sane-project-backends/doc/sane-find-scanner.man

.TH sane-find-scanner 1 "4 Oct 2004" "@PACKAGEVERSION@" "SANE Scanner Access Now Easy"
.IX sane-find-scanner
.SH NAME
sane-find-scanner \- find SCSI and USB scanners and their device files
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B sane-find-scanner
.RB [ -h | -? ]
.RB [ -v ]
.RB [ -q ]
.RB [ -p ]
.RB [ -f ]
.RB [ -F 
.IR filename ]
.RI [ devname ]

.SH DESCRIPTION
.B 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.
.PP
For 
.B SCSI
scanners, it checks the default generic SCSI device files (e.g., 
.IR /dev/sg0 )
and 
.IR /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 
.B sane-find-scanner
will find any SCSI scanner connected to those default device files even if it
isn't supported by any SANE backend.
.PP
For
.B USB
scanners, first the USB kernel scanner device files (e.g.
.IR /dev/usb/scanner0 ),
.IR /dev/usb/scanner ,
and
.IR /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, 
.B 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. 
.B 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.
.B sane-find-scanner
will even find USB scanners, that are not supported by any SANE backend.
.PP
.B sane-find-scanner
won't find most 
parallel port scanners, or scanners connected to proprietary ports. Some
.B parallel port
scanners may be detected by
.B sane-find-scanner -p. 
At the time of writing this will only detect Mustek parallel port scanners.

.SH OPTIONS
.TP 8
.B -h, -?
Prints a short usage message.
.TP 8
.B -v
Verbose output. If used once, 
.B 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.
.TP 8
.B -q
Be quiet. Print only the devices, no comments.
.TP 8
.B -p
Probe parallel port scanners.
.TP 8
.B -f
Force opening all explicitly given devices as SCSI and USB devices. That's
useful if 
.B sane-find-scanner
is wrong in determining the device type.
.TP 8
.B -F filename
filename is a file that contains USB descriptors in the format of
/proc/bus/usb/devices as used by Linux.
.B 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.
.TP 8
.B devname
Test device file "devname". No other devices are checked if devname is given.
.SH EXAMPLE
.B sane-find-scanner -v
.br
Check all SCSI and USB devices for available scanners and print a line for
every device file.
.PP
.B sane-find-scanner /dev/scanner
.br
Look for a (SCSI) scanner only at /dev/scanner and print the result.
.PP
.B sane-find-scanner -p
.br
Probe for parallel port scanners.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR sane (7),
.BR sane-scsi (5),
.BR sane-usb (5),
.BR scanimage (1),
.BR xscanimage (1),
.BR xsane (1),
.BR sane-"backendname" (5)

.SH AUTHOR
Oliver Rauch, Henning Meier-Geinitz and others
.SH 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.
.PP
SCSI support is available on Irix, EMX, Linux, Next, AIX, Solaris, FreeBSD,
NetBSD, OpenBSD, and HP-UX.

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