[sane-devel] Solaris 8 and SANE

[Kip Iles]

>On Tue, 11 Jun 2002 18:22:34 +0200, Henning Meier-Geinitz wrote:

>As far as I know there is currently no SANE support for USB for Solaris.  
>If I remember correctly, nobody has yet asked for it or implemented it.

Well this is not good news but it does clear up the confusion and I really 
appreciate the reply. I can ask for it now but it will be too late for my 
current project.

>I think I will add a comment about missing/unknown parport, USB and other 
>support.

Thanks! That would certainly help others researching this problem.

I suppose the 1st sentence in README.solaris should state that "ONLY" SCSI 
devices are supported by SANE under Solaris rather than implying the fact by 
describing a user mode generic SCSI driver requirement. Thats what sent me 
off on a tagent looking for SCSI<->USB converters, etc. I think it would be 
ludicrous to bottleneck SCSI down to USB (1.1) anyway.

>I think you can't use it to connect USB scanners. The only way to use a 
>SCSI generic driver would be some sort of converter in the kernel and a USB 
>scanner that is accessed over SCSI commands. I don't know if souch a 
>converter (SCSI-over-USB) exists for Solaris.

Even if it did. it would be too cost prohibitive for my use. Im after the 
most cost affective solution for a massive implementation for a customer. 
SCSI doubles the cost of the scanner.

>The interface used by most backends is sanei/sanei_usb.c.  It's build 
>around the assumption that there is one single device file that represents 
>an USB scanner. So you need a kernel driver fo this job. Currently I know 
>that this works with Linux, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. The epson backend also 
>uses this approach but accesses the device file directly (without the 
>sanei_usb layer).

Yeah - I have no actual /dev/usb(anything) on this server because the USB 
root hub is actually a SunRay (ultra-thin) client. I do have a Quatech 
USB>Serial device that is "Sun Ready" and it is recognized by the SunRay 
server software so it does get a pseudo device node created for it. If I can 
get specifics on what that device sends out to get special attention I could 
replicate that into a backend that would do the same thing for the Epson 
1650U. Right now I have to assume that the SunRay Server software thinks the 
epson is just another HID device and does not generate any device nodes for 
it.

>The sm3600 backend uses libusb. However, I don't think Solaris is supported 
>by libusb, is it? As far as I know, only Linux and the BSDs currently work.

There are some internal rumblings at Sun about libusb but I dont think its 
there, yet. UGEN is a different story. I believe that has recently been 
ported over from BSD. I have not found much about UGEN backends in the 
sane-devel archives. Basically I am trying to implement this with more 
integration/configuration, and less device driver/Sane backend development. 
If I have to make mods to SANE source or create a new backend - that becomes 
another piece that must be integrated, documented, distributed, and 
supported. The customer wants SANE because its easier for them to write 
their frontend.

>I have never heard from that Java API and I don't think it's supported by 
>SANE.

Javax.usb is a fairly new API. I doubt anyone is using it or even 
considering it for SANE unless they are running an OS optimized for Java 
(Solaris?). Most folks want to get to lowest level when supporting devices.
>
>So I think there are two approaches:
>
>1) Find out if there is a general kernel scanner driver in Solaris
>    like the Linux scanner module or FreeBSD's uscanner driver.
>    If such driver is available, SANE may run out-of-the-box or with
>    some tweaking.
>2) If there is a Solaris-compatible libusb: Rewrite sanei/sanei_usb.c
>    to support this way of access. Probably not easy.

Kinda what Im thinking, too. Looks like we might need to create a 
sane-sunray backend of sorts. I have looked at some other epson kernel level 
drivers that claimed to work on Solaris (i86). Maybe a bit more tweaking 
might render them useful under sparc architectures.

Thanks very much

Kip

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