[sane-devel] permissions for parallel port scanners

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

Parallel port scanners are a dying breed. As far as the
EPSON backend is concerned, I don't see any need to 
update / modify the way the scanner is accessed. 

If somebody is concerned about security, they should not
connect a par-port scanner. USB scanners are pretty inexpensive
these days, and they can be installed in a safe and portable
way. 

I will update the man page and list mention the drawbacks
of setuid-root programs, but I think that the mechanisms
of getting the frontends set up and maybe the sane-net work-
around should be documented on the project level and not
for the individual backends.

Karl Heinz

On Sun, Jul 22, 2001 at 03:37:22PM +0200, Oliver Rauch wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> Now we have some parallel port scanners supported by
> sane and I get several messages with questions how
> the people can access their scanner as user.
> 
> We need a better way to handle these scanners.
> It really is dangerous to run the frontends as
> root or with suid=root.
> 
> So I want to ask all authors of backends that support
> parallel port scanners to work out a common way
> (sanei_parallel_*) to talk as user to the scanner.
> These sanei_parallel_* routines should run on
> as much systems as possible (not only linux!).
> 
> Please also add a text to the manpage of the
> backend how the scanner can be used by user
> and also point out how dangerous it is with
> suid=root!!!
> 
> An other way would be to connect via sane-net/saned
> to the local machine but as far as I tested that
> still does not work very well due to a bug in sane-net
> or saned.
> 
> Bye
> Oliver
> 
> -- 
> Homepage:	http://www.rauch-domain.de
> sane-umax:	http://www.rauch-domain.de/sane-umax
> xsane:		http://www.xsane.org
> E-Mail:		mailto:Oliver.Rauch at rauch-domain.de
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-- 
Karl Heinz Kremer                                  khk at khk.net
PGP Key at http://www.freecolormanagement.com/download/khk.asc
EPSON Sane Backend:         http://www.freecolormanagement.com
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