Dear All,
I have tried for the past three days to install my Epson 3590 scanner in Mdv 2008.1. I was frevergetting the usual cryptic messages from Xsane and decided that I should wipe my hard drive and install Mdv 2010. Perhaps, I would have more success there.

Firstly,I booted up XP and the scaanner burst into life = not unexpected. Then I set about defragging the Windows partition.

I put the 2010 Live Cd in the CD drive and the scanner burst into life!!! Quickly, I shut down the system and rebooted into MDv 2008.1.

Once again, the sxanner burst into life and worked flawlessly. Moreover, it continues to do so.
Why? I cannot explain. All I know is that after a scanner being totally invisible to Kooka and Xsane after an XP defrag it becomes visible and functioning.

Has anyone got an explanation?


Tony LIttlejohn

P.S. I am sticking with Mdv 2008.1 for now!!

Gremlins.....

I have become convinced that computers (as seen by the user) are not deterministic. One postulated reason is that there are so many automatic setup and self-test routines, combined with the occasional random errors from hard disks or cosmic rays hitting the RAM.

For example, after a power glitch, my home system will often start up with no video. It will eventually work after multiple re-starts, and then continues to work (until the next power glitch). I have no confidence that I will ever find the cause---but the HW is old, and I will simply replace it. (And then there will be new gremlins.........)

If you "installed" the scanner drivers, and the scanner did not work, then you rebooted to Windows, and the scanner worked (expected), then rebooted back to Mandriva, when the scanner worked, and that was the first reboot after installing the scanner driver, it is possible that udev (or some other service) needed to restart to properly detect the scanner after configuration. I have heard all the arguments that Linux does not need to restart when new hardware is installed (and this has been mostly true here), but if I install new hardware in any OS, and it does not initially work, my first troubleshooting step is to reboot the system. This simple step often "fixes" the problem, saving me much unneeded troubleshooting time and effort.

Well Ernie, the problm is that I had rebooted several times after installing the driver and with no success at all. Only after I had booted up XP and did the scanner work. Then immediately on rebooting into Mandriva 2008.1 did the scanner spring into life.

The only thing that I could of was thare was perhaps a mechanical falt somewhere, but I somehow doubt it. Perhaps Pixallany is more in tune with varied phenomena associated with the "death" and "rebirth" of what are otherwise inanimate objects.

Seriously though, it must have somethg to do with coding. Quite what I don't know.
I also have a LabTec camera which is not yet working under Mandriva (yes the gspca driver is installed). Should I reboot into Windows or not or will Balmer (spl?) strike back and turn off my scanner???

Afn,

Tony

I do not have an answer for that one (Balmer), but another possibility is that accessing the scanner in XP reset some setting in the scanner so it then worked in Mandriva (just a guess) . . .

As for the camera, I do not use one on my PC here . . .

If the camera has any configurable software on-board (flash memory?), trying to use it in XP could work, but there is no way to know for sure. Sometimes hardware and software do things behind the scenes so we don't know what happened or why . . .

Ernie, I couldn't agree more with your final sentiments regarding hardware.

I switched the scanner and notebook off last night. And this morning Mandriva failed to recognise the scanner.

Now, I know that this can happen, so I rebooted Mandriva - no joy with the scanner.
Next I booted into Win XP, the scanner sprang into life so I closed down Windows and rebooted Mandriva.

AND GUESS WHAT? The scanner worked flawlessly. Weird and in some ways wonderful.

I am beginning to think that there is something about the scanner's electronics at play here because the power on light was not functioning with the first Mandriva boots but came on during WIndows AND stayed lit when I rebooted into Mandriva.

I'll try out the webcam now to see if this technique works. I do not expect it to do so.


Tony

Well,
Before I booted up Windows a moment ago, my Labtec webcam was neither working in Kopete or Skype.

I started up the LabTec programme in XP, took a couple of photos. Then XP froze on me but continued taking pictures - I couldn't shutdown for about six minutes - I loath just pressing the power button.

Then back into Mandriva 2008.1 and the LabTec camera works in Kopete but NOT in Skype where all I get is a blue screen in the Test Video window.

Very, very weird.

You know, I think that I will always keep XP running on any PC that I have just in case Mandy plays up. Other than this business, I have not used Windows for the past four years or more.

Should this filed under SOLUTIONS??? ;-)


Tony

No, this is not a solution. It is a kludge.

Have you tried pressing the power button when in Linux to start the scanner? If manually powering up the scanner lets it work in Linux, I would call that a solution because it does not involve the use of another OS to make it work. The same goes for the camera.

I do not want peripherals such as printers, scanners, or cameras, starting automatically at boot time. If I want to use one of them, it is easy enough to press a power button, and I do not want to be paying for the power they use as they sit idling until I want to use them.

"do not want peripherals such as printers, scanners, or cameras, starting automatically at boot time. If I want to use one of them, it is easy enough to press a power button, and I do not want to be paying for the power they use as they sit idling until I want to use them."

I could not agree more Ernie. So, with the scanner already unplugged and Mandriva running, I plugged it in and tried to scane using Xsane. Up came the following message

"Failed to open device "Snapscan libusb 001.010 Error during device I/O"

Which I teake to mean that it had not been detected at boot up. If it is possible to get past this error message I would be in the happy position of being able to switch on and off at will.


Thanks again for your interest in this subject.

Tony

Dear Tony,

Your message was useful for me. My Epson scanner worked well with the recently installed Ubuntu.
But I made some additions to Ubuntu (don't if that was the cause ...) and when I triued the scanner 2 days later it did not work: Sane did not find it with apparently well known messages.
However< when I booted under XP the scanner worked well (but was not recognised directly (new hardware found etc).
I then left XP (WITHOUT defrag or anything) and booted with Ubuntu and: yeps the scanner worked perfectly.
My conclusion: apparently some new installations under Ubuntu deleted a driver or file, that was fixed automatically by Ubuntu.
I hope someone who understands this can fux this bug!

Hein Moens