SANE
Sane provides a library and a command-line tool to use scanners under GNU/Linux. Here you can check if sane supports your scanner.
Contents
Installation
Install sane from the official repositories.
Configuration
Now you can try to see if sane recognizes your scanner
$ scanimage -L
If that fails, check that your scanner is plugged into the computer. You also might have to unplug/plug your scanner for /etc/udev/rules.d/sane.rules
to recognize your scanner.
Now you can see if it actually works
$ scanimage --format=tiff > test.tiff
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
For Acer/BenQ hardware
If you own an USB scanner from Acer (now BenQ), you need to download a suitable firmware binary and configure /etc/sane.d/snapscan.conf
.
- Find out which model you own and take note of the USB ID:
$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 010: ID 04a5:20b0 Acer Peripherals Inc. (now BenQ Corp.) S2W 3300U/4300U
- Go to snapscan main page and see whether your scanner is supported and which firmware you need (e.g,
u176v046.bin
). - Search the firmware image on the Internet and download it to
/usr/share/sane/snapscan/
. - Edit the head of
/etc/sane.d/snapscan.conf
and configure the following two lines:
firmware /usr/share/sane/snapscan/u176v046.bin /dev/usb/scanner0 bus=usb
For HP hardware
For HP hardware you may also need to install hplip from the official repositories (see hplib supported devices) and/or hpojAUR from the AUR (see hpoj supported devices).
- Uncomment or add
hpaio
andhpoj
to a new line in/etc/sane.d/dll.conf
. - Running
hp-setup
as root may help you add your device. -
hp-plugin
is the 'HPLIP Plugin Download and Install Utility'. -
hp-scan
is the 'HPLIP Scan Utility'.
For Hewlett-Packard OfficeJet, PSC, LaserJet, and PhotoSmart printer multi-function peripherals, run ptal-init setup
as root and follow instructions. Then start the ptal-init daemon.
For Brother hardware
In order to install a Brother Scanner or Printer/Scanner combo you need the right driver (which can be found in the AUR). There are only four drivers to choose from (brscan1-4). In order to find the right one you should search for your model at the brother linux scanner page.
After you installed the driver you need to run (eg. setupSaneScan2 for brscan2 compatible devices):
# /usr/local/Brother/sane/setupSaneScan2 -i
so the drivers/scanner are recognized by sane.
For network scanners, Brother provides a different configuration tool for each brscan version (eg. brsaneconfig2 for brscan2 compatible devices):
# brsaneconfig2 -a name=<ScannerName> model=<ScannerModel> ip=<ScannerIP>
Example:
# brsaneconfig2 -a name=SCANNER_DCP770CW model=DCP-770CW ip=192.168.0.110
For Epson hardware
For network (including Wi-Fi) scanners, you can use "Image Scan! for Linux".
Install iscanAUR and iscan-plugin-networkAUR from the AUR, then edit /etc/sane.d/epkowa.conf
and add the line:
net {IP_OF_SCANNER}
For Samsung hardware
For some Samsung MFP printers you may need to edit /etc/sane.d/xerox_mfp.conf
.
example entry:
#Samsung SCX-3200 usb 0x04e8 0x3441
Change the printer model as needed. You can get the idVendor and idProduct code with lsusb
. See this thread.
For plustek scanners
Some plustek scanners (noticeably Canoscan ones), require a lock directory. Make sure that /var/lock/sane directory exists, that its permissions are 660, and that it is owned by <user>:scanner. If the directory permissions are wrong, only root will be able to use the scanner. Seems (at least on x86-64) that some programs using libusb (noticeably xsane and kooka) need scanner group rw permissions also for accessing /proc/bus/usb to work for a normal user.
Firmware
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/hplip.
Install a frontend
XSane provides a GTK-based frontend to Sane. It can be installed with the package xsane, available in the official repositories.
Other frontends exist, to find them you can:
- use
pacman -Ss
to search for keywords such as "sane" or "scanner" - see the list of frontends on the sane-project website
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
Insert the nf_conntrack_sane
module for iptables to let the firewall track saned connections.
Scanning requests are handled by saned. This can be run as a daemon with saned -a
or run when needed by xinetd:
Configuring xinetd for sane
Install xinetd from the official repositories.
