Epson CX5000 3-in-1 not scanning
 

Epson provides a compressed file: pips-scx5700f-Redhat9-3.0-CLGE.tgz, that MAY drive the CX5000. My best read at the Epson website is confused at best about this, but it appears like it's for this device.

As this is a .rpm file, and I'm using Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon v. 7.10), I will have to 'alien' to convert the .rpm into Debian (so to speak).

I'm completely new to this, so: do I alien the archived file, or which files do I alien after the uncompression? Does it matter. Is one way better than another?

If the .tgz file has to be uncompressed, first, how will Ubuntu know where to put the archive files?

Lastly, what is the correct command sequence to uncompress or open this file? Having read about this, I need to se the permissions to the user, not to root. Is that all done on one command line? Should it be done that way?

thanks.

First of all, the Epson/Avasys drivers are pretty bad, especially when it comes to non-redhat-based systems.

Second, are you talking about printing or scanning? Because the pips drivers are for the printer only. And frankly, I've never been able to get pips to either compile on my Debian systems or work successfully after converting with alien. But you shouldn't need to use pips because the gutenprint driver appears to support your model.

As for the scanner, the avasys-supplied driver is the "iscan" package, a separate download from the pips driver. It's a little better than pips, but even it's a bitch to compile, and alien probably won't work either. It also doesn't seem to work at all on 64-bit systems. But you seem to be in luck here too, because your model appears to be supported by sane (using the epson2 backend), though I can't tell you how well it works.

(BTW, iscan is both a driver and a scanning frontend. It provides a basic backend for sane, but you need to use iscan itself to access the full range of functions. Unfortunately, iscan is crap.)

So if you install cups, gutenprint, sane and an appropriate scanning frontend you should get a functioning machine. The avasys stuff should be considered only as a last resort. Follow the links in my sig for more info.

I have it working! Hooray! Hours of fiddling later:

From:

Setup of Epson Stylus DX6050 multifunctional (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=599673)

I did not and could not follow all the instructions as I was uncertain I could. I did do the following and the scanner started working.

lsusb | grep Epson

which for an Epson Stylus CX5000 3-in-1, returned:

Bus 001 Device 008: ID 04b8:082b Seiko Epson Corp.

Next:

gksugo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/45-libsane.rules

and at the bottom of that file I added:

SYSFS{idVendor}=="04b8",SYSFS{idProduct}=="082b",M ODE="664",GROUP="scanner"

the above as one line (even though the files lines of code were sometimes in more than one line

Saved the file. Exited.

Next:

gksudo gedit /etc/sane.d/epson.conf

and added:

usb 0x04b8 0x082b

saved and exited that file.

Next:

for my scanner sitting on the USB bus so:

sudo chmod a+w /dev/bus/usb/001/008

and next:

scanimage -L

scanned an image. Then under GIMP, the device dialog found the scanner.