[sane-devel] Parallel and saned: GIMP impossible, since no default device found

[Gregor Hoffleit]

I managed to get my parallel port scanner working, and I managed to set
up saned, so I'm now able to run xsane/xscanimage/scanimage as normal
user (saned runs as root).

The problem is that xsane etc. fail to autodetect the scanner that's
made available through saned on my localhost, i.e. I have to provide
xsane with the device name on the command line:

  xsane                      -- fails and quite with "xsane: no devices
                                available"

  xsane net                  -- xsane immediately fails and quits with
                                "Failed to open device Invalid argument."
                                (no noise from scanner, though)

  xsane net:localhost        -- noise from scanner, but xsane fails and
                                quits with "Failed to open device
				'net:localhost': Invalid argument."

  xsane net:localhost:epson  -- works

Starting xsane as root, it autodetects the local 'epson' device (since
it now has permissions to access the pio address):

  sudo xsane                 -- works, but using the local 'epson' device
                                and not 'net:localhost:epson'


Similar, "scanimage --list-devices" fails to detect anything, but "sudo
scanimage --list-devices" detects the local scanner device:

   device `epson:0x378' is a Epson GT-5000 flatbed scanner


I tried to set "SANE_DEFAULT_DEVICE=net:localhost:epson" in the
environment, but this seems to have no effect at all.


The problem is that this makes the scanner unusable with the GIMP, since
I'm not able to provide the GIMP SANE plugin with a devicename.


Am I missing something obvious, or is it really impossible to use a
parallel port scanner with the GIMP due to this limitation ?

    Gregor