/sane-airscan

Scanner Access Now Easy - universal driver for eSCL (Apple AirScan) and WSD

Primary LanguageCOtherNOASSERTION

sane-airscan -- SANE backend for AirScan (eSCL) and WSD document scanners

Similar to how most modern network printers support "driverless" printing, using the universal vendor-neutral printing protocol, many modern network scanners and MFPs support "driverless" scanning.

Driverless scanning comes in two flavors:

  • Apple AirScan or AirPrint scanning (official protocol name is eSCL)
  • Microsoft WSD, or WS-Scan (term WSD means "Web Services for Devices)

This backend implements both protocols, choosing automatically between them. It was successfully tested with many devices from Brother, Canon, Dell, Kyocera, Lexmark, Epson, HP, OKI, Panasonic, Pantum, Ricoh, Samsung and Xerox both in WSD and eSCL modes.

For eSCL devices, Apple maintains a comprehensive list of compatible devices, but please note, this list contains not only scanners and MFP, but pure printers as well.

This backend doesn't require to install and doesn't conflict with vendor-provided proprietary software like ScanGear from Canon, HPLIP from HP and so on.

Features

  1. One backend for two different protocols, eSCL and WSD
  2. Automatic and manual device discovery and configuration
  3. Scan from platen and ADF, in duplex and simplex modes, multi-page scan from ADF supported as well
  4. Scan in color and gray scale modes
  5. Line-by-line image unpacking, for low memory footprint
  6. The cancel operation is as fast as possible, depending on your hardware
  7. Both IPv4 and IPv6 are supported

Compatibility

Any eSCL and WSD capable scanner expected to work. Here is a list of devices that were actually tested. If you have success with a scanner not included into this list, please let me know.

In most cases, devices were tested with network connection. However, most (all?) of the eSCL devices will also work over USB, if IPP-over-USB daemon is installed on your computer. WSD-only devices cannot be used with the IPP-over-USB daemon.

Currently, there is a choice of two IPP-over-USB implementations:

  • ippusbxd, which comes with some distros
  • ipp-usb, a modern replacement of the ippusbxd. The ipp-usb works better, binary packages available for many popular distros (see link from a project page).

Legend:

