USB printer and scanner not working with Ubuntu 11.10

[juventus]

The trick was to plug in the USB AFTER linux booted and the scanner had fully warmed up which seems to take ages to do (it has a cold fluorescent lamp)

Scans fine now under Ubuntu and better options than Win XP. All is forgiven Linux.

[tomdkat]

Great! Glad you got it working!

Peace...

[KutWrite]

In my case, just the scanner is a problem.

I have a Toshiba Satellite A650 laptop (Intel I5). All worked fine in Natty, 11.04. Last month (Oct '12) I upgraded to Oneiric 11.10 and after some diddling, got everything going. I've been doing updates weekly.

A week ago, the printer stopped being "seen." I reinstalled CUPS and the HP driver and now have two drivers, but one works and I'm stickin' with that.

I've changed nothing else except updates, but a few days ago, the Scanner stopped being seen as connected.

I normally use Simple Scan. I tried XSANE, same problem. lsusb does see the scanner:

Bus 003 Device 004:
ID 04b8:0118 Seiko Epson Corp. Perfection 4180 (GF-F600)

I rebooted multiple times. No change. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Simple Scan. No change.

The laptop is dual boot, and Windows 7 operates the scanner through the same USB hub etc.

I'd appreciate all ideas and suggestions!

Dan

PS I tried unplugging the USB as above, no change. I also checked the kernel: it's
3.0.0-26-generic-pae.

[pdc]

can I suggest you install the Epson scanner drivers that they supply

http://download.ebz.epson.net/dsc/se...h/searchModule

.........I started at the core page .....

http://download.ebz.epson.net/dsc/se...search/?OSC=LX

and typed in 4180 .........and got the top search result

it comes down as a .tar.gz file iscan_2.10.0-1.tar.gz

....if you save to your Downloads directory.....

I would envisage the commands

cd Downloads

tar -zxvf iscan_2.10.0-1.tar.gz

cd iscan_2.10.0-1

./configure

make

sudo make install

I get that from the Epson instructions in their README

4-2 Installing a tar file

Execute the following command to complete the installation.

# tar -zxvf iscan-${version}-${release}.tar.gz
# cd iscan-${version}
# ./configure
# make
# make install

Note that the installation of Image Scan! for Linux from tar requires
that sane has been installed from tar as well.

[KutWrite]

I tried SANE before, and the output said to use XSANE instead, which I did.

I will try reinstalling as you so carefully outlined. But I'm wondering why it worked before and not now.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks!

OK... It worked at first. When I did the "tar... "command a whole bunch of iscan things happened. When I got to "cd iscan_2.10.0-1" There is no such directory, at least not visible from Downloads. I'll look further.

OK... there IS a folder called iscan_2.10.0 without the hyphen and 1 at the end...

OK... Now I'm at a standstill. I ran the ./configure command. It ended with this:

"checking for GTK... no
checking for GTK... configure: error: Package requirements (gtk+) were not met:

No package 'gtk+' found

Consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if you
installed software in a non-standard prefix.

Alternatively, you may set the environment variables GTK_CFLAGS
and GTK_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.
See the pkg-config man page for more details."

I assume this has something to do with Gnome, which is what I run under (classic, no animation)

I tried "make" anyway, and got this:

"daniel@daniel-toshiba:~/Downloads/iscan-2.10.0$ make
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop."

Any further instructions? I hope so!

[pdc]

No package 'gtk+' found

........to me, that means it is likely you do not have gtk installed;

if you google on

No package 'gtk+' found

you get things like this

http://www.khattam.info/solved-no-pa...011-06-26.html

.....looks like adding

libgtk-3-0 and libgtk-3-dev would help.........run the commands again after installing these two packages......


.......when you couldn't find the iscan directory, if you use the command

ls

.....inside any directory.....it LISTS what is there so you can identify the name of the directory you are looking for ..

........also if you type the first two or three letters of a word such as iscan

cd isc

........... and then hit the TAB key,


...................the system should type out the rest of what you want..if there is only one directory starting with ........eg ...........isc

[KutWrite]

Got the same error again...

Thanks, PDC, for the help. You've been very quick and patient, explaining these things.

The problem I have is, I seem to fall down newer rabbit holes each time I try to fix something, even after 1 1/2 years of "trying out" Linux.

I did try using the Ubuntu Software Center to find GTK. All I found were apps which run UNDER GTK, which just made me want to walk away for a bit.

