Hello everybody, I have a problem which is getting on my nerves! Just cannot get the scanner to work in FC1. It is recognised under kde information, such as the vendor etc and sane-find-scanner finds it as well but xsane does not find any devices!!!!!!!!!. I have tried compiling the backends and puting fedora rpms as well after cleaning up the previous versions. But nothing works and I am speading a lot of time doing nothing. The model is an epson 1200 photo and it is recognised as working well under sane. Please can you give me some guidelines? Thanks in advance John.

I have been working through the same type of problem with an Epson 1660, and have not yet reached a satisfactory conclusion, as xsane starts to scan, and then aborts, following which the scanner is no longer recognizable.

Your can try the following:

If your Epson 1200 is a scsi scanner (1200S), you don't have to modify your /etc/sane.d/epson.conf file.

If your Epson 1200 is a usb scanner (1200U), edit (as root) the /etc/sane.d/epson.conf file as follows:

Comment out the line <scsi EPSON> by inserting a # before it.
Uncomment one of the two lines <usb /dev/usb/scanner0> at the end of the file by removing the #
Save the file with the changes.
This is an essential first step for a usb scanner.

If you are using a usb scanner and the above does not solve the problem, you could in addition try changing the permissions of /dev/usb/scanner0. A quick way to do this is (as root):
chmod 666 /dev/usb/scanner0
(If this works, then make it permanent as described in man sane-usb.)

If that does not solve the problem, try:
modprobe scanner vendor=<your vendor id number> product=<your product ID number>
Note: you can get these numbers from the output of the command <cat /proc/bus/usb/devices>; look in the section that lists your scanner.
The same information can also be obtained from the command <sane-find-scanner>.
Your modprobe command would then look something like this:
modprobe scanner vendor=0x04b8 product=0x0104
(Please use the correct product number from the output of <cat /proc/bus/usb/devices> or <sane-find-scanner>.)
If this works, make it permanent by adding (as root) the following to the/etc/modules.conf file:
modprobe scanner vendor=0x04b8 product=<your product ID number>

For additional information, read the man pages for sane-epson, xsane, sane-usb, scanimage, xscanimage, sane-find-scanner, etc.

Consult websites such as:
http://www.freecolormanagement.com/sane
http://www.epkowa.co.jp/english/linux_e (This site has a downloadable front-end.)
A commercial program, Vuescan, is available at http://www.hamrick.com.

I hope that the above is helpful. Scanner configuration can be tough.