Simple Scan cannot find scanner

I don't have that particular scanner available for testing, however research indicates that particular model requires the use of the sane-hp5590 backend provided by the package libsane-dev to operate with sane. Installing that package should resolve your issue and allow you to configure sane normally.

Note: The first documentation I can find on this backend indicates that it was originally designed for 64-bit systems based on the files it places in /usr/lib64/sane/ The 32-bit version has the same files in /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/sane/ so it appears that it's supported. However I can neither confirm nor deny this as I do not have the hardware available for testing. This may be soon be a moot point as It's becoming abundantly clear that 32-bit support is on it's way to extinction. See the story here and a list of 32 bit Processors already dropped

Sometimes a scanner will be supported by a sane backend that isn't enabled by default. Enabling it can often make things work.

Insure that your scanner is supported by checking here. In your case the 4500C is listed as completely supported and the 5500C is listed as Untested.

Enable the appropriate backend by editing /etc/sane.d/dll.conf and either uncommenting hp5590 or adding that line (if in doubt check your working configuration in the aforementioned file on your other linux for clues) Upon completion of your editing task, save and close the file.

Continue by running the command sane-find-scanner (if this doesn't work you may have a permissions problem, in which case you'll likely get a different result with sudo sane-find-scanner

the output of that command will look something like this:

  # 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=0x01aa [EXAMPLE], product=0x0001 [EXAMPLE SCANNER]) 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.

  # Not checking for parallel port scanners.

  # Most Scanners connected to the parallel port or other proprietary ports
  # can't be detected by this program.

Now add the scanner to the backend configuration file:

Each sane backend has its own configuration file.

  1. We need the results of sane-find-scanner for this next step. You can ignore everything that starts with a hash tag, but the important part is this line:

    found USB scanner (vendor=0x01aa [EXAMPLE], product=0x0001 [EXAMPLE SCANNER]) at libusb:001:003

  2. We need to add those two values to the back end of our scanner, in this case the example backend. To do that, fire up gedit as root using this command:

gksudo gedit /etc/sane.d/hp5590.conf (double check the spelling of the conf file matches your situation by checking ls /etc/sane.d )

  1. Find the line that reads:

usb

and after it we need to add a line with the word "usb" followed by the vendor number and the product number we got with the scanimage -L command. That line should look similar to this:

usb 0x01aa 0x0001 or in your case usb 03f0:1205 (based on your lsusb output.)

Edit: If all else fails you could try the proposed 32-bit libsane-dev package for your release. However whether that will be successful likely hinges on the resolution of this bug which I recommend that you subscribe to so the the developers can best prioritize their efforts.

Sources:

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man5/sane-hp.5.html

http://www.sane-project.org/man/sane-hp5590.5.html

http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/amd64/libsane-dev/filelist

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SANE%20-%20Installing%20a%20scanner%20that%20isn%27t%20auto-detected


I had the same problem with an HP scanner (HP DeskJet 1050A) on Debian. What fixed it for me was

  • sudo adduser <user> lp
  • sudo apt-get install libsane-hpaio
  • Logging out and back in (to get hold of the lp permissions)

Tags:

Sane

Simplescan

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