[sane-devel] Gradually increasing scan times

[Henning Meier-Geinitz]

Hi,

On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 11:28:56PM -0500, Karl O. Pinc wrote:
> My question is probably not directly related to sane,
> although who knows?

I have no experience with your scanner but maybe the comments help
nevertheless.

> I've got a HP Scanjet model 6100C (product C2520A) attached
> to a Adaptec 1524 scsi card.  Right now I'm running the
> latest RedHat 7.2:
> 
> xsane-0.82-3.1
> sane-backends-devel-1.0.5-4.1
> sane-backends-1.0.5-4.1
> xsane-gimp-0.82-3.1
> sane-frontends-1.0.5-2

That's really old (sane-backends 1.0.11 is current).

> Linux mofo.meme.com 2.4.18-27.7.xsmp #1 SMP Fri Mar 14 05:52:30 EST 
> 2003 i686 unknown

Is this really a SMP system?

> One upon a time, it worked.  (I recall somewhere in the early .60
> xsane releases, maybe.)

XSane is only the frontend (scan application) so most probably yor
problem does not depend on xsane (or any other frontend). But to make
sure, you can try scanning with xscanimage or scanimage.

> As time has gone by it's taken longer and longer to scan.  The delay
> is 'between' the little noises the scanner makes.  Right away there's
> a noise (where the scanner resets?) Then a pause.  Then another nose
> a bip-bop (where the scan head zeros?) Then a noise when it first
> scans and then moves the scan head back to the resting position.  The
> pause between the noises gets longer and longer.  After installing
> the latest kernel upgrade it now takes about 10 minutes or so to go
> through the whole cycle and, this is new, the resultant image is
> black.

For me that looks like a SCSI command times out or some other SCSI
trouble. Have you changed the kernel version in the meantime? Updating
(or even changing to an older version) may help.

> I don't use the scanner much at all, and leave the machine up for
> months.  I used to be able to rmmod the aha152x module and then
> modprobe it and the delays would go away.  I figured there was a
> memory leak (mozilla/galeon seems to have one) or something somewhere.
> Now, the scanner is unusable.  (And it's tax time.  :)

I would be surprised if a memory hole in a userspace application would
cause such problems.

> FWIW, for quite a while I've had to start xsane twice.
> The first time it always says
> that no device is found.

One reason for that may be that automatic loading of the sg module
doesn't work as expected. If /dev/scanner points to your scanner, this
shouldn't be a problem, however.

Try modprobe sg before running xsane. If this works with the first
call of xsane it's the problem I menitioned. It's not connected to
your other problem.

> IIRC, maybe, that when I first got the scanner working I didn't have
> this problem.  The scsi II cable is a little long, going from the
> floor to the desk but....  There are also 2 other devices attached to
> the same scsi chain, and they seem to work.  There's no messages in
> dmesg or /var/log/messages.  (Except for the bus reset related stuff
> from my module reloading.)

That's odd. But too long or bad cables and wrong termination can have
all kinds of nasty effects. And sometimes some of the devices work
anyway.

> What's the best way to approach fixing this problem?  I once had faith
> that HP devices would continue to work, but their printers now seem to
> break regularly.  Is this a hardware problem?  The lamp is old and
> weak or a sensor needs the dust removed?  It doesn't have that sort of
> feel.  (It has the feel of scsi hell.)  I've tried disconnecting some
> of the other devices on the bus (and adding an active terminator) to no 
> effect.

I also think it's SCSI-related. Maybe also a problem with the SCSI
driver. But to make sure, you could try the scanner on a different
computer, e.g. with MS Windows.

> (I've just downloaded the RH 9 sane and xsane source rpms, but I don't
> know if they'll compile without a lot of hassle and I'm not confident
> that will fix the problem.)

If it's a SANE problem, updating sane-backends should solve it.

> hp.conf is:
> 
> scsi HP C2520A * * * * *

Adding /dev/scanner (or /dev/sgwhatever) before that may solve the
detection problem.

> modules.conf is:
> 
> alias scsi_hostadapter aic7xxx
> alias scsi1 aha152x
> options aha152x io=0x340, irq=10, sync=0

Have you checked for io/irq conflicts?

> Here's some relevant /var/log/messages output:
> 
> Apr 10 21:28:35 mofo kernel: aha152x1: vital data: rev=1, io=0x340 
> (0x340/0x340), irq=10, scsiid=7, reconnect=enabled, parity=enabled, 
> synchronous=disabled, delay=1000, extended translation=disabled

Some scanners don't like reconnect.

Bye,
  Henning