Sane: New Epson Scanner
This blog entry describes how to get Epson Scanners working in Ubuntu, continue through to my rambling story below… Run these commands in a command line, go to Applications > Accessories > Terminal and then copy and paste hit enter and then restart your machine when it’s finished.
sudo wget -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/doctormo-epson-scanners.list http://divajutta.com/doctormo/ppa/doctormo-epson-scanners.list & sudo apt-key adv –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv-keys 113659DF & sudo apt-get update & sudo apt-get install iscan iscan-plugins
This is what those commands are doing:
- Installing my Epson PPA
- Adding my PPA Signing Key (113659DF) to say you trust my packages.
- Getting a new list of packages, updating.
- Installing iscan and iscan-plugins packages.
I finally managed to get myself a scanner that functions under Ubuntu, although not without some trial and error. The initial scanner I acquired was a Visioneer OneTouch 9520 (which is going back tomorrow). This scanner didn’t work in any material way based as it is on the gl843 chipset and there may or may not be somebody working on making it work in sane.
Scanned Photo: Martin Cooking
So I went out and got myself an Epson Perfection v500 Photo, didn’t work when I plugged that in either. I was about to give up hope when a search of the internet revealed that it worked because of a proprietary driver directly from Epson/Avasys.
So not content with being proprietary, the linux parts required to install the downloads from Avasys are missing in Ubuntu, iscan (LGPL) isn’t installable because of missing dependencies and none of the plugins are installable without iscan. They’re also heavily Debian based, even the pre-install scripts assume sh is bash and cause problems.
So for both of these I rebuilt them all and put them on my Epson PPA for Ubuntu Users. Hopefully some poor soul with an Epson Scanner will find these useful. To install them add my PPA to your repositories and install iscan and iscan-plugins using apt-get install.
Now there are two notes, firstly I had to add a HAL fdi file to order to set the permissions correctly (an idea which is starting to make me wonder about HAL’s setup) and the SANE project’s apparent ugliness and out of date website and hardware lists (although it also seems under-maintained for a project of it’s importance).
Scanning under Ubuntu is yet another thing that needs attention of a dedicated developer to sort out, but for which we just don’t have enough resources to do anything other that the odd enlightened self interested or arch packaging (I believe iscan should be ready to roll in Karmic).
Tags: epson, scanner, Ubuntu, v200, v300, v400, v500
I finally managed to get myself a scanner that functions under Ubuntu
Did you mean “I finally managed to find a scanner that’s supported by Ubuntu”
This scanner didn’t work in any material way based as it
Did you mean “Ubuntu didn’t work?” I bet the scanner worked when you tried it in windows/osx.
Scanning, audio, video editing, … just about everything which was ubiquitous in 2007 is still “needing attention” in Ubuntu.
This is really random, but why is the photo reversed? (I know, only the photographer would notice that) Is that how it scanned or did you flip it in post?
Currently there is a discussion on replacing XSane with GNOME Scan/Flegita on ubuntu-devel-discuss:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2009-April/007963.html
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2009-April/007978.html
I thought you’d find it interesting. I’m not sure what it uses to support scanners, HAL or something else.
I feel your pain, once (gutsy times) I had to edit fdi files for a Toshiba 3G phone. Two Ubuntu releases later that editing is no longer needed: it just works, at last.
Have you tried with a HP scanner? I have a printer and scanner device that just works out of the box since hardy.
Thanks! I’m on that list, it’s most interesting. But that just replacing xsane, not the sane backend which is still a very good architecture of scanners. No this was just a problem with closed drivers and packaging.
Fork: Well it wasn’t supported by ubuntu and won’t be until Karmic (maybe), I still had to install something else to get it working and build the packages (which should help others).
As for trying it in windows or OSX, I haven’t used windows since 2001, I’d rather raw my head off with a rusty saw then use windows. It’s just not Free enough for me, I’m picky about my politics.
I scanned it upside down and then flipped it right way up.
Howdy Dr.,
From reading your article I got the notion that the hardware isn’t working. The hardware works, just not in Ubuntu.
I’ve been programming in Linux as a profession for over 8 years (custom CPU farms) and quit the scene a few weeks back. Lack of decent tools, documentation and stable interfaces lead me to this decision. It took me a few days to find a similar job which doesn’t involve linux and my life got a hell of a lot better. You’re criticizing hardware vendors because they don’t offer free code, if you want to make things better I suggest to start a campaign to get upstream Ubuntu/linux devs to stop breaking API/ABI. To give you some insight: developing hardware drivers for linux means that you’re spending most of your time bending backwards to make a perfect piece of code work – most of my time went into trying to find out interface bugs. A few months and an upgrade later you find yourself re-iterating your code because of new bugs introduced by interface revisions. And this is for just one distro.
The company I worked for decided to release (open) driver code as a test 5 years ago. We received a lot of feedback, mainly from lawfirms. 8 people among which my project coordinator got fired as a result.
I had a barbecue this weekend and after everybody went home I performed a sort of ritual: I set fire to a few cubic meters of linux documentation and manuals. The space I created is now filled by an aquarium and plants.
You can be as picky as you want about your politics, but please don’t let it interfere with reality.
Fork: My dear fellow, politics is reality, it’s just the reality that the world is comprised of more than just my own selfish goals and ambitions. It’s not easy for a human being to get into the mind of others, but when we do consider the implications, some of us strive to better the lot of everybody.
