The mystery is that xsane DOES find the scanner over the WIFI network connection and scans perfectly well, but only once. After that, trial and error shows that stopping (unplugging) and restarting the Cannon xp-310 printer lets me scan one image. (Rinse, repeat. It's a viable workaround, mostly, but painful for multiple scans).

I'm running F22 with the 4.0.6 kernel, but the error has been coming up since F21 (using late kernels).
I'm running the printer with the latest iscan drivers from cannon, and printing has worked fine.

Has anyone seen this effect? Alternately, please point me to any XSane logs that might help me pinpoint the problem.

Finally, are there alternatives to Sane that work with Cannon printers/scanners?

Thanks

Vuescan might work.

Regards...

i have never had good results or heard of people having good results using cannon printers or scanners on Linux

best bet
install Windows 7 or 8
and if it is a OLD scanner install XP , there are a TON of GREAT scanners that cannon NEVER made a vista or 7 driver for

Canon's support of Linux, at least in the Americas, is less than exemplary.

Is the full model name "Canon xp-310," or is it "Canon PIXMA XP-310" or some other variant. Searching for "Canon XP-310" turned up a lot of links about an Epson XP-310.

First, thanks for the replies.

Frank, I'm really surprised to find it's clearly marked an Epson xp-310. I have no idea where the Canon came from - maybe one too many glasses of wine tonight, and maybe creeping senility.

However, the printer and scanner drivers I mentioned are the appropriate drivers - they're just from the epson web-site. The problem is still that, although the scanner will scan once for me over WIFI, XSane produces the "Failed To Start Scanner: Error during device I/O" error message after that until I turn the printer off and on again.

My next attempt (tomorrow) will be to use SimpleScan. I'll report back.

You are not the first person to have a brain-skip. I've had many of my own. I had a couple tonight. I blanked on remembering the name of "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy," for one.

I used to have an Epson many years ago--it was, I think, a CX-310 ca. 2005. It worked like a charm with Linux.

If you can do so, I would suggest testing it with a USB connection. I doubt the wireless has anything to do with the problem, but the more variables that can be eliminated during testing, the better.

I'll be trying the USB connection soon (it's connected to my wife's machine, running Fedora 21. I'll need to pry her away from the keyboard first...). Thanks for the tip.

Funny coincidence. I've been recording The Hitchhiker's Guide even as we speak - uh, type. Starz is showing it for the while. Spoiler alert.... 42.

And here's my report. Simple Scan just works. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that XSane has, of course. But it it wasn't meant to. For what I need it to do, Simple Scan works and fills my needs.

I'll mark this thread as "Solved."

Glad you got it fixed.