
Scanimage: Scan from the Command Line - ingve
https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/07/11/scanimage--scan-from-the-command-line/
======
dvh
Few years ago friend gave me a broken scanner. In Windows it always said
"Paper jammed". I opened it and just wanted to short paper sensor, but this
scanner was too "smart". Instead of single sensor there were two sensors next
to each other and the scanner was using them to calculate speed of paper and
if it was outside of some range it called an error. I tried sane on Linux and
got similar error. But on Linux I had source code so I found exact error
message, commented that single line out, recompiled and it worked like a
charm.

------
hoytech
I'm probably going to lose a lot of geek-cred here, but if you're on hour 4 of
wrestling with your SANE config, have some mercy on yourself and checkout
vuescan. It works flawlessly on linux with every scanner I've tried:
[https://www.hamrick.com/](https://www.hamrick.com/)

~~~
Mekantis
It's too bad people look at proprietary software with such disdain. Yeah, I'd
love it too if all the world adhered to open source, but there are too many
useful and awesome applications that simply aren't open source, where the open
source "alternatives" pale in comparison.

~~~
anoncake
As a supporter of free software, why should I advertise for the competition?

------
tapia
My friends can never understand my excitement when I realize that I can use a
non-trivial scanner or printer utility in Linux. For example, I was really
impressed that I could scan without problems from my brother ADS-1100W through
wifi(!), or when I could configure the printer at work that requires some
login credentials. Ah, the little joys of life :P

~~~
non-entity
To be fair I get excited when printing /scanning through wifi works on any OS.

~~~
gvjddbnvdrbv
Nevermind WiFi. I get excited when the ink cartridge hasn't dried up/run out
after 20 odd pages.

~~~
stareatgoats
b/w laser printers ftw

------
Klasiaster
The easiest-to-use scan GUI is GNOME Simple Scan (The binary is `simple-
scan`), not gscan2pdf which is powerful but normally not needed.

------
u801e
It works for my scanner, but I have to reset the usb device after scanning
each page. I use the C program I found in this Stack Overflow[1] answer to
handle resetting the device.

[1] [https://askubuntu.com/questions/645/how-do-you-reset-a-
usb-d...](https://askubuntu.com/questions/645/how-do-you-reset-a-usb-device-
from-the-command-line#661)

------
sam_lowry_
I really miss a tool where I would put paper into the scanner, hit a button
_on the scanner_ and get the output in a folder of my linux workstation.

~~~
pgtan
There are scanbd, scanbuttond, which poll the usb events and trigger a script,
if a scanner button was pressed:

[https://sourceforge.net/projects/scanbd/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/scanbd/)

[http://scanbuttond.sourceforge.net/](http://scanbuttond.sourceforge.net/)
[https://github.com/jdam6431/scanbuttond](https://github.com/jdam6431/scanbuttond)

~~~
sam_lowry_
Gosh! Thanks for the hint!

------
nickcw
What's the best way to get a supported scanner on Linux?

Buy a scanner, put it in a box for a year, then it will work fine!

~~~
ce4
Supported devices:

[http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html](http://www.sane-project.org/sane-
mfgs.html)

Generally, Canon Lide series work great, if you want double sided automatic
feed scanning, Fujitsu FI or ScanSnap series.

------
at_a_remove
I made _great_ use of Dosadi EZTwain tool for command line scanning in
Windows. Fantastic stuff.

