NAME

       sane-find-scanner - find SCSI and USB scanners and their device files

SYNOPSIS

       sane-find-scanner [-h|-?]  [-v] [-q] [-p] [-f] [-F filename] [devname]

DESCRIPTION

       sane-find-scanner is a command-line tool to find SCSI and USB scanners and determine their
       Unix device files. Its primary aim is to make sure that scanners can be detected  by  SANE
       backends.

       For  SCSI  scanners,  it checks the default generic SCSI device files (e.g., /dev/sg0) and
       /dev/scanner.  The test is done by sending a SCSI inquiry command and looking for a device
       type  of  "scanner"  or  "processor"  (some  old HP scanners seem to send "processor"). So
       sane-find-scanner will find any SCSI scanner connected to those default device files  even
       if it isn't supported by any SANE backend.

       For  USB  scanners,  first  the USB kernel scanner device files (e.g.  /dev/usb/scanner0),
       /dev/usb/scanner, and /dev/usbscanner) are tested. The files are opened and the vendor and
       device  ids  are  determined, if the operating system supports this feature. Currently USB
       scanners are only found this way if they are supported by the Linux scanner module or  the
       FreeBSD  or  OpenBSD uscanner driver. After that test, sane-find-scanner tries to scan for
       USB devices found by the USB library libusb (if available). There is no special USB  class
       for scanners, so the heuristics used to distinguish scanners from other USB devices is not
       perfect.  sane-find-scanner also tries to find out the  type  of  USB  chip  used  in  the
       scanner.   If   detected,   it   will  be  printed  after  the  vendor  and  product  ids.
       sane-find-scanner will even find USB scanners, that are not supported by any SANE backend.

       sane-find-scanner won't find  most  parallel  port  scanners,  or  scanners  connected  to
       proprietary  ports.  Some  parallel port scanners may be detected by sane-find-scanner -p.
       At the time of writing this will only detect Mustek parallel port scanners.

OPTIONS

       -h, -?  Prints a short usage message.

       -v      Verbose output. If used once, sane-find-scanner shows every device  name  and  the
               test  result.   If  used  twice,  SCSI  inquiry  information  and  the  USB device
               descriptors are also printed.

       -q      Be quiet. Print only the devices, no comments.

       -p      Probe parallel port scanners.

       -f      Force opening all explicitly given devices as SCSI and USB devices. That's  useful
               if sane-find-scanner is wrong in determining the device type.

       -F filename
               filename   is   a   file   that   contains   USB  descriptors  in  the  format  of
               /proc/bus/usb/devices as used by Linux.  sane-find-scanner tries to  identify  the
               chipset(s)  of  all  USB  scanners found in such a file. This option is useful for
               developers when the output of "cat /proc/bus/usb/devices"  is  available  but  the
               scanner itself isn't.

       devname Test device file "devname". No other devices are checked if devname is given.

EXAMPLE

       sane-find-scanner -v
       Check  all  SCSI  and USB devices for available scanners and print a line for every device
       file.

       sane-find-scanner /dev/scanner
       Look for a (SCSI) scanner only at /dev/scanner and print the result.

       sane-find-scanner -p
       Probe for parallel port scanners.

SEE ALSO

       sane(7),    sane-scsi(5),    sane-usb(5),    scanimage(1),    xscanimage(1),     xsane(1),
       sane-"backendname"(5)

AUTHOR

       Oliver Rauch, Henning Meier-Geinitz and others

SUPPORTED PLATFORMS

       USB  support  is  limited  to  Linux  (kernel,  libusb),  FreeBSD (kernel, libusb), NetBSD
       (libusb), OpenBSD (kernel, libusb). Detecting the vendor and device ids  only  works  with
       Linux or libusb.

       SCSI  support  is  available  on  Irix,  EMX,  Linux, Next, AIX, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD,
       OpenBSD, and HP-UX.

BUGS

       No support for most parallel port scanners yet.
       Detection of USB chipsets is limited to a few chipsets.

                                           13 Jul 2008                       sane-find-scanner(1)