scanner not working after upgrade to Dapper

[ainsaur]

Re: scanner not working after upgrade to Dapper

I've continued to try to run iscan and I have made some progress. When I select "New Root Shell", enter the password, and type "iscan", the program starts up. I don't hear the scanner "perk up", however. When I select "preview", I get the now familiar "cannot send command to scanner" box. Previously, I did "sudo iscan" and the program would not run. I don't know why there is a difference but there apparently is one. So, if iscan starts up, what still needs to happen in the background for the scanner to work?

[metricus]

Re: scanner not working after upgrade to Dapper

This usually happens when you don't have the plugin installed. Check the posting I made above and install both files iscan and the plugin. I had the same situation and after i installed the plugin it worked.

[ainsaur]

Re: scanner not working after upgrade to Dapper

I just tried uninstalling and reinstalling both files. This time, I got some progress:

alex@Kubuntu:~/Downloads$ scanimage -L
device `epson:libusb:006:002' is a Epson flatbed scanner
device `epkowa:libusb:006:002' is a Epson flatbed scanner

Having scanimage find the scanner is a minor victory. What I notice, however, is that it takes about a minute for scanimage to return the above output. I typed "iscan" and waited about a minute before the program started. Once again, there was no response from the scanner and when I clicked on "preview", I got the "could not send command to scanner". Is there some other way to check if the iscan-plugin is correctly installed or if it is running when iscan requests it?

The slowness of the computer is another issue. When I upgraded to Dapper, the computer was pretty fast (for a 1 GHz cpu with 256 Mb of RAM). After the first set of updates, the computer slowed down considerably. Has anyone noticed a generall slowing down of their computer? If so, is there anything I can do about it (other than starting a new thread on this forum)?

[metricus]

Re: scanner not working after upgrade to Dapper

Are u sure that libsane-extras is not installed? the Epkowa driver in that package (also called free) conflicts with the one in the iscan plugin (also called non-free) and only the non-free one works with this particular scanner (Ep 3170).
My scanner works just fine with iscan. The command scanimage moves the scanner as well. The only things that don't work are kooka and the scanning plugin from Gwenview (they both use the same engine). I haven't tried xsane yet. Never used it...

I am discussing with someone from Avaya (makers of iscan) on the sane forum to try to determine why these frontends don't fire-up this scanner when apparently they should. I also had the same experience when I used SUSE 9.3 and after updating to 10.0 and then 10.1 experienced the same situation with kooka not working. There is something more to it than just drivers and settings since 2 distros are behaving the same.

As for you, I was thinking to suggest you reinstall kubuntu and the 2 iscan packages. The reason I suggest this is that I am sure that the scanner should work. It has worked for me in 2 distros exactly the same. Another reason is that in this thread there have been many suggestions made that are not needed and you should consider the possibility of making a modif and then having forgotten about it. Don't be mad at me if it still doesn't work but I guess it's not much to do and chances are high that you will get it to work.
Just make sure you don't install libsane-extras.

Try making a fresh install. Or maybe, if you can, create another partition and install another kubuntu there fresh and see if it works. This way you are not bothering other apps you may be using in your current installation.
I too have SUSE 9.3 in one partition and Kubuntu in another until I make sure that all features work to my satisfaction in Kubuntu and I can finally give-up SUSE.

Take care.

metricus

[ainsaur]

Re: scanner not working after upgrade to Dapper

Thank you for your advice. I think that reinstalling is the best solution right now. I don't plan on doing it for another week or so because I've put a lot of time into getting this scanner to work to the detriment of other projects I need to take care of. Thanks, again, to everyone who has chimed in with suggestions. Good luck to those who are also still trying to get their scanner to work.

[metricus]

Re: scanner not working after upgrade to Dapper

Alex if you still follow this thread I think I found the issue.
Also Just to recap a final conclusion on how to get this scanner working (Epson 3170 Photo)

download the Iscan package AND!! the plugin from here:
http://www.avasys.jp/english/linux_e/dl_scan.html
just go through the routine and dnload both files.

