MAKEDEV usb from the /dev folder accomplishes nothing.
From the usb folder it produces a /dev/usb/usb folder with all the devices. Apparently udev will not let me alter the /dev/usb folder.

A that damn udev I never use it the only thing I know about it is you have to write something called a rule to tell it to create the device node, you may want to check into what is needed in such a rule.

You would think Debian would have udev pre-configured for usb scanners. Wishful thinking. Well, it looks like I need to learn more about udev. I did notice the absence of scanners in the usb portion of the rules and I did edit them in, but either I need to reboot, or there's something else I'm missing. The scanner shows up on lsusb and usbview, so I just need to convince udev it's there.

I wonder if that's also why my irda device isn't connecting properly. Probably.

Most likely is the reason you can do without the udev I never installed it and everything works here. Now if I need a new device I need to use the MAKEDEV or mknod to create the nodes but I can live with that.

After wasting an entire day on it I found out that sane-backend is supposed to use /proc/bus/....
Well, when I try to use Xsane, it looks in /dev/usb. Some part of the system is convinced that my lexmark is at /dev/usb/scanner0. I tried a symlink to /proc/bus/usb/001/003, but that never produced any response from the scanner itself. I'm moving to a new house and I packed the thing away. I guess I can remove my cmos battery to reset the password now.