[sane-devel] Iscan and Ubuntu 17.10/18.04 fixed

[staedtler-przyborski]

Dear Sane developers,

all Iscan dependend Epson scanners refused to work with Ubuntu 17.10
(and 18.04)

see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sane-backends/+bug/1707352.

I know it is not your fault. But maybe some users try to find a solution
on the sane-devel-mailing- list.

I discovered today a simple fix for this bug (after updating libsane to 
:libsane1 1.0.27-

1~experimental2ubuntu2.1, curently in proposed).

Copy (or move) the files from /usr/lib/sane (libsane-epkowa.la, libsane-

epkowa.so.1, libsane-epkowa.so.1.0.15 in my case) to
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane

after a reboot the Iscan dependend scanners (verified with a Epson V300)
start to work.


Maybe Epson delivers updated packages some day so the manual correction
will be unnecessary


Hope this helps


Klaus Staedtler

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Hi,

Post by staedtler-przyborski
Dear Sane developers,
all Iscan dependend Epson scanners refused to work with Ubuntu 17.10
(and 18.04)
see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sane-backends/+bug/1707352.

What a mess. Changing the package name from libsane to libsane1 and
then expecting nothing breaks??? The Provides: libsane is absolutely
required until all depending packages have been updated to require the
new libsane1 package.

The issue with third party package does not end there. A lot of them
were created before "multi-arch" so they install in /usr/lib/sane or
/usr/lib64/sane, not in some really architecture dependent place such as
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane. There is little change that third party
*vendor* packages will be rebuilt to fix this.

As far as iscan and its interpreters are concerned, to the best of my
knowledge they are no longer actively maintained. Good luck prodding
EPSON in fixing this.

# Full disclosure: I work at a daughter company of EPSON and have been
# taking care of iscan for over a decade (and spent about five years
# working on utsushi, aka imagescan).

Post by staedtler-przyborski
I know it is not your fault. But maybe some users try to find a solution
on the sane-devel-mailing- list.

Fortunately not.

Post by staedtler-przyborski
I discovered today a simple fix for this bug (after updating libsane to
:libsane1 1.0.27-
1~experimental2ubuntu2.1, curently in proposed).
Copy (or move) the files from /usr/lib/sane (libsane-epkowa.la, libsane-
epkowa.so.1, libsane-epkowa.so.1.0.15 in my case) to
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane

Actually, I'd leave them where they are and create symlinks to them from
where they are expected. After moving them back to /usr/lib/sane

cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane
ln -s ../../sane/libsane-epkowa.la
ln -s ../../sane/libsane-epkowa.so.1
ln -s ../../sane/libsane-epkowa.so.1.0.15

Post by staedtler-przyborski
after a reboot the Iscan dependend scanners (verified with a Epson V300)
start to work.

You shouldn't have to reboot. Just restart your application.

Post by staedtler-przyborski
Maybe Epson delivers updated packages some day so the manual correction
will be unnecessary

Like I said, good luck with that.

Hope this helps
--
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2 FSF Associate Member since 2004-01-27
GnuPG key: F84A2DD9/B3C0 2F47 EA19 64F4 9F13 F43E B8A4 A88A F84A 2DD9
Support Free Software https://my.fsf.org/donate
Join the Free Software Foundation https://my.fsf.org/join

[staedtler-przyborski]

Post by Olaf Meeuwissen
Actually, I'd leave them where they are and create symlinks to them from
where they are expected. After moving them back to /usr/lib/sane
cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane
ln -s ../../sane/libsane-epkowa.la
ln -s ../../sane/libsane-epkowa.so.1
ln -s ../../sane/libsane-epkowa.so.1.0.15

Dear Olaf I discovered this after my post by myself ...

Nevertheless many thanks for your kind advice. And yes you are right: no
reboot needed.

In the meanwhile we got the following backends working by doing these steps:

1.Brother:

brscan, brscan2, brscan3

a) 'sudo ln -sfr /usr/lib64/libbr* /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu'
b) 'sudo ln -sfr /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother*
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane'
c) generate '/etc/udev/rules.d/59-udev-local.rules'
content:
# Brother brscan devices
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04f9", ATTRS{idProduct}=="*", MODE="0664",
GROUP="scanner", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"

2. Epson Iscan

a) 'sudo ln -sfr /usr/lib/sane/libsane-epkowa*
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane'
b) generate '/etc/udev/rules.d/79-udev-epson.rules'
content:
# chmod device EPSON group
ATTRS{manufacturer}=="EPSON", DRIVERS=="usb", SUBSYSTEMS=="usb",
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04b8", ATTRS{idProduct}=="*", MODE="0777"

3. Xerox Workcentre 3225

a) 'sudo ln -sfr /usr/lib/sane/libsane-smfp* /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane'
b) 'sudo adduser $USER lp'


Only brscan4 refuses to work for what reason ever (it works only as root
and only with xsane, no scanimage, no scantopdf ...) currently we try
discover if any 'special' udev rules are missing and generating them
might work.

Any help/advice appreciated.

The owner of the brscan4 Scanner asked Brother. They replied: "read the
faq, or check over internet if there are solutions from the community".

current state can be observed here
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sane-backends/+bug/1728012

Some people call using 'MODE="0777" for epson dangerous. The rule was
installed by the epson-printer-utility. With the rule Iscan works,
without not.


