[sane-devel] error: no devices available

[Henning Meier-Geinitz]

Hi,

On Thu, Oct 18, 2001 at 03:08:58PM -0500, Robert E. Harvey wrote:
> Please forgive me.  I'm new to linux.

No Problem :-) Read a good book about Linux (or Unix in general). You
will need it. Most Linux distributions provide at least an introduction.

> Is SCSI generic available (modprobe sg)?
> Is "modprobe" a command run in a terminal?   I get the message "command
> not found" when I attempt to execute modprobe from the command line.

You need to be root. modprobe inserts a module into the Linux kernel,
in this case the module "sg" (SCSI generic). You can also list the
modules currently active with "lsmod".

> Maybe permission problems with /dev/sg?
> 
> In /dev I find listings for sg0 through sg15 with creation dates of 23
> March which I think is the day I installed the card.  Do I need to have
> /dev/sg mentioned in fstab?

No. fstab is only for filesystems. Check the permissions of the sg
files if you want to scan as an ordinary user. You can do this with 
"ls -l /dev/sg*". As long as you do the tests as root the permissions
are not important.

> (try scanimage -L as root)?
> 
> Is "scanimage" a command run in a terminal? 

Yes.

> I get the message "command
> not found" when I attempt to execute "scanimage -L" from the command
> line.
 
In this case SANE is not installed on your system or your system is
screwed up completely. Maybe scanimage is in a different package than
the SANE libraries?

> Does "sane-find-scanner" find your scanner?
> 
> Is "sane-find-scanner" a command run in a terminal? 

Yes.

> I get the message
> "command not found" when I attempt to execute "sane-find-scanner" from
> the command line.
 
I don't know what version of SANE you have on your system. If it's
older you may try "find-scanner" (yes, that's a command for the
command line :-). If none of the above commands work, check your Linux
and SANE installation or ask someone who has experience with Linux.

Bye,
  Henning