[sane-devel] Astra 1220s freezes system

[abel deuring]

On 02.08.2007 12:47, B Thomas wrote:
> Hi,
> I am using Astra 1220 (scsi) with Debian/GNU Linux 4.0 (etch),
> kernel 2.6.22.1, and sane 1.0.18. After a couple of scans using
> xsane the scanner stops scanning often in the middle of a scan.
> xsane stops responding and eventually goes into uninteruptable
> sleep (state D). Often but not always the entire xserver freezes
> and I have to do a hard boot. The kernel spits out i/o error
> messages.

Thi sounds like a problem within the Linux kernel, most likely, with the
card driver...

> Any subsequent scsi command also goes to sleep 
> immediately. Even if the system is not hung, the xsane process
> can not be killed and starting a new one hangs it too.
> 
> My scsi card is Domex 3191D. It uses passive termination and the
> scanner has two scsi ports, one of which is terminated,(the other
> has the cable).

A quote form an old posting to this list from Henning Meier-Geinitz
(http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/sane-devel/2003-June/007879.html):

> |  Adaptec AHA-1505/AHA-1542/AHA-2940
> |  ASUS SC200
> |  BusLogic BT958
> |  NCR/Symbios 53c400/53c400 ISA card
> |  Domex DTC3181E/L/LE (DTCT436/436P) ISA card
> 
> The last two are very low level cards that come with SCSI scanners
> (e.g. Mustek ones). I wouldn't call them "work without difficulty".
> While they can be made to work, they are slow and the driver tends to
> crash quite often.

I remember too quite a few problem reports for this Domex card.. You
could ask the maintainer of the kernel driver for this card for help,
but as a quick fix I'd recommend to buy a well-supported SCSI adapter
card. You can get quite useful second-hand cards on Ebay for perhaps
10-20 Dollar/Euro/... For example the Adaptec 2940 works fine, as well
as adapters with the Symbios 53c8xx chips.

Abel