Thanks for your kind interest

Klaus Staedtler

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Hi Klaus, Jörg,

[... Ubuntu using libsane1-1.0.27-1~experimental* packages breaks just
about any third party SANE backend package ...]
1. Brother: brscan, brscan2, brscan3
2. Epson Iscan
3. Xerox Workcentre 3225

I read through the bug report you mentioned below and think the whole
thing sucks. Ubuntu has made a *huge* judgement error pulling an
*experimental* package for their upcoming release just to get a newer
version of the SANE backends upstream. A lot of scanners supported by
third party scanner break for no good reason.

I think things can actually be solved quite easily if Jörg can upload a
libsane-1.0.27 package that simply uses the debian/* from 1.0.25 with a
few minor changes:

- change the configure invocation to account for the changed USB option
(see note 2 of the NEWS file)
- drop any patches that we included (mentioned in an earlier head's up)
- the usual "new version" changes

This can be uploaded to Debian's unstable/sid and Ubuntu can then pull
that for their upcoming release.

Any help/advice appreciated.

See above.

@Jörg> You can stop reading here and start on that package ;-)

The owner of the brscan4 Scanner asked Brother. They replied: "read the
faq, or check over internet if there are solutions from the community".

That's a polite way of saying "We don't support GNU/Linux" :-(

Brother is not alone in this. Manufacturers may publish a package that
makes the device work with (a subset of?) SANE but that is not the same
as providing support.

current state can be observed here
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sane-backends/+bug/1728012

Ugh!

Some people call using 'MODE="0777" for epson dangerous. The rule was
installed by the epson-printer-utility. With the rule Iscan works,
without not.

A mode of 0777 gives anyone on the PC/laptop access to the scanner (MFP
in your case, I believe). Whether that is "dangerous" depends on who
uses th PC/laptop. The idea behind 0664, used by many distributions,
and making the device owned by a special purpose group (scanner, lp,
etc.) or adding an ACL for that group is that that allows the machine's
admin to configure some kind of access policy.

I think that 0666 should work but that basically has the same security
implications. I don't know if the printer utility has any special
requirements that dictate execute permissions and also don't know what
is responsible for the firmware upload. I do know that the non-free
scanner plugin are (should be) able to upload the firmware themselves.

Hope this helps,
--
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2 FSF Associate Member since 2004-01-27
GnuPG key: F84A2DD9/B3C0 2F47 EA19 64F4 9F13 F43E B8A4 A88A F84A 2DD9
Support Free Software https://my.fsf.org/donate
Join the Free Software Foundation https://my.fsf.org/join

[staedtler-przyborski]

Post by Olaf Meeuwissen
I read through the bug report you mentioned below and think the whole
thing sucks. Ubuntu has made a *huge* judgement error pulling an
*experimental* package for their upcoming release just to get a newer
version of the SANE backends upstream. A lot of scanners supported by
third party scanner break for no good reason.

Reverting this decision would definitely be the best solution.

But who knows (I'm not affiliated to ubuntu in any way, I'm only using
it). In that case it's good to have workarounds to overcome the limitations.

Thanks to another user we got now Brother brscan4 based scanners working
too (by using an unconventional approach) with relevant scanning apps
(Xsane, scanimage, simple-scan, scantopdf)and as user.

Summary of all workarounds:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sane-backends/+bug/1728012/comments/76

Regards

Klaus Staedtler

[Olaf Meeuwissen]

Hi Klaus,

Post by staedtler-przyborski

Post by Olaf Meeuwissen
I read through the bug report you mentioned below and think the whole
thing sucks. Ubuntu has made a *huge* judgement error pulling an
*experimental* package for their upcoming release just to get a newer
version of the SANE backends upstream. A lot of scanners supported by
third party scanner break for no good reason.

Reverting this decision would definitely be the best solution.
But who knows (I'm not affiliated to ubuntu in any way, I'm only using
it). In that case it's good to have workarounds to overcome the limitations.

I'm not affiliated with Ubuntu either (but I do have a Launchpad
account) and I no longer use any of the 'buntus. I don't let those kind
of "details" get in my way when a "dumb decision" wrecks my workflow or
causes me lots of extra work. If the maintainers of your preferred
distribution(s) break things, it's up to them to fix them (possibly with
the help of knowledgeable users) and not the upstream project.

Post by staedtler-przyborski
Thanks to another user we got now Brother brscan4 based scanners working
too (by using an unconventional approach) with relevant scanning apps
(Xsane, scanimage, simple-scan, scantopdf)and as user.

Oh yeah, hwdb files, yet another systemd thingy. Our sane-desc utility
know how to create these files since the summer of 2013. I'm not sure
if any distribution uses them but that would probably not have helped
those brscan4 users anyway.

Post by staedtler-przyborski
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sane-backends/+bug/1728012/comments/76

Thanks for the feedback,
--
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2 FSF Associate Member since 2004-01-27
GnuPG key: F84A2DD9/B3C0 2F47 EA19 64F4 9F13 F43E B8A4 A88A F84A 2DD9
Support Free Software https://my.fsf.org/donate
Join the Free Software Foundation https://my.fsf.org/join