diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 6e0780bcb..066aaf5e4 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -8,6 +8,9 @@
 	  image. Increased safety margin for backtracking. This fixes the
 	  "garbled image" bug. Set default gamma value to 2. Manpage
 	  update. Status set to "basic".
+	* frontend/scanimage.c: Don't exit with error when trying to set
+	  inactive options. This especially happens in connection with
+	  geometry options and the v4l backend (bugs #300321, #301977).
 
 2005-08-13  Henning Meier-Geinitz <henning@meier-geinitz.de>
 
diff --git a/frontend/scanimage.c b/frontend/scanimage.c
index 9dbe055a1..920a489b4 100644
--- a/frontend/scanimage.c
+++ b/frontend/scanimage.c
@@ -929,7 +929,14 @@ set_option (SANE_Handle device, int optnum, void *valuep)
   SANE_Int info;
 
   opt = sane_get_option_descriptor (device, optnum);
-
+  if (opt && (!SANE_OPTION_IS_ACTIVE (opt->cap)))
+    {
+      if (verbose > 0)
+	fprintf (stderr, "%s: ignored request to set inactive option %s\n",
+		 prog_name, opt->name);
+      return;
+    }
+    
   if (opt->size == sizeof (SANE_Word) && opt->type != SANE_TYPE_STRING)
     orig = *(SANE_Word *) valuep;