[SOLVED] scanner not detected

Pedroski · 04-26-2016, 09:08 PM

I have Ubu 14.04 on one partition and I just updated from Ubu 15.10 to Ubu 16.04 on another partition. In 14.04, xsane works fine. In 15.10, I could not get xsane to find the scanner. Now I upgraded to 16.04 and xsane still finds no device.

The scanner works fine in 14.04. Never worked in 15.10, won't work now in 16.04. The scanner is part of an all in one scanner printer Epson L351. It works fine in 14.04.

I borrowed a simple canon flatbed usb powered scanner. Xsane finds it and it works in 16.04. I did not have to set anything at all. Just works, as does my Epson in 14.04.

This is the output of sane-find-scanner and scanimage -L

Quote:

pedro@pedro-275E4E-275E5E:~$ sudo sane-find-scanner

# sane-find-scanner will now attempt to detect your scanner. If the
# result is different from what you expected, first make sure your
# scanner is powered up and properly connected to your computer.

# No SCSI scanners found. If you expected something different, make sure that
# you have loaded a kernel SCSI driver for your SCSI adapter.

could not fetch string descriptor: Pipe error
could not fetch string descriptor: Pipe error
found USB scanner (vendor=0x04b8 [EPSON], product=0x08a1 [EPSON L350 Series]) at libusb:004:005
# Your USB scanner was (probably) detected. It may or may not be supported by
# SANE. Try scanimage -L and read the backend's manpage.

# Not checking for parallel port scanners.

# Most Scanners connected to the parallel port or other proprietary ports
# can't be detected by this program.
pedro@pedro-275E4E-275E5E:~$

Don't know what a pipe error is. but the scanner is detected.

Quote:

pedro@pedro-275E4E-275E5E:~$ sudo scanimage -L
[sudo] password for pedro:

No scanners were identified. If you were expecting something different,
check that the scanner is plugged in, turned on and detected by the
sane-find-scanner tool (if appropriate). Please read the documentation
which came with this software (README, FAQ, manpages).
pedro@pedro-275E4E-275E5E:~$

I have the correct settings in /etc/sane.d/epson.conf

Quote:

# usb 0x4b8 0x110
#[EPSON L350 Series]) at libusb:004:003

usb 0x04b8 0x08A1

# And for the scanner module, use the following configuration:
usb /dev/usbscanner0

usb /dev/usb/scanner0

This has gone on a long time now. Any tips out there please? Permissions??

I tried running xsane as root, got danger warnings, went ahead, but still no devices found.

What is wrong here? I was hoping the upgrade would solve the problem, then I could move to 16.04 completely.

Ztcoracat · 04-26-2016, 11:00 PM

Hi:

Got a few ideas-

Reconfigure your kernel.
Often times that will make things that didn't work work again.

Maybe the wrong driver is loading first? If it is this will cause the device not to work.
You might have to blacklist a driver.
Maybe it's a backend issue?

To find out if it's a permissions issue just run 'groups' in the terminal and see if you belong to the 'lp' and 'scanner'. If not add yourself to the group with the usermod cmd.

Ubuntu 16.04 was just released (April, 2016) recently right?
Maybe give the Developers time to get the bugs out.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/36416...issions-issues
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=304071

Pedroski · 04-27-2016, 01:39 AM

Eh, reconfigure my kernel? Sounds like something for experts, which is not my category, I'm more like 'dull witted beginner' category. Could I really do that??

Thing is, this was the same in 15.10, which has been out a long time. I hoped it would get better. The very same scanner works fine in 14.04

I made sure I am in the groups you mentioned:

Quote:

pedro@pedro-275E4E-275E5E:~$ groups
pedro adm lp cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin scanner saned sambashare
pedro@pedro-275E4E-275E5E:~$

hazel · 04-27-2016, 01:50 AM

Check that epson configuration file again. As far as I can remember, SANE requires either a usb vendor/model code or a scanner device created by a kernel module but not both. They interfere with each other. And the kernel scanner module is deprecated now. You're supposed to use libusb.

Pedroski · 04-27-2016, 03:21 AM

I went to the Epson webpage, downloaded and installed epkowa, which installs iscan, which is like their spin of xsane I suppose.

I noticed in /etc/sane.d/epkowa.conf that it said:

Quote:

# For any USB scanner not known to the backend (yet), you may, at your
# own peril(!!), force the backend to recognise and use it via libusb.
# You can do so by the following configuration command:
#
usb 04b8 08a1
#
# SEIKO EPSON's USB vendor ID is '0x04b8' (without quotes). In order
# to find the USB product ID, use lsusb(1).
# A sample configuration for the Epson Perfection 1650 (Epson GT-8200),
# which has a product ID of 0x0110, would look as follows:
#
#usb 0x04b8 0x0110

"at your peril" gave me the idea to mask this line in epson.conf and epson2.conf so I wrote a few ###

Long story short, now it works!!

Problem may have been multiple .conf files in /etc/sane.de pointing at the same machine! No idea, but it works! Took me a year!

Thanks for comments and tips anyway, very grateful!

Ztcoracat · 04-27-2016, 08:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pedroski

I went to the Epson webpage, downloaded and installed epkowa, which installs iscan, which is like their spin of xsane I suppose.

I noticed in /etc/sane.d/epkowa.conf that it said:

"at your peril" gave me the idea to mask this line in epson.conf and epson2.conf so I wrote a few ###

Long story short, now it works!!

Problem may have been multiple .conf files in /etc/sane.de pointing at the same machine! No idea, but it works! Took me a year!

Thanks for comments and tips anyway, very grateful!

Quote:

Could I really do that??

Yes you could but it would require some commitment and study on your part.

Glad to hear tweaking that config file worked:-

Ztcoracat · 04-27-2016, 08:11 PM

Quote:

They interfere with each other.

By 'they' do you mean the modules/drivers?

hazel · 04-28-2016, 01:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ztcoracat

By 'they' do you mean the modules/drivers?

Not the drivers as such but the underlying layer that supports them. The old way of using a scanner was to have a kernel module that created a /dev/scanner device. The modern way is to use libusb. But you can't have it both ways.

Ztcoracat · 04-28-2016, 08:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hazel

Not the drivers as such but the underlying layer that supports them. The old way of using a scanner was to have a kernel module that created a /dev/scanner device. The modern way is to use libusb. But you can't have it both ways.

Cool-It's a C library--
I'll stick with the modern way.-

It's installed on my Slack box.

Code:

The list below shows all packages with name matching "libusb".

[ installed ] - libusb-1.0.9-x86_64-1
[ installed ] - libusb-compat-0.1.4-x86_64-1