[sane-devel] Identifying identical scanners dynamically turned on and off

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Martin Zackrisson <martin.zackrisson at cmb.gu.se> writes:

> It is a modified version of the epson2-backend (don't know if the
> patch of last fall has made its way into the main dist).
> The OS is Ubuntu, the latest I think or the latest long-term (not
> sitting close to that computer at present).
> My first thought was to look for the serial too, and unfortunately
> fujitsu don't have any scanner that fits our needs (A4 TPU + many more
> things), so they all have to be Epson v700. Reading its "Programming
> Guide. Rev. C" it seems to agree with you - that the best it can do is
> to send its 'Product Name' and 'ROM Version'.

That's right the ESC/I protocol does not provide access to information
that is unique amongst all devices (of a certain model).  You may have
more luck with the USB information which may include a serial number.
Some models have one, others don't.  Don't know about the V700.  Even if
they have a serial number in the USB info, I would not be too surprised
if some devices have the same serial number :-|

> I suppose it must be question of learning the inner workings of udev
> then?

These days the USB devices stay at the same place below /sys/ even when
power cycled.  Only when replugging to a *different* USB port will this
location change.  I'm not sure what happens when you reboot.

Assuming that you know which scanner shows up where in /sys/, you can
then use the busnum and devnum "files" to construct the device names
that the epson2 backend groks.  So with

  $ cat /sys/bus/usb/devices/usb2/2-4/busnum
  2
  $ cat /sys/bus/usb/devices/usb2/2-4/devnum
  3

you'd use `epson2:libusb:002:003` for the device name.  When power
cycling, on the `devnum` will change.

Note that there is a libsysfs-dev package which may be useful here.

Hope this helps,
-- 
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2           FLOSS Engineer -- AVASYS CORPORATION
FSF Associate Member #1962               Help support software freedom
                 http://www.fsf.org/jf?referrer=1962