELLING/CAPITALIZATION/WHITESPACE are critical!
</quote>

Now that  I have created the scanner specific udev rule, Xsane runs fine 
from Applications>Graphics>Xsane under my user account.

_________________________________

Postscript:

I do not know why the system finds three different instances of the 
scanner mounted but that is what happened as a result of running:

> sudo scanimage -L.

So  I did a directory listing for /etc/sane.d/

ls /etc/sane.d/

I found that among the many files in the subdirectory with the same file 
creation date, there was a file with a name:

epkowa.conf.dpkg-old

dated much more recently than all the other files in the subdirectory

When I looked in it

less /etc/sane.d/epkowa.conf.dpkg-old

The first lines looked like this:
<quote>
# epkowa.conf -- sample configuration for the EPKOWA SANE backend
# Copyright (C) 2004, 2008, 2009  Olaf Meeuwissen
#
# See sane-epkowa(5), sane-usb(5) and sane-scsi(5) for details.

# Detect all devices supported by the backend.
# If you don't have a SCSI device, you can comment out the "scsi"
# keyword.  Similarly for the other keywords.
#
usb
scsi
scsi EPSON    Perfection636
</quote>

While the first lines of the active file:

less /etc/sane.d/epkowa.conf looked like this:

<quote>
# epkowa.conf -- sample configuration for the EPKOWA SANE backend
# Copyright (C) 2004, 2008, 2009  Olaf Meeuwissen
#
# See sane-epkowa(5), sane-usb(5) and sane-scsi(5) for details.

# Detect all devices supported by the backend.
# If you don't have a SCSI device, you can comment out the "scsi"
# keyword.  Similarly for the other keywords.
#
usb
scsi
</quote>

So I think during the upgrade that my working epkowa.conf file was renamed 
and a generic epkowa.conf file was substituted.


So I have now learned a lot more about how an Ubuntu Linux operating 
system works. :-)



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                        Bonnie Dalzell, MA
mail:5100 Hydes Rd PO Box 60, Hydes,MD,USA 21082-0060|EMAIL:bdalzell@qis.net
Freelance anatomist, vertebrate paleontologist, writer, illustrator, dog
breeder, computer nerd & iconoclast... Borzoi info at www.borzois.com.
HOME www.batw.net    ART bdalzellart.batw.net  BUSINESS www.boardingatwedge.com

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