# Sane driving me INsane: /dev/ nodes for scanner [solved]

## The Doctor

Well, I have a problem that I assume exists between the keyboard and the chair. I have an hp Officejet printer/scanner. I can print fine after I change the group and mod of a node (specifically, /dev/bus/usb/002/*)

Now, the problem is that I need to scan a document, however the result of 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.

<stuff>

found USB scanner (vendor=0x03f0 [HP], product=0x2d12 [Officejet 4500 G510g-m]) at libusb:002:005

<stuff>

  # Your USB scanner was (probably) detected. It may or may not be supported by

  # SANE. Try scanimage -L and read the backend's manpage.

```

If I do that (run 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 assume this is because the program is looking for a /dev/ node that udev would have created but does not. I would appreciate it if someone could point me in the direction of what this node should be and how to create it. Thanks.

EDIT: *Facepalem* these things tend to work better when you install the driver. For anyone who may be interested, it appears you can build hplip without udev using the nodeps option. Unsupported, obviously.

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## The Doctor

I believe so. It basically includes everything, I haven't tried to streamline it.

```
SANE_BACKENDS="abaton agfafocus apple artec artec_eplus48u as6e avision bh canon canon630u canon_dr canon_pp cardscan coolscan coolscan2 coolscan3 dc210 dc240 dc25 dell1600n_net dmc epjitsu epson epson2 fujitsu genesys gt68xx hp hp3500 hp3900 hp4200 hp5400 hp5590 hpljm1005 hpsj5s hs2p ibm kodak kodakaio kvs1025 kvs20xx leo lexmark ma1509 magicolor matsushita microtek microtek2 mustek mustek_pp mustek_usb nec net niash p5 pie pixma plustek plustek_pp qcam ricoh rts8891 s9036 sceptre sharp sm3600 sm3840 snapscan sp15c st400 stv680 tamarack teco1 teco2 teco3 test u12 umax umax1220u umax_pp xerox_mfp -kvs40xx -mustek_usb2 -pnm"
```

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## Jaglover

Alright, (sorry for deleting my post), is correct driver enabled also in /etc/sane.d/dll.conf ?

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## The Doctor

Looks like it is. All the hp entries are on, incliding support for the hplip driver, which is installed with scanner support.

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## Jaglover

Methinks everything does not mean your scanner is included, I had to get the driver from Brother and install it by hand (Gentoo wasn't supported).

http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/models/officejet/index.html

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## The Doctor

Looks like I have the driver. It has been included since hplip 3.10 and I have 2.12 installed.

Sorry for the lack of clarity in my original post, but the I should have said udev isn't creating a dev entry (or anything else) because it isn't installed. I'm using mdev, and trying to do it by hand.

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## Jaglover

You may be better off using it over ethernet, if feasible, creating devices by hand has always been a little bit mystery for me, how did you figure what minor to use?

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## The Doctor

 *Quote:*   

> You may be better off using it over ethernet, if feasible, creating devices by hand has always been a little bit mystery for me, how did you figure what minor to use?

 

Hence the insanity. Unfortunately, Ethernet isn't an option. The fall back option is to reboot into another OS (windows) which isn't ideal.

Thanks for the help anyway. I appreciate it.

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## Jaglover

I'm still curious. First, I must admit I never used a locally connected scanner, I'm big network fan. In case of printer/scanner, are they sharing same USB device node or there are two separate nodes? A good liveCD may give you good clues, BTW.

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## The Doctor

 *Jaglover wrote:*   

> I'm still curious. First, I must admit I never used a locally connected scanner, I'm big network fan. In case of printer/scanner, are they sharing same USB device node or there are two separate nodes? A good liveCD may give you good clues, BTW.

 

It looks to me like they are, but then again /dev is kind of like a magic box for me. About all I know how to do is fix a few permissions that are improperly set. Great idea about the live meda. I'm going to try that right now.

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## Jaglover

Oh, and you can stop quoting my posts, I will not delete them. I deleted my first reply because I realized it was useless and I didn't want your thread be removed from unanswered.

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## The Doctor

Wierd. A trip through mint latter, sane-find-scanner fails but scanimage -L works. I can't seem to make the same settings work in gentoo, at least not yet. At least I know I have the right driver installed.

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## The Doctor

More details. It seems that my printer does indeed need the hpaio backend and the challenge now seems to be that I have to configure it. easer said than done...

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## The Doctor

ahh, embarrassing moment. Apparently, hpiao isn't installed even if the scanner use flag is set unless -minimal is set for hplip so the driver seems to be missing.

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## The Doctor

I had to use some brute forced to install the driver.  I had to use --nodeps to do it, but other than that a clean solution. Thanks for the help, I wouldn't have though to use Mint if you hadn't suggested it.

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## Jaglover

Hey, I'm glad you got it sorted!

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