SANE

Related articles

• SANE/Scanner-specific problems
• Scanner Button Daemon

SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) provides a library and a command-line tool to use scanners under GNU/Linux. See [1] to check if sane supports your scanner.

Installation

Install the sane package.

Verification

Now you can try to see if sane recognizes your scanner

$ scanimage -L

If that fails, run the command again as root to check for permission problems. If that fails as well, check that your scanner is plugged into the computer. You also might have to unplug/plug your scanner for /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/49-sane.rules to recognize your scanner.

Now you can see if it actually works

$ scanimage --format=png > test.png

If the scanning fails with the message scanimage: sane_start: Invalid argument you may need to specify the device.

$ scanimage -L

device `v4l:/dev/video0' is a Noname Video WebCam virtual device
device `pixma:04A91749_247936' is a CANON Canon PIXMA MG5200 multi-function peripheral

Then you would need to run

$ scanimage --device "pixma:04A91749_247936" --format=tiff > test.tiff

Sane provides many special backend options for numerous scanner types. To see what these are for your device:

$ scanimage -A

Installing a scanner driver

Most scanners should work out of the box. If yours does not, see SANE/Scanner-specific problems for installation instructions.

Firmware

Note: This section is only needed if you need to upload firmware to your scanner.

Firmwares usually have the .bin extension.

Firstly you need to put the firmware someplace safe, it is recommended to put it in a subdirectory of /usr/share/sane/.

Then you need to tell sane where the firmware is:

• Find the name of the backend for your scanner from the sane supported devices list.
• Open the file /etc/sane.d/<backend-name>.conf.
• Make sure the firmware entry is uncommented and let the file-path point to where you put the firmware file for your scanner. Be sure that members of the group scanner can access the /etc/sane.d/<backend-name>.conf file.

If the backend of your scanner is not part of the sane package (such as hpaio.conf which is part of hplip), you need to uncomment the relevant entry in /etc/sane.d/dll.d or in /etc/sane.d/dll.conf.

Install a frontend

Many frontends exist for SANE, a non-exhaustive list of which can be found on the sane-project website.

• Simple Scan — Simplified GUI that is intended to be easier to use and better integrated into the GNOME desktop than XSane. It was initially written for Ubuntu and is maintained by Robert Ancell of Canonical Ltd. for GNU/Linux.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/simple-scan || simple-scan

• Skanlite — Simple image scanning application that does nothing more than scan and save images, based on the KSane backend.

https://www.kde.org/applications/graphics/skanlite || skanlite

• XSane — Full-featured GTK-based frontend looking a bit old but providing extended functionalities.

http://www.xsane.org/ || xsane

Some OCR software are able to scan images using SANE: gImageReader, gscan2pdf, Linux-Intelligent-Ocr-Solution, OCRFeeder, Paperwork.

Note:

• Scanning directly to PDF using XSane in 16bit color depth mode is known to produces corrupted files and a note in pacman output warns so. 8bit mode is known to work.

• Using a frontend does not mean you do not have to apply some tricks. This is especially true with devices configured via mDNS. For example, skanlite needs to have additional info specified on the command line in order to detect a network scanner properly as it cannot handle mDNS. Here is an example with an HP Officejet Pro L7590: skanlite --device "hpaio:/net/Officejet_Pro_L7500?ip=192.168.0.17".

Network scanning

Sharing your scanner over a network

You can share your scanner with other hosts on your network who use sane, xsane or xsane-enabled GIMP. To set up the server, first indicate which hosts on your network are allowed access.

Change the /etc/sane.d/saned.conf file to your liking, for example:

# required
localhost
# allow local subnet
192.168.0.0/24

If you use iptables, insert the nf_conntrack_sane module to let the firewall track saned connections.

Now start/enable saned.socket. Your scanner is now available over the network. For more information, see saned(8).

Note: saned intentionally refuses to share scanners that use the net: backend (which includes some USB scanners). There is a crude patch to allow this in FS#54786, but note it may cause problems on some networks. Check output of scanimage -L on the server to see the scanner url.

Accessing your scanner from a remote workstation

Note: Some network scanners require a different approach. See SANE/Scanner-specific problems.

You can access your network-enabled scanner from a remote Arch Linux workstation.

First, specify the server's host name or IP address in the /etc/sane.d/net.conf file:

# static IP address
192.168.0.1
# or host name
stratus

Now test your workstation's connection:

$ scanimage -L

The network scanner should now also show up in any front-end.

Windows clients

Since the Windows port of SANE seems to be unsupported, outdated and difficult to get, you can try SaneTwain instead.