Then convert them with alien using the option scripts:

sudo alien --scripts iscan-2.1.0-1.c2.i386 (or whatever the current version is...)
NOTE: if you don't use --scripts it won't work!!

after this just install the packages. with this method only the package iscan and will work. If you want to have the package in the Kmenu you will have to edit the menu by hand and add a new entry called Iscan with the command iscan.
Xsane will also work after the Iscan-plugin install.
Note that only the package libsane is needed for Iscan and Xsane to work. Other packages like sane-utils are not needed unless you are using other programs.

The suggestion found earlier in the thread to add the scanner to
etc/udev/rules.d/45-libsane.rules is not needed for iscan to work. It is however needed to make
scanimage -L
recognize the scanner. Otherwise, only
sudo scanimage -L
finds the scanner.
Kooka will not work with this scanner no matter what. Kooka does not seem to be supported anymore as well as libkscan which appears to be the culprit in this matter. The 45-libsane.rules modification will help Kooka see the scanner but it will still not fire it up.

I hope this helps putting all suggestions in one post for future needs.
(I had done a reinstall myself and found out that it was not working again. My only mistake was that I had not used the --scripts option with alien. Luckily I remembered what I had done last time... 8)

metricus

[metricus]

Re: scanner not working after upgrade to Dapper

I have however one last challenge/question. How do we make this work under AMD-64? The iscan plugin is binary only (non-free) and all we have is a i386 rpm.

[ainsaur]

Re: scanner not working after upgrade to Dapper

I just tried to reinstall iscan and the plugins using --scripts. Unfortunately, iscan loads up but there is no "wake up" from the scanner. When I try a preview, I get the same old "could not send command to scanner". I'm afraid that I've tried so many solutions that I may have messed things up somewhere else. I think that I'm going to just wipe out the partition and do a clean install. I'm waiting for my Kubuntu disk from shipit to arrive before I try this (just in case there is something funny going on with my downloaded CD).

Maybe the reinstall will fix some other issues I've got, like my printer that now takes at least 2 minutes to print out anything that I send to it. Or, perhaps, the inability to print out files from Tuxpaint. Or maybe the overall sluggishness that I've experienced after installing my first set of updates.

Thank you metricus, and others, for all of your help.

[metricus]

Re: scanner not working after upgrade to Dapper

May be worth a reinstall. I was getting the same exact message as you yesterday and I freaked-out...Only after I re-ran alien with scrips it worked. Last time I used scripts without paying attention. The only other time when I got this message was when the plugin was not installed.

I got a new mobo and AMD-64 3500+ and I have to say that I was surprised that in 64 mode it works just a little bit slower than 32 on the same machine (I have 2 versions of Kubuntu installed (64 and 32). It is strange however that the whole machine is now slightly slower than the old AMD 3000+ 32 bit that I had before. And I have a pretty expensive graphic card ASUS-N660 silencer which is slower than my old ATI radeon 9600. Very strange... 500$ later my machine is slower... Not a whole lot though but noticeable. I think the graphic card is to blame, I will investigate... I am digressing however...

So this is the reason I had everything wiped-out and made a clean install.
And Yes it is worth waiting for the original cd. I had only mishaps with the cd and the dvd downloaded through bittorrent.

The ftp download however worked well in all instances. Left it overnight and bam! (for the dvd)
Let me know when you reinstall. The procedure above is exactly what I did step by step.

take care.

[dc2rf]

Re: epson 3170 scanner not working - a fix link

First, I apologize if this post is a dup to an existing post under this topic. I just spent weeks trying to get my 3170 working under Dapper and I don't have time right now to go back and check all the previous posts for duplicates. I do however want to post a link to the fix I used successfully, since it was so useful and I think it simplifies the procedure, IMHO. I think the same procedure was mentioned earlier (here), but I think this link is worth posting since it's visually easy to follow. It worked first time for me, and my 3170 is finally working fine with Dapper. The link is below:
http://ubuntu.flowconsult.at/en/epso...-installation/