As for the linux ABI,I’d suggest that’s because the Linux kernel project has been too successful in attracting developers and testers. Most other projects but a lot of work into leveraging coverable API test suites and full cycle testing, but why bother investing in that if you’ve got thousands of people willing to do the work for you?
Check out the NoStaples scanning program too.
@Fork: I think the kernel’s dev’s argument would be you should have got your drivers into the kernel source tree, that way when things changed the burden of getting your driver (and other drivers) working would be distributed across more people.
But me knows nothing.
As for scanning, while Sane does a nice job of scanning once its working, the GUI is inSane and the trouble to get scanners working is beyond what most users should be expected to have to go through.
For instance my scanner which is old, circa 2001, does not work out of the box. I had to trawl the net looking for a driver that worked.
scanners and Linux hehe. not gonna comment on that.
but i SHALL comment on the picture. this picture is awesome. i wish i could take pictures like this.
hopefully one day i can get my hands on a Lomo camera
I tried your packages for an epson v300 photo, but without success.
Then removed your iscan-plugins and installed the original esci-interpreter-gt-f720 package from the avasys site and – now it works!
Yes, there is a postinst and prerm scripts which I failed to take into account and I’ve updated it to 0.7 and that works for me now
Although at least you got the iscan package, which in it’s self is very useful.
works now for me too!
Thanks for putting the iscan-stuff on your Launchpad-PPA. After Weeks of fiddling with Avasys downloads and trying to compile things myself, your .deb files finally got my Epson V200 Photo working in Jaunty_x64.
Keep it up.
Thanks! works like a charm. I tried the avasys site to download drivers for my new v300, and almost gave up… dpkg -i on both packages and voila, scanning works (in gscan2pdf as well)!
Thank you.
This was really easy once I plugged the scanner into the correct computer
I’ve got stuff that doesn’t work in windows anymore but works great in Ubuntu Jaunty. Only reason now to keep windows on the laptop is for using the modem to fax, but only do that rarely. I fought with setting it up for a bit and gave it up.
thanks for providing the ppa, etc.
Tried this with an Epson GT-1500 on Jaunty. Everthing installs as expected. xsane can’t find a scanner. iscan complains too. Scanner shows up with lsusb.
You’ll have to give me more details than that. I don’t know the USB ids, I don’t know what commands you tried to test that it works (you should have tried `sudo scanimage -L` at the very least) and I don’t know if this driver supports that scanner.
Sorry Martin. I didn’t means to be brief. The GT-1500 shows up as 04b8:0133. scanimage -L shows no scanners. sane-find-scanner finds it. The plugin description just mentions that it works for GT scanners and doesn’t mention which. FYI, the sane page says that the scanner is supported by epkowa with DFSG non-free iscan-plugin-gt-1500. I’m beginning to believe that this plugin is not one in your PPA.
So I got off my butt and figured it out. The firmware for the GT-1500 is already there in your PPA.
All I needed to do was to:
iscan-registry –add interpreter usb 0×04b8 0×0133 /usr/lib/iscan/libesint86 /usr/share/iscan/esfw86.bin
and add an entry to your 20-iscan-plugins.fdi for that usb id.
iscan-plugin is in broken package and cannot remove, any help..?
Interesting, have you tried purging? If not we might want to talk to a real MOTU to fix the package up.
Hi DoctorMo. Im trying to install Your PPA and, I can see only iscan-plugins-64 and i can’t install iscan because it’s not on the packages list (in synaptic). Any sugesstions?
The other two are building, look here:
https://launchpad.net/~doctormo/+archive/doctormo-epson-scanners
Now i see it. Thank’s, i’m waiting with patience now
BTW. graet job, especially if it will work with my epson 3170 photo under karmic x64 ;D
Thank you so much! My Epson CS7400 scanner/printer combo was scanning fine last time I tried it (probably 6 months ago). I tried today, and XSane said it couldn’t find the scanner. Much troubleshooting later, I had made no progress. I installed your iscan and iscan-plugins packages, and Lo! and Behold!, XSane works again.
Good to hear, let me know how it goes and don’t forget to support your favourite free software project with a donation.
That should say Epson CX7400…
epson perfection v300
new and good
I’ve purchased the Epson V500 scanner and after some net research was hoping to rely on your builds for the back ends. I see the ppa does not currently hold your iscan package; flag says that the build failed for i386. I’m on 9.10 pretty standard. Is there a chance that the avasys iscan package would work with your plugins (which did exist in the ppa)? Many kudos and much karma for your work with the Ubuntu community, whatever your answer!
The first thing I think is to go to this page:
http://www.avasys.jp/lx-bin2/linux_e/scan/DL1.do
And then try and download the debian / ubuntu deb package for iscan _and_ the V500 driver.
Worked like a charm! I had installed those debs before and for whatever reason they did not work. Today I reinstalled the same debs and both iscan and xsane now work as designed. Go figure. Thanks again for help and inspiration!
I got my V200 scanner broken in Debian (Sid) AMD64 due to upgrade to new packages from Avasys. Your packages worked instantly. Thank you very much!
@vitko: I’m very glad to hear that. I wonder what has gone on with iscan to make it so incompatible. I think we ort to reverse engineer it to be honest.