libsane (sane-backends) for Debian :
------------------------------------

The configuration files for Debian release of sane are in /etc/sane.d.
Each backend has a configuration file which specifies which devices,
access methods, options etc. should be used by this backend. The format
and content of each configuration file is documented in the manpage for
the backend, e.g. sane-plustek (5).

For USB and some SCSI scanners, the parameters can be auto-detected, and
manual configuration is not required. If the auto-detection fails, read
the next paragraph. Again, see the manpage for your backend for more
information.

For SCSI devices (mostly scanners), the configuration files use the
/dev/scanner device ; /dev/scanner is a symbolic link to the appropriate
SCSI device node. It's up to you to create this symbolic link, once you
will have determined which device node it needs to point to. Use the
sane-find-scanner command in the sane-utils package to determine which
SCSI device your scanner is attached to. The sane-find-scanner utility
also discovers USB scanners, provided they are detected by the kernel
scanner driver.

It can be a good idea to try running sane-find-scanner as root to ensure
there will be no permissions problems while attempting to detect your
devices.


DOCUMENTATION :
---------------

For information on configuring and trouble-shooting the various SANE
components, please refer to the manual pages listed below:

       Regarding:	  Read:
       -----------------  ------------------------------------------
       General            sane(7) -- your starting point

       scanimage	  scanimage(1)
       xscanimage	  xscanimage(1)
       saned		  saned(1)
       xcam		  xcam(1)

       Dynamic loading	  sane-dll(5)
       Backends           See sane-<backend name>(5). Each backend
                          comes with a manual page in section 5 of
                          the manual system.


TROUBLESHOOTING :
-----------------

If your scanner does not work, edit the file /etc/sane.d/dll.conf.
Verify that your scanner is not commented out. You may need to
comment out all other scanners in dll.conf. It shouldn't matter, but
sometimes it does.

The most common cause for a non-working scanner is inappropriate
permissions on the device. So your first reflex should be to check the
permissions of the device used to access your scanner, e.g. /dev/usb/scanner
or the device pointed to by /dev/scanner.


If you encounter any problems with getting your device(s) recognized,
try setting the various environment variables that are there to assist
in debugging such problems. The environment variables are documented
in the relevant manual pages. For example, to get the maximum amount
of debug information when testing a Mustek scanner, set environment
variables SANE_DEBUG_DLL, SANE_DEBUG_MUSTEK, and SANE_DEBUG_SANEI_SCSI
to 128 and then invoke scanimage or whatever program you're trying to
debug.  For a Mustek SCSI scanner at /dev/scanner, you might want to
invoke scanimage as follows:

	scanimage -d mustek:/dev/scanner -h

If this works, you could try to acquire an image with:

	scanimage -d mustek:/dev/scanner > t.pnm

If you are not sure what generic SCSI device your scanner is connected
to, try the command sane-find-scanner (sane-utils package). It is
normally sufficient to invoke the program without any arguments. Invoking
this command should produce output similar to this:

  $ sane-find-scanner
  sane-find-scanner: found "MUSTEK MFC-06000CZ 1.01" at device /dev/sge

sane-find-scanner will help you discover your USB scanner too, provided
it is recognized by the kernel scanner driver.


UNSUPPORTED DEVICES :
---------------------

If your scanner (or camera, or whatever) is not supported by the regular
SANE distribution, have a look at the libsane-extras package which contains
some backends not yet included in the regular SANE distribution.


-- Julien BLACHE <jblache@debian.org>, Mon, 30 Sep 2002 1:12:58 +0200