Here's what happened:

I installed the Dev pkg per the post you linked:

sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-dev

I then looked for libgtk using Ubuntu Software center & it said I already had it:

"Installed - GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets, GTK+ is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off tools to complete application suites.
This package contains the shared libraries.
Version libgtk-3-0 3.2.0-0ubuntu6"

I ran ./config and the same GTK+ error occurred as before.

I did a Google search and saw some admonishments as to using non-standard packages, but so far, not what to do if you have the package and something can't find it. Perhaps a clue is in the config files mentioned in the error message, but I don't know where those are.

I searched for an hour or so, but seem to have hit another dead end.

I'd again greatly appreciate your help.

- - - - -

A few hours later:

I found and tried this suggestion:

I used

locate pkgconfig

to find that path. Well, there were two, but this one looked more like
the example in the post I saw, so I entered:

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/pkgconfig
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH

But that didn't change anything. I don't know why it's looking for GTK+ instead of GTK3.

Later... I found a folder at /usr/include/gtk-3.0. there were a bunch of similarly named GTK folders
which seem linked to GUIs, Python, etc.

Do I need to point something to that?

There was also a folder named GTK-2.0 and similarly named ones, as above.

[KutWrite]

This AM I tried a few more things:

$ 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.

found USB scanner (vendor=0x04b8, product=0x0118 ) at libusb:003:007
found USB scanner (vendor=0x8086, product=0x0186) at libusb:001:003
# Your USB scanner was (probably) detected. It may or may not be supported by
# SANE. Try scanimage -L and read the backend's manpage.

I'm not sure why it found two scanners I only have one. It matches the ID of the first found device, ending in 0118. The scanner was powered on but my other USB devices were powered off (e.g. printer).

Then I tried:

$ sudo scanimage -L
[sudo] password for daniel:

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).

Some of these posts go back to 2005. I guess this is a long-standing problem.

[pdc]

how about one more go at installing iscan .......

if we use alien, to convert rpm packages to .deb packages

but first have a read at this Mint post..Mint is derived from Ubuntu..

....I don't know if it is relevant .......

http://community.linuxmint.com/hardware/view/1450

as advised from here

http://www.debianadmin.com/install-r...nd-ubuntu.html

sudo apt-get install alien

get the Epson rpm package from here

http://download.ebz.epson.net/dsc/du...f9097305c1a464

download into your Downloads directory; save

so first command is

cd Downloads

..hit enter.....

check the package is there ......ask the directory to list its contents.....

ls

and convert and install with alien

sudo alien -i iscan-2.10.0-1.i386.rpm

and let's install the plugin (making sure we are still INSIDE the Downloads directory........)

http://download.ebz.epson.net/dsc/du...bcd8cdc0e141f1

sudo alien -i iscan-plugin-gt-f600-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm

... I wonder if all that gets you anywhere........

to get it running..............

iscan

and apparently it should open from within GIMP as well..............

[KutWrite]

Thanks PDC... Here goes. I'll enter events step by step, as I don't think I can do this in one go.

I looked at the Mint thread. It was for Isadora; they are now on Maya. It says the Epson won't work with SimpleScan, but I've been happily using SimpleScan until 11.10 (oh, how much trouble I've had since I left 11.04).

OK here goes the rest...

1. I already had installed Alien using the Ubuntu Software center.

2. RPM files... one mental bookmark: You linked to gcc 3.2/3.3. I have gcc 4.6.1. So I looked for a higher version. I found one and may later try the ones for gcc 3.4 and later. But they're from Avasys, not Epson, so I'll hold off unless the file you linked doesn't work.

Well... I cut & pasted your Alien command and checked; it was the same as the rpm file name I downloaded. But... it didn't work.

I got a whole bunch of error messages like this:

error: db5 error(-30969) from dbenv->open: DB_VERSION_MISMATCH: Database environment version mismatch
error: cannot open Packages index using db5 - (-30969)
error: cannot open Packages database in /home/daniel/.rpmdb
Warning: Skipping conversion of scripts in package iscan: postinst postrm preinst prerm
Warning: Use the --scripts parameter to include the scripts.
mkdir: cannot create directory `iscan-2.10.0': File exists
unable to mkdir iscan-2.10.0: at /usr/share/perl5/Alien/Package.pm line 257.

Should I try again, using the "--scripts" parameter? I'm nervous to try it w/o an OK from someone who knows what's what.