As usual it was fairly easy in the end, and anything from obvious. I followed the directions here and was up and running in no time. (google + ubuntu forums == goodness)
Summary:
- With the scanner on and plugged in to the computer, run sane-find-scanner (as root) to see if the scanner is detected (I was using the USB interface)–it was:
$ sane-find-scanner # sane-find-scanner will now attempt to detect your scanner. If the # result is different from what you expected, first make sure your # scanner is powered up and properly connected to your computer. # No SCSI scanners found. If you expected something different, make sure that # you have loaded a kernel SCSI driver for your SCSI adapter. found USB scanner (vendor=0x04b8 [EPSON], product=0x012c [EPSON Scanner]) at libusb:005:036 found USB scanner (vendor=0x0483 [STMicroelectronics], product=0x2016 [Biometric Coprocessor]) at libusb:003:029 # Your USB scanner was (probably) detected. It may or may not be supported by # SANE. Try scanimage -L and read the backend's manpage. # Not checking for parallel port scanners. # Most Scanners connected to the parallel port or other proprietary ports # can't be detected by this program. # You may want to run this program as root to find all devices. Once you # found the scanner devices, be sure to adjust access permissions as # necessary.
- I edited /etc/sane/epson.conf and replaced ‘usb’ with ‘usb 0×04b8 0×012c’ (from the output above).
- Once you do this, scanimage should be able to locate it, to wit:
$ scanimage -L device `epson:libusb:005:036' is a Epson GT-X900 flatbed scanner
It’s not identified correctly, but that turned out to be a non-issue.
- After this I could run ‘vuescan’ as root, but not joe user. The somewhat unsatisfying fix is as follows:
sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules
Scroll down the file until you find an entry that says:-
# USB devices (usbfs replacement) SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", MODE="0664"
Change the MODE=”0664″ to MODE=”0666″ and save the file, then reboot.
- Bob’s your uncle!
