Questions[simplescan](ubuntu)

I am scanning documents with simple-scan and I'm finding that, if I save documents as PDF, the quality is very low, and if I afterwards save teh document as PNG, the quality is very high.

I have tried to enable "Photo" as opposed to "Text", and configured the settings to have the same resolution for text and photo. Still, the PDF has low quality (it's like its palette has been reduced to just a few colors and the resolution lowered). I'm exporting to PNG and converting with GIMP or imagemagick, but it's not an ideal solution.

Can the settings of the PDF export be configured, maybe in a config file?

I'm using simple-scan with a Brother DCP-L2530DW printer/scanner. The printer works fine, but I'm having issues using the scanner.

I've installed the drivers:

jam@jam-ncase:~$ sudo dpkg -l | grep Brother
[sudo] password for jamie: 
ii  brscan-skey                                0.2.4-1                                amd64        Brother Linux scanner S-KEY tool
ii  brscan4                                    0.4.8-1                                amd64        Brother Scanner Driver
ii  dcpl2530dwpdrv:i386                        4.0.0-1                                i386         Brother DCP-L2530DW printer driver (lpd/cups)
ii  printer-driver-brlaser                     5-1                                    amd64        printer driver for (some) Brother laser printers
ii  printer-driver-ptouch                      1.4.2-3                                amd64        printer driver Brother P-touch label printers

When I start simple-scan, it says Ready to Scan - Brother DCP-L2530DW.

But when I click scan, the scanning animation starts, but then an error message pops up saying: Failed to scan, unable to connect to scanner.

I've googled the problem, and the things I've tried are:

• add my user to lp

• Running this command: sudo cp /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother* /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane

I have a Canon Pixma G2100 multifunctional that prints very well but I cannot use the scanner. My Linux is a Xubuntu 18.04 updated.

I followed this link to install the scanner (option B - from source): https://blog.droidzone.in/tag/sane/

Both commands autoreconf and debuild show many warnings and some errors but the scangearmp-common_2.30-1_amd64.debis generated and can be installed without error messages.

I add the definition in the 2 lines below to /etc/udev/rules.d/80-canon_mfp.rules and /etc/udev/rules.d/80-canon_mfp2.rules

#G2000 series
ATTR{idVendor}==”04a9″, ATTR{idProduct}==”1795″, MODE=”666″

At this point, lsusb and sane-find-scanner detect my usb scanner but scanimage, simple scan and xsane don't.

Another try, using the procedure of the link below give the same result: Scanner Canon Pixma G2000 not detected on scangearmp

I find that this multifunctional is old in the US and Europe and never had an original Canon linux driver. It was sold as a novelty in Brazil last year and I bought it thinking I could find a sane driver.

Does anyone has a solution for this problematic scanner?

I have Canon Pixma G3012 All-in-One Wireless Ink Tank Colour Printer

I am trying to scan a document from my Linux Ubuntu 18 installed PC using simple scan software.

Connected the device into PC over USB and powered on. Opened simple scan software and tried to scan the document. But got the message as "no scanner available please connect a scanner"

Already installed the driver package named scangearmp2-3.30-1-deb.tar.gz.

Used command sane-find-scanner and got below result

found USB scanner (vendor=0x04a9 [Canon], product=0x183b [G3010 series]) at libusb:001:004
  # Your USB scanner was (probably) detected. It may or may not be supported by
  # SANE. Try scanimage -L and read the backend's manpage.

Issued command scanimage -L and got below results.

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).

Referred below two links.

http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html#Z-CANON
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SANE%20-%20Installing%20a%20scanner%20that%20isn%27t%20auto-detected

After that manually added below line in file named /etc/sane.d/genesys.conf

# Canon PIXMA G3012
usb 0x04a9 0x183b

Run the command scanimage -L again but still got scanner not detected message.

Any help is much appreciated.

Adding to this Printing function is working fine for this device. Tested and verified but difficulty in scanning.

Okay. There is an improvement.

I have installed the scangearmp2-3.60-1-deb.tar.gz package by removing scangearmp2-3.30-1-deb.tar.gz. After that scanning is working by initiating the command "scangearmp2". But still simple-scan doesn't detect scanner.

Found below comment from link

Canon MB2320: Scangear works, but simplescan and xsane don't find scanner

Canon does not develop SANE drivers for their scanners but they provide an own solution scangearmp for basic scan functions. This will of course not allow using SANE backends such as simplescan or xsane

For many PIXMA scanners there is a SANE implementation sane-pixma but I could not test if these work or can be made working with the Canon MAXIFY series.

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/cosmic/en/man5/sane-pixma.5.html

Any idea how the sane-pixma can be installed in ubuntu18.04?

Downloaded and installed the linux drivers from the Brother site here.

But the scanner still wasn't recognised.

You can see here, the drivers installed successfully:

$ dpkg  -l  |  grep  Brother
ii  brother-cups-wrapper-common                          1.0.0-10-0ubuntu6                                        amd64        Common files for Brother cups wrapper packages
ii  brother-udev-rule-type1                              1.0.0-1                                                  all          Brother udev rule type 1
ii  brscan-skey                                          0.2.4-1                                                  amd64        Brother Linux scanner S-KEY tool
ii  brscan2                                              0.2.5-1                                                  amd64        Brother Scanner Driver
ii  printer-driver-brlaser                               3-5~ubuntu1                                              amd64        printer driver for (some) Brother laser printers
ii  printer-driver-ptouch                                1.4-1                                                    amd64        printer driver Brother P-touch label printers

And here, you can see the installed driver thinks it is not 'registered':

$ brscan-skey -l

 DCP-350C          : brother2:bus3;dev1  : USB                  Not registered

When I open Simple Scan, it tells me I have a Brother scanner but that I need to install the drivers.