Troubleshooting

See also: SANE/Scanner-specific problems

Invalid argument

If you get an "Invalid argument" error with xsane or another sane front-end, this could be caused by one of the following reasons:

Missing firmware file

No firmware file was provided for the used scanner (see #Firmware for details).

Wrong firmware file permissions

The permissions for the used firmware file are wrong. Correct them using

# chown root:scanner /usr/share/sane/SCANNER_MODEL/FIRMWARE_FILE
# chmod ug+r /usr/share/sane/SCANNER_MODEL/FIRMWARE_FILE

Multiple backends claim scanner

It may happen, that multiple backends support (or pretend to support) your scanner, and sane chooses one that does not do after all (the scanner will not be displayed by scanimage -L then). This has happened with older Epson scanners and the epson2 resp. epson backends. In this case, the solution is to comment out the unwanted backend in /etc/sane.d/dll.conf. In the Epson case, that would be to change

epson2
#epson

to

#epson2
epson

It may also be possible that the independent iscan epkowa backend interferes with your snapscan backend (epson scanners). You may get this error right after using the scanimage -L command. Starting the scanner app (like xsane) twice can also solve the problem. Otherwise check your /etc/sane.d/epkowa.conf for wrong configurations or remove the iscan package.

Communication via xHCI not working (older scanner models)

Some older scanner models do not work when connected via an USB3 port. If you experience this issue, try setting the SANE_USB_WORKAROUND=1 environment variable before starting your frontend.[2][3]

If that does not work, try one of the following workarounds:

• Use an USB2 port instead of an USB3 port, if available.
• Disable xHCI via BIOS/EFI. eHCI will consequently be used and communication with the scanner will work. On the downside, USB3 speed can not be reached on any port.
• On (some) intel chipsets the setpci command can be used to route specific usb ports to either the xHCI or the eHCI controller. See here and here (scroll down to where it says "setpci") for further information. With this it is possible to toggle single USB ports with a simple shell script.
• Connect the scanner over the network instead if it is supported.

Slow startup

If you encounter slow startup issue (e.g. xsane or scanimage -L take a lot to find scanner) it may be that more than one driver supporting it is available.

Have a look at /etc/sane.d/dll.conf and try commenting out one (e.g. you may have epson, epson2 and epkowa enabled at the same time, try leaving only epson or epkowa uncommented).

You can also try to comment out net driver, if there are no network scanners.

Your webcam might also be listed as scanning device and slow down detection at startup. To blacklist webcam, try commenting out all the lines in /etc/sane.d/v4l.conf.

Device busy

If your USB device is listed with scanimage -L but launching the test scanimage pixma:04A9173E_11DAD1 --format=tiff > test.tiff always return the 'Device busy' error, you might try to add your username to the scanner group usermod -a -G scanner yourusername then blacklist the usblp kernel module by writing blacklist usblp in /etc/modprobe.d/no-usblp.conf (it prevents usblp from loading to support scanning, not needed by xsane and related tools, might also conflict with CUPS). Reboot to finish. [4]

Permission problem

With systemd, the scanner and lp groups are deprecated. No need to add your user to those groups. See Users and groups#Pre-systemd groups for detail.

You can also try to change permissions of usb device but this is not recommended, a better solution is to fix the Udev rules so that your scanner is recognized.

First check connected usb devices with lsusb:

Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 04d9:1603 Holtek Semiconductor, Inc.
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 04fc:0538 Sunplus Technology Co., Ltd
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 03f0:2504 Hewlett-Packard
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 046d:0802 Logitech, Inc. Webcam C200
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

In our example we see the scanner: Bus 001 Device 006: ID 03f0:2504 Hewlett-Packard. Here 03f0 is the vendorID and 2504 is the productID.

Now open /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/49-sane.rules and see if there is there is a line with the vendorID and productID of your scanner. If there is not any, create the new file /etc/udev/rules.d/49-sane-missing-scanner.rules, with the following contents:

ATTRS{idVendor}=="vendorID", ATTRS{idProduct}=="productID", MODE="0664", GROUP="scanner", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"

Save the file, plug out and back in your scanner and the file permissions should be now correct.

Another tip, is that you can add your device (scanner) in backend file:

Add usb 0x03f0 0x2504 to /etc/sane.d/hp4200.conf so it looks like this:

#
# Configuration file for the hp4200 backend
#
#
# HP4200
#usb 0x03f0 0x0105
usb 0x03f0 0x2504

Parallel port scanners

All devices attached to a parallel port are assumed to be printers, and are given a lp group. Either create a udev rule to mark the relevant parallel port as libsane_matched, or add your user to the lp user group. CUPS also uses the lp group for read-only access to configuration files, so there are potential security implications to adding users to the lp group - see CUPS#Connection Interfaces for more information.