I'm trying to scan a multipage document into a single PDF using xsane. The first page is scanned correctly (I can verify the image) but as soon as it's completed, I get the message "Failed to start scanner. Device busy." If I try to scan again, it rescans page 1 of 3 rather than page 2 of 3, and doesn't incorporate it into the first PDF. (The scanner is a CanoScan LiDE 25, but I don't think that matters.)

I think I know what's going on, but I don't know what to do about it. When the scanner finishes scanning page 1, it takes a while for it to move the lamp back to the starting position. During this movement, the scanner returns a busy status (I assume), which ends the process of constructing the full PDF.

I need to be able to do two things: pause the process while I put page 2 onto the scanner bed, and cause page 2 to become part of a single PDF file. Is that possible?

Hi,

I don't have a direct answer for your question but I've used the quiteinsane package for multi-page scans. I'm having my own scanner issues at the moment which prevents me from looking at quiteinsane to give a more definitive answer. I've done multi page scans a few times in the past and quiteinsane is the only thing I use any more.

Hopefully you're using a distro with a good package system so installing and checking it out wouldn't waste too much time.

Good luck.

Try using gscan2pdf, it allows you to scan pages in batches (if your scanner has an automatic feed) or as individual pages and you can re-order the pages, etc plus it saves directly to pdf format.

My scanner doesn't have automatic feed, so anything I use has to allow pauses between pages. xsane, by the way, can scan directly to PDFs, and it even has a multipage feature which apparently works for some people. Alas, I'm not one of them.

gscan2pdf will work fine without an automatic feeder as well.