$ lsusb
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 04f9:01d0 Brother Industries, Ltd DCP-350C

$ sudo dpkg -l | grep Brother
ii  brother-cups-wrapper-common                          1.0.0-10-0ubuntu6                                        amd64        Common files for Brother cups wrapper packages
ii  brother-udev-rule-type1                              1.0.0-1                                                  all          Brother udev rule type 1
ii  brscan-skey                                          0.2.4-1                                                  amd64        Brother Linux scanner S-KEY tool
ii  brscan2                                              0.2.5-1                                                  amd64        Brother Scanner Driver
ii  printer-driver-brlaser                               3-5~ubuntu1                                              amd64        printer driver for (some) Brother laser printers
ii  printer-driver-ptouch                                1.4-1                                                    amd64        printer driver Brother P-touch label printers

Brother seems to have removed the linux o/s config instructions from its support pages - i.e. here and here, which had been the source of earlier solutions to this problem given here and here. The OS support information page in its FAQS and Troubleshooting section refer only to Windows and Macintosh. If you look elsewhere, you will find a page of linux information. It says "The Brother Linux scanner driver works only with a superuser by default". It points to a page where it says is given the means to make the scanner work for non-sudo users - perhaps, then, SimpleScan. That page contains fix downloads for numerous OSs, but nothing later than Ubuntu 13.10. Downloading and installing that file all the same does nothing to make the scanner work. If you grub around long enough you will find there is a linux troubleshooting FAQ after all - just not in the place where you would expect to find it. Getting this Brother scanner to work is like threading a needle in a wind tunnel. The first item on the linux FAQ is 'I'm using Ubuntu 16.10. I cannot scan from my Brother Machine'. That is close enough. It says 'Install libusb-0.1-4'. (The Brother driver had dependencies but it did not bother to check them). I do have this usb lib installed already anyway.

One of the earlier solutions (for a different Brother scanner - and the Brother support page with the solution has since disappeared), is quite helpful. It says to put a line in '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-libsane.rules', though in fact it should, on my 16.04 at least, be /lib/udev/rules.d/60-libsane.rules. And the line it asks you to add includes a reference to a product ID for a different Brother scanner. Looking on the sane website for a DCP-350C product ID (it wouldn't be DCP-350C -- that would be too easy -- the earlier solution is for a DCP-7030 and that has a product ID of "01ea")... so where were we?... looking on the sane website for a DCP-350C product ID. The sane page for Brother scanners has no entry for the DCP-350C. It says if your device isn't there it's not supported. It says the page was last updated on Oct 05 2003. That's fourteen and a half years ago. I believe the 350C came out a few years later, in 2007.

So the old solution for the DCP-7030 said to add edit the sane config thus:

sudo gedit /lib/udev/rules.d/40-libsane.rules

And to add this (in the right place):

# Brother scanners
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04f9", ATTRS{idProduct}=="01ea", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"

Since my config appears to be in 60-libsane.rules and I don't have a product code, I edited the config thus:

sudo gedit /lib/udev/rules.d/60-libsane.rules

And added:

# Brother scanners
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04f9", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"

And restarted the machine. This did not work.

I also moved some files the Brother intsall routine seems to put in the wrong place - at least, according to reports elsewhere such as here.

That involved copying Brother files from cp /usr/lib64/ to /usr/lib. (I had downloaded and installed the 64-bit version of the Brother driver).

The instructions to do this seemed out of date. And since Brother's website says its Brscan2 driver must be used with the DCP-350C, the filenames may differ. I copied mine thus:

sudo cp /usr/lib64/libbrscandec2.so /usr/lib
sudo cp /usr/lib64/libbrscandec2.so.1 /usr/lib
sudo cp /usr/lib64/libbrscandec2.so.1.0.0 /lib/lib
sudo cp /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother2.so /usr/lib/sane
sudo cp /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother2.so.1 /usr/lib/sane
sudo cp /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother2.so.1.0.7 /usr/lib/sane
sudo cp /usr/lib64/libbrcolm2.so /usr/lib
sudo cp /usr/lib64/libbrcolm2.so.1 /usr/lib
sudo cp /usr/lib64/libbrcolm2.so.1.0.1 /usr/lib

This blind alley was suggested by Brother itself. It's linux FAQ for the DCP-350C (if you can find it), says (for "Ubuntu 11.10 or higher"):

Copy the following files under /usr/lib64/ to /usr/lib/.

Another tip was to actually run the brscan-skey file that is offered as download with the driver, by simply entering brscan-skey at the command line.

At some point, something must have gone right because the Brother driver now tells me the device is recognised:

$ brscan-skey -l

 DCP-350C          : brother2:bus3;dev1  : USB                  Not registered

However, SimpleScan still says no devices are recognised.

Also, Brother says that brscan-skey allows scanning to be performed from the scanner's own console, using its 'scan-to-file' and 'scan-to-image' options. When I do so, the scanner says 'Connecting to PC', but nothing more happens.

I can get the 350C to scan when I call it from a trial version of a commercial linux scanning tool called VueScan. But the trial version puts water marks across the scanned image, making it useless to me. Moreover, the full version is expensive, and demands an annual subscription. And I only came across it while trying to find a way to get SimpleScan to work - or indeed, any open source scanning software.

The point is that VueScan just works. (But it does so in a way that leaves the scanner dysfunctional to other tools). It proves the scanner can be used with open source tools on Ubuntu. The question is how.