[sane-devel] Epson 4490 in Debian

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Fredrik Sandstrom <fs at iki.fi> writes:

> Hi,

Hi,

I know you already found out what to do, but nevertheless ...

> I'm trying to use an Epson Perfection 4490 Photo under Debian etch
> (testing). It's supposedly fully supported by the epkowa backend. This
> is what I did so far:
>
> - installed Debian's sane, sane-utils and libsane-extras packages (the
>   last one contains the epkowa backend)
>
> - downloaded iscan-2.0.0-0.c2.tar.gz from www.avasys.jp, for the
>   binary-only component not distributed by Debian

As of iscan-2.0.0 the non-free, binary-only components are no longer
in the "source" tarball.  The epkowa backend of that version (as well
as the one in 1.18.0) works fine without these components.

The binary-only components are available (as RPMs) from the download
page for your particular scanner model at:

  http://www.avasys.jp/english/linux_e/index.html

Just select your scanner model and note that it lists two RPMs (for
gcc 3.4 or later and another two for gcc-3.2/3.3).

These non-free, binary-only components used by the backend follow the
following naming convention:

  iscan-plugin-$modelname

where $modelname normally refers to the Japanese version of your
model.
# It's shorter, that's why.

> - copied the binary-only component libesmod.so to /usr/lib/epkowa/,
>   in accordance to the instructions given in
>   /usr/share/doc/libsane-extras/README.Debian

The libesmod.so library is *not* used by the epkowa backend.  It is
only used by the iscan frontend.

> - removed "epson" from /etc/sane/dll.conf (also following the same
>   instructions) and made sure epkowa was enabled

That's only necessary if you find it annoying to see scanners
supported by both backends listed twice.

> The result? sane-find-scanner detects the scanner fine, but
> scanimage -L does not. Adding "usb 0x04b8 0x0119" to /etc/epkowa.conf
> makes scanimage -L *claim* to find the scanner,
> (device `epkowa:libusb:001:002' is a Epson  flatbed scanner)
> but scanning does not work.
> (scanimage: sane_start: Invalid argument)
>
> So, where did I go wrong? Any ideas?

Install the iscan-plugin-gt-x750 package.  For Debian, you probably
want to convert using alien.

> Some ideas of my own:
>
> The instructions in /usr/share/doc/libsane-extras/README.Debian says
> that one should make sure to use a matching version of the binary
> component. That would be version 1.16.0-3, according to
> /usr/share/doc/libsane-extras/copyright. But www.avasys.jp will only
> let me download version 2.0.0. Are older versions available somewhere?

No.  EPSON AVASYS (unfortunately) does not keep old versions around
for download.

> However, I doubt this is the only problem, because strace reveals that
> scanimage does not look in /usr/lib/epkowa/ at all, and that can't be
> right.

That's because the backend doesn't look there in 1.16.0.  As of
1.18.0, the backend will look for non-free, binary-only plugins in
$pkglibdir.  On most systems that will be /usr/local/lib/iscan or
/usr/lib/iscan.  If modules aren't there, certain models are simply
considered *not* supported.
# OK, so it also looks everywhere else your loader is looking by
# default :-{

FWIW, libesmod.so is normally installed in $libdir.

Of course, if the Debian maintainer(s) have been mucking around with
this, that is their problem/responsibility/fault/whatever.

> Thanks for reading. :)
 
You're welcome ;-)

Hope this helps,
-- 
Olaf Meeuwissen                          EPSON AVASYS Corporation, SE1
FSF Associate Member #1962           sign up at http://member.fsf.org/
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Penguin's lib!       -- I hack, therefore I am --               LPIC-2