Sharing SANE on the network
About this tutorial...
This tutorial
was written based on numerous notes that had been made getting scanners
shared out over a LAN on Ubuntu 11.11. These directions should work
for most ubuntu systems version 10 and up. Some additional information
is below:
sane.d Support under Ubuntu
Sane.d is well supported under Ubuntu linux.
Why sharing
By sharing
the scanner over the network, we can allow many other devices to access a
scanner or scanners , without having to do nearly as much configuration
work. This is especially helpful if you have other versions of linux
on your network that may need to access this scanner, but do not have a
current version of sane available (e.g. RHEL 6.2).
Assumptions
We made a
number of assumptions while writing this tutorial. Watch for these, as
you may need to adjust them to fit your situation.
- Your network is 192.168.0.1
- Your scanner is already working locally
- Your scanner server (the machine the scanner is local to) is located at 192.168.0.15
- Your scanner server is running Ubuntu 11.11 - 12.10
How to share scanners via sane.d
The
following step-by-step guide to setting up sane.d should work for the
vast majority of scanners. If you need to add scanner specific
information, please try and do so on the scanners wiki page.
Step 1: Set up your scanner on sane first
In order to
make network scanning work, you first need to get sane working with your
scanner. If your scanner is USB scanner DO NOT PROCEED TO STEP 2 until
it is correctly scanning via USB.
If
your scanner is a network attached scanner, you need to get it working
on your saned server BEFORE you try and share it out on the network.
Step 2: Tell sane to run as a server (saned)
-
We need to edit the file /etc/default/saned to tell the computer to
start the saned server. To do that, we will run the following command
from a terminal:
$ sudo gedit /etc/default/saned
- Look for the section that reads:
# Set to yes to start saned
RUN=no
- Edit that so that it reads:
# Set to yes to start saned
RUN=yes
- Save, and close gedit
Step 3: Tell saned who to share with
-
We need to edit the file /etc/sane.d/saned.conf to tell saned who to
share with. To do that, we will run the following command from a
terminal:
$ sudo gedit /etc/sane.d/saned.conf
- Look for the section that reads:
## Access list
-
Since we are on a small office or home network, and we do not need
to control access, we will add the line " 192.168.0.0/24" (share with
everyone on the local network) after "## Access list"
## Access list
192.168.0.0/24
- Find the line that reads
#data_portrange = 10000 - 10100
- Edit that line to read
data_portrange = 10000 - 10100
- Save the file and close gedit
Step 4: Clean up tasks
1. Restart the saned service to get the new configurations by running the following command in a terminal:
$ sudo service saned restart
2.
Tell the computer to start saned automatically when the computer
boots up by running the following command in a terminal:
$ sudo update-rc.d saned defaults
3. Check to make sure the saned service is up and running
$sudo service saned status
It should return something along the lines of:
saned start/running, process 804
If it does not, see the section on troubleshooting.
Set up sane clients
Now that you have your server set up, its time to set up your clients.
Step 1: Set up your Linux clients to use this shared scanner
1. We
need to tell the client computer where to find the saned server we want
to connect with. To do that, we have to edit the file
/etc/sane.d/net.conf by running the following command:
$ sudo gedit /etc/sane.d/net.conf
2. Find the line that reads
## saned hosts
3.
After that line, you need to add a line with the address of the
ubuntu box we installed the server on. That line will look like this:
## saned hosts
192.168.0.15
4. Find the line that reads
# connect_timeout = 60
5. and change it so that it reads:
connect_timeout = 60
6. Save the file and close gedit.
7. From a terminal, run
$ xsane
and you should see you scanner.
Step 2: Set up your MAC/Windows clients
It is often
best to use the scanner drivers that shipped with your scanner for Mac
and Windows clients and connect directly to the scanner. If that is not
an option, the following solutions are available:
Windows
The easiest method of connecting Windows computers to SANE scanners is to use SANEWinDS [
http://en.landdownload.com/sanewin.html].
SANEWin allows windows computers to connect to SANE servers, and
provides a TWAIN interface, allowing you to use any Windows scanning
application to acquire and manage your scans.
The
saneTWAIN bridge is a most popular method for using sane network
scanners in a Windows system. For more information on this project, see
[
http://sanetwain.ozuzo.net/]
Mac
Twain-sane
is a bridge for the MAC platform (10.6, 10.7) that allows you to use a
sane shared scanner with any twain enabled Mac program. For more on
this project, see
http://www.ellert.se/twain-sane/ If you really need to, sane front ends are available for these platforms.
Trouble-shooting
If your network scanner does not work, the following procedures may be of help. Try to follow these steps in order.
Make sure your scanner works locally
From the server that is sharing out the scanner, make sure you can scan. If it doesn't work locally, it won't work remotely.
Make sure the saned service is running
From the server sharing out saned, run the following command:
$ sudo service saned status
it should show the saned service as up and running.
Test if the server can reach its own saned on localhost
Instead
of using the scanner directly, try and access it via the localhost
interface. IF this doesn't work, it won't work across the network.
To access the scanner via the local saned server,
Export the scanner to localhost
- Edit the saned.conf file by running the following command:
$ sudo gedit /etc/sane.d/saned.conf
- Look for the section that reads:
## Access list
and add the following lines:
## Access list
localhost
127.0.0.1
Save the file and close gedit.
Tell sane to use localhost
From the command line, run the following command to open net.conf in gedit:
$ sudo gedit /etc/sane.d/net.conf
Look for the section that reads:
## saned hosts
We need to add a line to tell sane to use localhost for a host:
## saned hosts
localhost
127.0.0.1
Fire up xsane to test it out...
From the command line, run:
$ xsane
You should now see two copies of your scanner. Make sure both can actually scan.
Check using xsane and command line options
From the command line, run the command
xsane [driver]:net"192.168.0.15
Assuming that your scanner uses the epson2 backend, the command would be:
xsane epson2:net:192.168.0.15
Check the local connection with telnet
IF
the above procedure doesn't work, you need to make sure you can connect
to the saned server with telnet. We also should log what happens. We
can do that by running the following commands:
$ sudo netstat -tulpn | egrep '(:6566|saned)' saned-test.log
$ telnet localhost 6566
Manually check other configuration files (advanced)
Their
are a number of configuration files that may cause a problem. Please
attempt all other solutions before doing down this path (including
asking for help!)
/etc/services
Check to make sure the following services are present:
sane-port 6566/tcp # SANE Control Port
sane-port 6566/udp # SANE Control Port
/etc/hosts.allow & /etc/hosts.deny
Try
temporarily commenting out any entries in these files. If you can scan
after doing this, then you will need to specifically add your host or
hosts to the /etc/hosts.allow file. The following entry will give access
to saned to the local network:
saned 192.168.0.
If all else fails...
If these steps have failed, its time to visit the folks on the
sane-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org mailing list. They should be able to help.
