[sane-devel] Sane doesn't create a scanner device

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

CC:ing sane-devel for the benefit of archival purposes.

dark_mail at gmx.net writes:

> Actually, I already have switched to udev. So gathering from your
> answer I guess iscan and udev don't work together.

Let me put it this way, iscan does not have any udev support so when
you plug in your device udev may not recognise it as a scanner.  The
upshot of that is that the device node may not get the permissions
needed iscan and other SANE frontends to access it.  You will need
read and write access to the device for it to work.

Just to make sure, check that the /proc/bus/usb/###/### entry that
corresponds to your RX420 has read/write access for everyone.  If it
doesn't, then, as root, do

  # chmod 0666 /proc/bus/usb/###/###

and give it another try.

# For the security conscious boys and girls out there, I know that
# this is not a good idea in general, but we're just trying to get
# the damn thing to work here first.

> I tried again to make the scanner work, without result. It makes no
> difference if I'm a normal user or root, neither the with epson- nor
> with the iscan-backend I get it to work.

Now, if it also doesn't work when you are root, then there may be
something else that is getting in your way because root normally can
do anything to the device.  i say normally, because SELinux and the
like may throw a spanner in the works here.  For now I'm assuming you
are using the good old Unix ACL mechanism.

> The node at /proc/bus/usb/001/ is there, but I can't use it in any way.
> Creating a link from the respective node to something in /dev/ didn't
> help me, either.

With /proc being a virtual file system, I'm surprised you managed to
make it a symlink to anywhere else to begin with.

> But I can't believe I'm the only one not able to make it work!

Actually, there is another thread going on (started by russbucket,
IIRC) that just may be related to this (at least as far as iscan is
concerned).

> What do you think: Is udev the reason? Is it something else? Is it me?

Nah, it's probably the weather or the phase of the moon ;-)

Seriously, sane-backends should have reasonably working udev support,
but I vaguely recall seeing some udev related commits recently.  You
may want to check CVS for the latest scoop on this.

> I have updated my sane-backend to version 1.0.16, didn't help.

That version introduced a locking mechanism which may or may not be
enabled by default on Gentoo.  I don't know the details (yet).  Any
one else care to jump in?  Henning?

BTW, the epson backend in that version should support your scanner out
of the box.  In 1.0.15 it did not, but you could force support for it
by adding

  usb 0x04b8 0x080f

to your /etc/sane.d/epson.conf.

> I even installed iscan from rpm (which normally isn't a good idea when
> you use portage for all other packages).
>
> I'm close to despair!

I can tell from your installation from RPM ;-)

> Olaf Meeuwissen wrote:
>> Karl Heinz Kremer <khk at khk.net> writes:
>> 
>> 
>>>You need to configure your hotplug system - this will then create the  
>>>scanner device for you once the scanner is connected to the system.  
>>>I'm not familiar with Gentoo, so I don't know how this is done with  
>>>your system.
>> 
>> 
>> There most likely will be a dynamically created device by the name of
>> 
>>   /proc/bus/usb/001/004
>> 
>> but it may not have the correct permissions.  You need read and write
>> permissions for the user that wants to use the scanner.
>> 
>> Note that when you re-plug or power cycle the device it will change
>> "names" (probably to /proc/bus/usb/001/005, 006 and so on).  Unless
>> you set up hotplug (or udev, which I still have to look into myself)
>> to do this for you, you will need to do this manually every time you
>> re-plug, power cycle the device or reboot.
>> 
>> For USB scanners with a recent enough libusb (>= 0.1.6) and kernel (>=
>> 2.4.12-ish. IIRC) there is no real need to muck with /dev/usb/scanner*
>> anymore.  For 2.6.x kernels /dev/usb/scanner* is not an option, really.
>> 
>> 
>>>On Oct 24, 2005, at 6:40 PM, dark_mail at gmx.net wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>I'm using an Epson Stylus Photo RX 420 (scanner-printer-combo) on a
>>>>Gentoo machine (Kernel 2.6.13).
>>>>
>>>>Sane is version 1.0.15 (back- and frontend).
>>>>
>>>>My problem is the following:
>>>>
>>>>sane-find-scanner detects my scanner correctly:
>>>>
>>>>found USB scanner (vendor=0x04b8 [EPSON], product=0x080f [USB MFP]) at
>>>>libusb:001:004
>>>>
>>>>But I don't find a device for the scanner anywhere. I even created a
>>>>/dev/usb/scanner0 by hand, but that didn't help me, either.
>>>>
>>>>I also tried iscan, but it only says that it can't connect to the
>>>>scanner and that I should make sure the scanner is on.
>> 
>> 
>> What version?  If you take care of the hotplug support it provides,
>> most of the EPSON scanners should work out-of-the-box (unless your
>> system has already switched to udev in favour of hotplug).
>> 
>> 
>>>>[snip]
>> 
>> 
>> Hope this helps,
>
>
>

-- 
Olaf Meeuwissen
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