Next, make sure the file /etc/xinetd.d/sane
exists and disabled is set to no:
service sane-port { port = 6566 socket_type = stream wait = no user = nobody group = scanner server = /usr/bin/saned disable = no }
The user named ('nobody' in the file included in the sane package) must usually be a member of the scanner group to have permission to access the scanner:
# usermod -a -G scanner nobody
For some HP combined scanner-printers the user must be a member of the lp group instead, which should also be used instead of scanner in the service file.
Add the following line to /etc/services
if it is not already present:
sane-port 6566/tcp
Start the xinetd daemon.
Your scanner can now be used by other workstations, across your local area network.
Accessing Your Scanner from a Remote Workstation
You can access your network-enabled scanner from a remote Arch Linux workstation.
To set up your workstation, begin by installing xsane from the official repositories.
Next, 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, from a non-root login prompt:
$ xsane
or
$ scanimage -L
After a short while, xsane should find your remote scanner and present you with the usual windows, ready for network scanning delight!
For HP All in one network printer/scanner/fax you need to configure it via:
$ hp-setup <printer ip>
Troubleshooting
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 above 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 doesn't do after all (the scanner won't be displayed by scanimage -L then). This has happend 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
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)
Permission problem
If you see your scanner only when running lsusb
(as root), you might get it working by adding your user to scanner
and/or lp
group.
# gpasswd -a username scanner # gpasswd -a username lp
This is reported to work on HP all-in-one models (e.g., PSC 1315 and PSC 2355).
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.
Example:
First, as root, 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 scanner - 'Bus 001 Device 006: ID 03f0:2504 Hewlett-Packard'
Now edit /lib/udev/rules.d/53-sane.rules
and look for the first part of the ID number found previously and check if there is a line that also reports the second part of the number (model numer), in this example 2504. If not found change or copy a line and enter the idVendor and idProduct of your scanner, in this example it would be:
# Hewlett-Packard ScanJet 4100C ATTRS{idVendor}=="03f0", ATTRS{idProduct}=="2504", 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
Epson Perfection 1270
For Epson Perfection 1270, you also need a firmware named esfw3e.bin. It can be obtained by installing the Windows driver.
Modify the configuration file of the snapscan backend, /etc/sane.d/snapscan.conf
. Change the firmware path line with yours:
# Change to the fully qualified filename of your firmware file, if # firmware upload is needed by the scanner firmware /mnt/mydata/Backups/firmware/esfw3e.bin
And add the following line in the end or anywhere you like
# Epson Perfection 1270 usb 0x04b8 0x0120
Actually you can leave only two lines in the snapscan.conf file: 'firmware' line and 'usb' line.
You can get such code information (usb 0x04b8 0x0120) by "sane-find-scanner" command.
Also add such information lines to /etc/hotplug/usb/libsane.usermap
to setup your privilege, like:
#Epson Perfection 1270 libusbscanner 0x0003 0x04b8 0x0120 0x0000 0x0000 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00000000
Replug scanner, you have a working Epson Perfection 1270 now.
NOTE: I can scan image if I define the X and Y value, but without that error message occurs like: "scanimage: sane_start: Error during device I/O", if anyone knows any other reasons, please add them to this section.
- To prevent "scanimage: sane_start: Error during device I/O" and hangup of the scanner itself, when trying to scan with ADF (automatic document feed) enabled, I had to remove or comment out all Backends from
/etc/sane.d/dll.conf
and instead just add this to the file:
snapscan
Finally. If you still get the "Error I/O" messages try to check the transportation lock of the scanner. It's on the bottom of the scanner. It must be opened.
Hangs while scanning due to xhci pre-boot mode
If you get a problem where your scanner is detected while running lsusb
or scanimage -L
and even the GUI apps, however when you attempt to scan, the scanner starts but shortly after hangs or freezes while scanning the following fix may help you.
You may also get this error loged while attempting to scan:
kernel: usb 1-2: new high-speed USB device number 8 using xhci_hcd kernel: WARNING! power/level is deprecated; use power/control instead
The fix is: In the UEFI/BIOS change the setting under USB configuration, xhci pre-boot mode from enabled to disabled.