  • Yes - device works perfectly
  • No - protocol not supported by device
  • Space - author has no information on this mode/device combination
Device eSCL mode WSD mode
Brother DCP-9020CDW No Yes
Brother DCP-L2540DW No Yes
Brother DCP-L2550DN / DCP-L2550DW Yes
Brother HL-L2395DW series Yes
Brother MFC-J485DW Yes
Brother MFC-L2700DW No Yes
Brother MFC-L2710DW Yes Yes
Brother MFC-L2720DW No Yes
Brother MFC-L2750DW Yes Yes
Canon D570 Yes
Canon imageCLASS MF642C/643C/644C Yes
Canon imageCLASS MF743cdw Yes1
Canon imageRUNNER 2625/2630 Yes Yes
Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE 4545/4551 Yes Yes
Canon imageRUNNER ADV C5550/5560 Yes
Canon imageRUNNER C3120L Yes Yes
Canon i-SENSYS MF4780w No Yes4
Canon i-SENSYS MF641C No Yes2
Canon LiDE 300 Yes3
Canon LiDE 400 Yes3
Canon MB5100 series Yes
Canon MB5400 series Yes Yes
Canon MF240 Series No Yes4
Canon MF260 Series Yes Yes4
Canon MF410 Series Yes Yes
Canon MF440 Series Yes Yes
Canon MF745C/746C Yes Yes
Canon PIXMA G3000 series No Yes
Canon PIXMA MG3600 series Yes
Canon PIXMA MG5500 Series No Yes
Canon PIXMA MG7700 Series Yes
Canon PIXMA TS5000 Series Yes
Canon PIXMA TS 9550 Series Yes
Canon TR4529 (PIXMA TR4500 Series) Yes Yes
Canon TR7500 Series No Yes
Canon TS 3100 Yes
Canon TS 3300 Yes
Canon TS 6151 Yes
Canon TS 6200 series Yes Yes
Canon TS 6400 series Yes
Dell C1765nfw Color MFP No Yes
Dell C2665dnf Color Laser Printer No Yes
EPSON ET-2750 Series Yes
EPSON Stylus SX535WD No Yes
EPSON WF-7710 Series No Yes
EPSON XP-2100 Series No Yes
EPSON XP-340 Series Yes
EPSON XP-442 445 Series Yes
EPSON XP-6100 Series Yes
EPSON XP-7100 Series Yes
EPSON XP-8600 Series Yes
HP Color Laserjet MFP m178-m181 Yes
HP Color LaserJet MFP M182nw Yes
HP Color LaserJet MFP M281fdw Yes
HP Color LaserJet MFP M477fdw Yes Yes
HP Color LaserJet Pro M478f-9f Yes
HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw Yes
HP DeskJet 2540 Yes
HP DeskJet 2600 series Yes
HP DeskJet 2700 series Yes
HP DeskJet 3700 series Yes
HP DeskJet 5000 series Yes
HP DeskJet 5200 series Yes
HP ENVY 4500 Yes
HP ENVY 5530 series Yes
HP ENVY 5540 Yes
HP ENVY 5640 Yes
HP ENVY Photo 6200 series Yes
HP ENVY Photo 7800 series Yes
HP ENVY Pro 6400 series Yes
HP LaserJet 200 colorMFP M276n No Yes
HP LaserJet MFP M130fw No Yes
HP LaserJet MFP M227sdn Yes
HP LaserJet MFP M426dw Yes
HP LaserJet MFP M630 Yes
HP LaserJet Pro M28a Yes3
HP LaserJet Pro M28w Yes Yes
HP LaserJet Pro MFP 148fdw Yes
HP LaserJet Pro MFP M125 series No Yes
HP LaserJet Pro MFP M428dw Yes
HP LaserJet Pro MFP M521 series No Yes
HP Laser MFP 131 133 135-138 Yes
HP OfficeJet 3830 series Yes
HP Officejet 4630 Yes
HP Officejet Pro 6970 Yes
HP OfficeJet Pro 6978 Yes
HP OfficeJet Pro 7740 Yes No
HP OfficeJet Pro 8010 series Yes
HP OfficeJet Pro 8020 Series Yes
HP OfficeJet Pro 8730 Yes Yes
HP OfficeJet Pro 9010 series Yes
HP ScanJet Pro 4500 fn1 Yes
HP Smart Tank Plus 550 series Yes
Kyocera ECOSYS M2040dn Yes Yes5
Kyocera ECOSYS M5521cdw Yes Yes5
Kyocera ECOSYS M5526cdw Yes
Lexmark CX317dn Yes6 Yes6
Lexmark MB2236adw Yes
Lexmark MC2535adwe Yes
Lexmark MC3224adwe Yes
OKI-MC853 Yes
Panasonic KV-S1058Y No Yes
Pantum M6500W series Yes
Ricoh MP C3003 No Yes7
Samsung M2070 Series No Yes
Samsung M267x 287x Series No Yes
Samsung M288x Series No Yes
Samsung M337x 387x 407x Series No Yes8
Xerox B205 Yes Yes
Xerox B215 Yes
Xerox VersaLink B405 Yes
Xerox WorkCentre 3025 No Yes
TODO

[1]: this device requires manual activation of AirPrint scanning on its web console: Home->Menu->Preferences->Network->TCP/IP Settings->Network Link Scan Settings->On.

[2]: WS-Scan needs to be manually enabled on this device: Home->Menu->Preferences->Network->TCP/IP Settings->WSD Settings->Use WSD Scanning->ON

[3]: this device is USB-only, but it works well with the IPP-over-USB daemon.

[4]: by default, WS-Scan is disabled on this device and needs to be enabled before use: open web console, Click [Settings/Registration], Click [Network Settings]->[TCP/IP Settings], Click [Edit] in [WSD Settings], enable [Use WSD Scanning] checkbox, Click [OK]

[5]: this device requires manual action on its front panel to initiate WSD scan: Send->WSD Scan->From Computer

[6]: when low in memory, this device may scan at 400 DPI instead of requested 600 DPI. As sane-airscan reports image parameters to SANE before actual image is received, and then adjust actual image to reported parameters, image will be scaled down by the factor 2/3 at this case. Lower resolutions works well.

[7]: by default, WS-Scan is disabled on this device and needs to be enabled before use: open web console, Click [Configuration], click [Initial Settings] under [Scanner], and then set [Prohibit WSD Scan Command] to [Do not Prohibit] (from http://support.ricoh.com/bb_v1oi/pub_e/oi_view/0001047/0001047003/view/scanner/int/0095.htm)

[8]: with old firmware (tested with V4.00.01.04 APR-09-2013) ADF scan causes device reboot. Firmware update helps, version V4.00.02.20 MAY-27-2020 known to work.

