I own an Epson Perfection V550 Photo Scanner that worked well with Mint 19.3, but that I was unable to use when I upgraded to Linux Mint 20; the problem appeared to be with the installation of the Epson driver.

After repeated failure it was just easier to do any scanning with another OS or another computer. However I noticed in the release notes for 20.1 that some problems with scanners had been resolved so I tried again.

After installing Linux Mint 20.1 Cinnamon downloading and installing the Epson driver went smoothly: I now see the program "Epson Scan 2" in the menu, but unfortunately when it runs it says it cannot communicate with the scanner.
Running gscan2pdf also gave an error message (see attachments).

I did find this thread through the Linux Mint forums:
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtop...2b9aab9773d403

which looked interesting, but I confess I did not fully understand it:
a) 'sudo ln -sfr /usr/lib/sane/libsane-epkowa* /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane'
b) generate '/etc/udev/rules.d/79-udev-epson.rules'

"a" is a command, but what is "b"?

Any help would be appreciated!
I am using an HP Pavillon dv6 laptop with 8G of RAM.

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create a file '/etc/udev/rules.d/79-udev-epson.rules' with for example
or another editor in case you dont have "leafpad" installed.
then include
in it.
Store your file.
Close it.

I created the new file with the text editor included with Linux Mint.
Attached are screenshots of the new file and its contents. They look right to me ... but I am not experienced with text editor.
Unfortunately I have restarted both the computer and the scanner a couple of times, with the same error messages as before ...

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Thanks.

It looks like the file is created and stored in the directory, or not?

The file permissions are correct? (such dev rules must have a type of permissions execute/read etc. see other forums for this and use the CHMOD command for this)

The "Read-only" message is coming because you edited a file from a standard user?

This file should be created and stored using the SuperUser (user "root" in your system? password "root" or other you placed during installation? look at mint forums explaining this. I dont know. For raspbian I used sudo https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...on-4175488989/).

Do following (based on a worst case speculation from me):
- start a terminal
- make - include the text from previous post
- store the file by clicking "save" in leafpad
- google/search for "chmod udev rule" in the internet (I cannot describe a precise suggestion to you because I have server issues on EU mainland internet) and in a command line in the terminal, adapt the permissions of your file like "sudo chmod 888 /etc/udev/rules.d/79-udev-epson.rules". Not sure sudo is the right superuser access in your system and 888 is the right number (a guess for now).

I changed the permissions on that file but had the same bad results.

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What is the USB ID of the "Epson Perfection V550 Photo Scanner" ?
HowTo there https://wiki.debian.org/HowToIdentifyADevice/USB

# 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.

found USB scanner (vendor=0x138a, product=0x0018) at libusb:004:002
found USB scanner (vendor=0x0a5c [Broadcom Corp], product=0x21e3 [BCM20702A0]) at libusb:003:004
# 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.

As per advice in post#6, please show us what is reported by...
You can also do
With the scanner disconnected, open a terminal and run
Plug in the scanner and observe/capture the output. Post here for others to review. Some scanners don't work well with USB3 ports. You may try shifting to another USB port. Any difference?

Another diagnostic step. Try detecting scanner using
If not enumerated, try running command with sudo privileges...

Moving from one usb port to another made no difference.
Here are the results from lsusb and scanimage -L :


brant@brant-HP-Pavilion-dv6-Notebook-PC:~$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 5986:02ac Acer, Inc HP TrueVision HD
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 138a:0018 Validity Sensors, Inc. Fingerprint scanner
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 04b8:013b Seiko Epson Corp. EPSON Scanner
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 005: ID 0a5c:21e3 Broadcom Corp. HP Portable Valentine
Bus 003 Device 008: ID 05ac:020c Apple, Inc. Extended Keyboard [Mitsumi]
Bus 003 Device 007: ID 046d:c044 Logitech, Inc. LX3 Optical Mouse
Bus 003 Device 006: ID 05ac:1003 Apple, Inc. Hub in Pro Keyboard [Mitsumi, A1048]
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub


brant@brant-HP-Pavilion-dv6-Notebook-PC:~$ scanimage -L
device `epsonscan2:EPSON Scanner:esci2:usb:ES00EB:315' is a EPSON EPSON Scanner flatbed scanner

Almost forgot; the dmesg -w output is attached.

Attached Files

dmesg -w output.txt (91.3 KB, 20 views)

The scanner is device chipset reported as expected.

The scanner device is detected by scanimage as expected. However, the SANE supported scanners page...
http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html
...mentions that this model may not be supported by the epsonscan2 backend.
Instead, the Epson 'epkowa' driver is required. You can download and install the Epson driver for this model via
http://download.ebz.epson.net/
* Use 'V550' for model.

This Ubuntu thread may also be of guidance to you.

In particular
FWIW, another similar question
https://askubuntu.com/questions/421877/does-the-epson-perfection-v600-photo-scanner-or-v550-work-with-sane

See how that goes.

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The end of the month (and the onset of spring) are pressing me hard, so it will be a few days before I can take another swing at this.
But thanks to everyone who has offered assistance!

[SOLVED]-https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=274085
from a simple search: Debian Epson Perfection V550 Photo Scanner

I started over at the beginning, read to the end, and browsed off in different directions following links, and in the process noted that Epson had posted a newer driver for their scanners for Linux, as of 28-04-2021 and decided to remove the existing installation of EpsonScan2 and reinstall the newer one.

The results were interesting:

EpsonScan2 detected the scanner ... but seemed to offer only the choice of a very low-res image, or an incredibly slow process.

Document Scanner ran well.

gscan2pdf ran well.

ImageScan continued to say that it detected no hardware.

VueScan also continued to say that it detected no hardware.

I sometimes wish that there was a "Solved—I think" button!
I was recently given another laptop that I am in the process of setting up the way I like it: it will be interesting to see if installing the scanner goes faster the second time.
Many thanks for all the comments.

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