[SLUG] does my scanner work?

From: Eben King (eben01@verizon.net)
Date: Wed Jul 26 2006 - 21:02:38 EDT


I moved a working scanner (a 3-pass, 300-dpi, 24-bit Microtek Scanmaker
III) from an antique Mac to my machine. It's SCSI ID 6, with this as the
card:

0000:00:0d.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AHA-2940U/UW/D / AIC-7881U (rev 01)

xsane doesn't admit it's there. It says:

+----------------------+
| no devices available |
| |
| [Help] [Close] |
+----------------------+

If I press "Help", I get another dialog:

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| no devices available |
| |
| Possible reasons: |
| 1) There really is no device supported by SANE |
| 2) Supported devices are busy |
| 3) The permissions for the device file do not allow you to use it -- try |
| as root |
| 4) The backend is not loaded by SANE (man sane-dll) |
| 5) The backend is not configured correct (man sane-"backendname") |
| 6) Possibly there is more than one SANE version installed |
| |
| [ C l o s e ] |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+

So. #1 is reasonable, as it's an old semi-obscure scanner. I might not
have the SCSI card configured correctly either. How do I tell?

#2, no.

#3 is probable, but their suggested workaround gives a GTK error:

(xsane:12337): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

The permissions on /dev/sg* needed to be changed; they were root/root 0600.
I changed them manually to root/eben 0660, but next time I reboot, that's
gone. I forget the file I need to change to make that stick. Anyone?

#4, "microtek" and "microtek2" are listed in /etc/sane.d/dll.conf. The
scanner was on when the machine was booted. What else do I have to do?

#5, heck if I know. I'm not even sure what backend to use.

#6, unlikely. I only installed once, using synaptic.

I ran

strace xsane 2>&1 | grep open | grep '= -' | grep -v ENOENT | less -S

(basically, show me all erroring OS calls where the error was NOT "file not
found")

and it showed permission errors on /proc/bus/usb/*/*, /dev/parport*,
/dev/port, and /dev/lp0, but nothing related to SCSI. From this I deduce
that it successfully scanned SCSI but didn't find anything it could support.
Is my logic correct? How can I see what it found? (There should be two
things out there.) Where do I get a list of supported scanners?

-- 
A well-loved and correctly trained domestic canine is generally
slobbery, excitable, noisy, scatalogically obsessed, xenophobic,
pathetically unjudgmental, embarrassingly uninhibited, unreasoningly
devoted, heartbreakingly dependent and wretchedly craven. - PB, AFCA
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