Downloading and installing a scanner driver.

[Falcon]

I recently bought a Canon TR8520 all-in-one printer because Canon stated that they have Linux drivers for the print and scan functions. When I installed the drivers, it turned out that their function was minimal. If the scanner driver had any less function, it would have none at all. The MX Linux built-in scanner programs SimpleScan and Gscan2PDF do not work with the TR8520 scanner function.

In reading the MX Linux User Manual, a reference with a hyperlink is made to a list of SANE-supported scanners. The TR8500 series is on the list and the driver is listed as "SANE-Pixma". Clicking on this link takes me to another page titled SANE-Pixma.5. The text makes reference to this driver, but there is no link to download it or install it. It is stated that the scanner function of the TR8520 MAY work with this driver, but it is untested. I'm willing to try it if I can figure out how to download and install it.

Does anyone have any experience in obtaining SANE drivers and getting them installed and working?

Thanks in advance.

[eriefisher]

The sane-pixma driver is part of the libsane package. Ensure it is installed, plug in the scanner and run sane-find-scanner. No guarantee that the scanner will work but as noted in the man pages it may still list the scanner. You may also want to run lsusb before and after the scanner is plugged in just to see if the OS see's it. If all goes well you should see the driver with lsmod. Again this doesn't mean the scanner will actually work.

http://www.sane-project.org/man/sane-fi ... ner.1.html

[Falcon]

eriefisher,

Thanks for the info. How do I go about installing the libsane package. It did not appear in any of the Package Installer libraries. I've never downloaded packages before; I've only made use of the MX Package Installer so I'm not sure where to go from here.

[chrispop99]

Assuming MX-19, libsane is already installed.

To confirm, search for it in Synaptic.

Chris

[eriefisher]

As root apt update && apt install libsane

If it's already there is will tell you as much.

[Falcon]

I'm running Linux 18.3

I did the install operation and was informed that the libsane package was already at the latest level. The printer is connected wirelessly, rather than USB. Is there a command similar to lsusb that can be use to detect wireless devices that the computer has access to?

I plugged the printer into the USB port on the laptop, but neither SimpleScan nor gscan2pdf could find it. It seems like MX should be able to find the scanner, even though it may not function.

[figueroa]

With the device plugged into your USB port, run "scanimage -L" which should inform you of any scanners it finds. If it does not find any scanner, it's not recognized and you need to make configuration changes in /etc/sane.d

dll.conf contains a list of all the scanner backends sane will try to find. Make sure your needed backend is listed there. Better yet, put it first.

To use it on the network, add the IP address to net.conf and add net to dll.conf.

Do set up the printer/scanner to use a fixed IP address. Otherwise you add a whole magnitude of difficulty reaching the scanner with sane.

Make sure you user is listed in the scanner group.

[Falcon]

I ran the scanimage -L command and the scanner was not found. Then I ran the sane-find-scanner as root and the scanner was found. Here is what was returned:

found USB scanner (vendor=0x04a9 [Canon], product=0x1823 [TR8500 series]) at libusb:002:007

Then I ran the scanimage -L command again as root and got these results:

$ sudo scanimage -L

No scanners were identified. If you were expecting something different,
check that the scanner is plugged in, turned on and detected by the
sane-find-scanner tool (if appropriate). Please read the documentation
which came with this software (README, FAQ, manpages).

I opened the dll.conf file and looked at its contents. "Net" is the first entry. The following is listed for Canon:

canon
canon630u
canon_dr
#canon_pp

I don't know if there should be another backend for my particular printer/scanner. Should there be an entry called sane-pixma or just pixma?

I edited the dll.conf file to add sane-pixma to the list and then saved it and rebooted. On the roboot, I got a message box stating that there was a new printer and I was asked to add it, which I did. sane-find-scanner says that it found the printer. scanimage -L still says that there was no scanner found.

[Falcon]

I took another look at the dll.conf file and saw that there was an entry named pixma. There was also a configuration file called pixma.conf i opened that and found that
it was for a pixma backend, but all of the lines were commented out. It appears that the user is expected to fill in their own information but I have no idea what needs to be entered there. Perhaps you or someone else can provide some info on that.

Thanks for the help so far.