Thursday, June 12, 2008

Install Mustek BearPaw 1200CU Plus Scanner on Debian Lenny

First, we need sane backend, that is what works with your scanner on the apparatus level, include driver, firmware, etc and some utilities, which very help us in configuration and diagnostics. As root:

# apt-get install libsane sane-utils

Then go to get firmware. I have a Mustek BearPaw 1200CU Plus and as shown on SANE home page it uses gt68xx backend. Thus, I went to get firmware from http://www.meier-geinitz.de/sane/gt68xx-backend/, put in /usr/share/sane/gt68xx/, and make sure it is readable for everyone:

# chown root.scanner /usr/share/sane/gt68xx/PS1Dfw.usb
# chmod 755 /usr/share/sane/gt68xx/PS1Dfw.usb

The sane-utils package contain two tools we need. First we use sane-find-scanner to check if kernel support USB scanner:

$ sane-find-scanner
found USB scanner (vendor=0x055f, product=0x021c [USB Scanner], chip=GT-6816) at libusb:003:002

It's seem OK. Let's check if scanimage works:

$ scanimage -L
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).

But under root, scanimage gives a positive answer:

# scanimage -L
device `gt68xx:libusb:003:003' is a Mustek Bearpaw 1200 CU Plus flatbed scanner

Yes, you guess right. We have permission problem, programs works successfully under root and not as user. Although, Debian Lenny uses UDEV, all we need is to add appreciated users to scanner group, you know how :). Don't forget to logout and login again after that.

Mustek BearPaw 1200 CU Plus doesn't need any manual settings, so editing is no-needed, but take a look at /etc/sane.d/gt68xx.conf or your scanner backend's configuration file.

Now, when scanner is ready, scan your documents, images, etc by:

$ scanimage --device-name gt68xx:libusb:003:003 --resolution 300 --format png > test.png

Or, better, get a GUI frontend like Xsane:

# apt-get install xsane


Additional steps: Here, when configured the hotplug subsystem I needed to get sane-backends source from http://www.sane-project.org/, untar & copy hotplug files in subdir tools/hotplug into /etc/hotplug/usb then restart UDEV:

# /etc/init.d/udev restart

Note: If you have other scanner, just look for other sane backend.
Read more:
1. SANE home page (especially documentations section).
2. http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Installing_USB_Scanner
3. Script and configuration files (/etc/hotplug/usb/*, /etc/sane.d/*)

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the tutorial, it was very useful. I have the exact same scanner you used in the example (and stated you had that scanner also)

everything works as you have suggested. Only there is a vertical (clear) line runing through every scan I do (just left of the center of the scan). Did you have this issue also?

I have recently started using Ubuntu instead of windows. I had the scanner when using windows and seem to remember this happening then. But there was a patch issued during that time that fixed it. I would love to get this scanner working, as it no longer works with windowsXP sp2/3 onwards.

Thanks for any help in advance.

Phan Vinh Thinh said...

Hi,
My wife used this scanner under XP before. And there was a horizontal blurred (not clear) line at the same place for every A4 scans. There was not the line for smaller scans, for example, 10x15 photo if we put them where the line does not across.

I don't remember whether or not this line under Debian. I sent the scanner to my parents almost after getting it worked under Linux. Now I have another scanner - Canon LiDE 25, which is also perfectly supported by SANE and produced scans with very good quality. The only caveat is working speed in color mode (quiet slow).

If the line is not scanner issue, you may want to write a bug report to SANE developers.

Anonymous said...

Hi
Thanks for a great description, thanks to you and few other guys finally came to the conclusion I have no clue anymore! That's because I kept getting No such file or directory message while running xsane. All else did work and I don't know how many times I kept copying the firmware to the directory mentioned...
I guess I was tired when downloading the firmware, because I didn't see this:
Mustek BearPaw 1200 CU Plus CIS 6816 0x055f 0x021c PS1Dfw.usb works in all resolutions
Mustek BearPaw 1200 CU Plus CIS 6816 0x055f 0x021b PS1Gfw.usb Works. For all of you that don't recognize this, this is a table from http://www.meier-geinitz.de/sane/gt68xx-backend/ to get the firmware from...
And guess what I took the wrong file :)
Once I downloaded the correct one (of course the one 1 line lower, changed permissions and copied it to /usr/share/sane/gt68xx/ worked like a charm instantly...
Wow!

Blaming my eyes here (and the fact that I didn't know why there be 2 firmware for same model) and being tired! All of you guys contributing to my final success: THANK YOU! Adam

Ciprian Tomoiaga said...

Thank you very much!

Anonymous said...

I did it on ubuntu by

1) getting xsane
2) copying the driver file *.USB from the CD/XP/ to the folder you mentioned by using sudo nautilus
3) sane-detect-scanner

scanned using simple-scan

telewatho said...

This worked for someone I met on the Linux Mint IRC channel earlier today, thanks! (although they had to make sure they got the correct version of the firmware first)

Siôn said...

Great tutorial thanks! I have exactly the same scanner as the one mentioned in this article. I'm using Debian Wheezy and /usr/share/sane/gt68xx/ does not exist but if you create it everything works fine, I guess it helps keep the /sane directory tidy and …sane. Thanks once again!

Cipri Tom said...

As of April, 2014, this is still useful! It's incredible how that scanner still does its job! Thanks a lot!

Unknown said...

Hi. Thanks for the tutorial.

If you still have problems after doing all this, try to change de the .usb file name to SBSfw.usb

This worked for me !

Anonymous said...

thanks, have just applied your advise to my ubuntu 14.10 and mustek bearpaw 1200 cu plus.

Anonymous said...

Is there a new way for executing this command

apt-get install libsane sane-utils

I am not very familiar with ubuntu and linux generally
Thanks