Distros that come with sane-airscan

The following distros (in alphabetical order) include sane-airscan officially:

  • ALT Linux (Sisyphus and p9)
  • Arch Linux (in extra repository)
  • Debian 10+
  • Fedora 32+
  • NixOS
  • Ubuntu 20.10+

This list is constantly growing and may be very incomplete.

Also, sane-airscan works on BSD and included into FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD ports.

Installation from pre-build binaries

If you use one of the following Linux distros:

  • Debian (9.0 and 10)
  • Fedora (29, 30, 31 and 32)
  • openSUSE (Leap and Tumbleweed)
  • Ubuntu (16.04, 18.04, 19.04, 19.10 and 20.04)

Follow this link, where you will find packages and very detailed installation instructions.

Note, after a fresh build this link sometimes takes too long to update, so if you encounter "Resource is no longer available!" problems, there is a direct link to repositories: https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/pzz/

I strongly recommend you to choose "Add repository and install manually" option rather that "Grab binary packages directly", because it will enable automatic updates of the sane-airscan package.

Linux Mint users may use Ubuntu packages:

  • Linux Mint 18.x - use packages for Ubuntu 16.04
  • Linux Mint 19.x - use packages for Ubuntu 18.04
  • Linux Mint 20.x - use packages for Ubuntu 20.04

Big thanks to openSUSE Build Service for providing package build infrastructure.

If your distro is not listed, see Installation from sources section below.

Installation from sources

Install required libraries - Fedora and similar

As root, execute the following commands:

dnf install gcc git make pkgconf-pkg-config
dnf install avahi-devel
dnf install libxml2-devel
dnf install libjpeg-turbo-devel libpng-devel
dnf install gnutls-devel
dnf install sane-backends-devel

Install required libraries - Ubuntu, Debian and similar

As root, execute the following commands:

apt-get install gcc git make pkg-config
apt-get install libavahi-client-dev
apt-get install libxml2-dev
apt-get install libjpeg-dev libpng-dev
apt-get install libsane-dev
apt-get install gnutls-dev

Download, build and install sane-airscan

git clone https://github.com/alexpevzner/sane-airscan.git
cd sane-airscan
make
make install

Contribution

All contributions are welcome and greatly appreciated, assuming the following:

  1. Feature that you propose has a general interest for many people
  2. Your code is well-formatted and has a good quality

Please note, this project has two branches:

Stable branch accepts mostly bug fixes and minor features with small change in code base. Major features should be contributed into the development branch.

Paid consulting

If your business depends on my project, and you require any specific feature not currently implemented here, you may consider contracting me on a paid basis.

PVS-Studio

PVS-Studio is a static code analyser, supporting C, C++, C# and Java.

Once upon a time I was chatting with its authors in Russian software development forum and told them, that if their tool will find something interesting in my code, I will put a reference to their project here.

Their tool actually found a couple real bugs, so I had to fulfill my promise :-)

Now I regularly test this code with PVS-Studio, and it really helps. Their product is not free, but they offer free licenses for open source projects.

Reporting bugs

To report a bug, please create a new GitHub issue

To create a helpful bug report, please perform the following steps:

  1. Enable protocol trace in the sane-airscan, by adding the following entries into the configuration file
    (/etc/sane.d/airscan.conf):
[debug]
trace = ~/airscan/trace ; Path to directory where trace files will be saved

You may use an arbitrary directory path, assuming you have enough rights to create and write this directory. The directory will be created automatically.

  1. Reproduce the problem. Please, don't use any confidential documents when problem is being reproduces, as their content will be visible to others.

  2. Explain the problem carefully

  3. In the directory you've specified as the trace parameter, you will find two files. Assuming you are using program xsane and your device name is "Kyocera MFP Scanner", file names will be "xsane-Kyocera-MFP-Scanner.log" and "xsane-Kyocera-MFP-Scanner.tar". Please, attach both of these files to the new issue.

References

The eSCL protocol is not documented, but this is simple protocol, based on HTTP and XML, easy for reverse engineering. There are many Internet resources around, related to this protocol, and among others I want to note the following links:

  • kno10/python-scan-eSCL - a tiny Python script, able to scan from eSCL-compatible scanners
  • SimulPiscator/AirSane - this project solves the reverse problem, converting any SANE-compatible scanner into eSCL server. Author claims that it is compatible with Mopria and Apple clients
  • markosjal/AirScan-eSCL.txt - document, describing eSCL protocol, based on reverse engineering. Not complete and not always accurate, but gives the good introduction