RE: [Sheflug] Scanner for Sale *Works with Linux*

["James Mears" <james [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Matt

> Aha!! Afraid _I'm_ not directly interested because I've a 
> parallel Optic Pro 4831P but I was wondering how to get rid 
> of it since my attempts to run it under VMware were 
> completely unsuccessful and wasn't aware there were any linux 
> drivers.  But I am very interested to hear we might be able 
> to use it after all...!

OK. The 4830P works very nicely so the 4831P should do the same :-)

> I know it is a bit cheeky, but if you and/or Craig could give 
> me some tips on how to build the driver that would be good.  
> The plustek driver documentation is a little unclear but I 
> _think_ the following is true:

I will have a go. It's been a while since I had to build the driver, it
was Craig that
Was the real expert!

> 1. the parallel port support is not included with sane so the 
> plustek-sane AND sane both need to be (re)compiled from source

Yes that's right. You have to build the module from source.

> 2. latest version will work with sane-1.0.8 upwards (which is 
> what we've got)

Yes.

> 3. the latest source dist is plustek-sane-0.45-5.tar.gz ; but 
> this is not version 0.45 but 0.42 (??) ; anyway I've unpacked 
> it and looked at the documentation which is rather out of date.
> 
> Is this right?

The plustek-sane-0.45-5.tar.gz file is a complete tar-ball including the
whole of SANE.
Since you already have sane 1.0.8 you should be able to leave you
current sane install as it is and just download and build the
plustek-module-0_42_9.tar.gz which is the latest version of the module.

> Now I have a ximian rpm installation of sane (1.0.8); it 
> seems that I will have to remove this as it doesn't allow 
> adding plustek parallel support.  Ideally I'd rebuild the rpm 
> and install that but that is a counsel of perfection and I 
> don't have a few hours to spare learning how to do it.  
> However all of the installation instructions relate to 
> versions of sane <= 1.0.3 so I'm not quite sure how to proceed.

SANE-1.0.3 and higher already contains the backend-code so it should be
possible to install SANE from a precompiled distribution. After
compiling and installing the correct module, you should be able to use
your scanner.

> Or can I get hold of sane-devel and use that instead?  I'd 
> prefer to stick with rpms if possible.  Not that there 
> appears to be a ximian sane-devel package for SuSE 7.3 of course...

It is better to build it from source. Try the instructions at
 http://www.gjaeger.de/scanner/howtos/Plustek_HowTo.txt
To get more info on what to do. It does cover installing the module on a
system that already
Has SANE installed.

Make sure the kernel headers are installed and from what I remember from
last time I did this within the unpacked directory it was just a case of
the old:
./configure
Make
Make install

Edit /etc/modules.conf and add

alias char-major-40 pt_drv
post-install pt_drv modprobe -k parport 
options pt_drv lampoff=180 warmup=15 lOffonEnd=0 port=0x378

Then do a:

Depmod
Make unload
Make load

If all has gone well the lamp should turn on now and with scanimage -L
you'll get a list of
available devices. Then you should be able to use xscanimage as the GUI
for scanning.

See you later.

James


> > Linux SANE Driver: http://www.gjaeger.de/scanner/plustek.html
> 

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