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Using a Scanner in a Network

This Howto describes how one can use a scanner which is connected to another Slackware-computer over the network.

Necessary Software

All packages which are necessary are available in a stock Slackware-installation. This are sane and xsane for the scanner. Also the internet super-server daemon inetd is used (on the scannerserver) to listen to the network for scanner-job.

Permissions

I have an older Multifunction-device HP-PSC-1410 which is connected via USB to my server. In order to use the device for scanning (locally or over the network) one has to be member of the scanner as well as the lp-group. Note that any user who is added with Slackware's adduser command, is member of this groups by default.

Configuration of the server

One has to edit the /etc/sane.d/saned.conf file. Since the inetd is used to listen to the network the only part one has to configure is the “Access-List”. It lists the IP-adresses of the computers which are allowed to access the scanner. It is possible to list single IP-Adresses or the adress of the whole subnet, here I use

192.168.98.0/24

In the /etc/inetd.conf file one needs a line

sane-port    stream    tcp    nowait    root.root    /usr/sbin/saned    saned

Afterwards you will have to restart the inetd-daemon

/etc/rc.d/rc.inetd restart
Testing the network-settings for the server

With the nmap command one can scan the ports and find out if the sane-port is open, sane uses port 6566

Samsung ~ # nmap -p 6566 192.168.178.10

Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2010-11-29 19:54 CET
Nmap scan report for srv-zuhause.home.local (192.168.98.10)
Host is up (0.0031s latency).
PORT     STATE SERVICE
6566/tcp open  unknown
MAC Address: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (xx Computer)

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.23 seconds

The command can be executed on the server as well as any client, the ip-adress is the one of the server!

Configuration of the client(s)

On the client one has to edit the /etc/sane.d/net.conf file and add a line with the IP-adress of the server.

#/etc/sane.d/net.conf
192.168.98.10

Theoretically it is possible to insert the DNS-name of the server (instead of it's IP-adress) in the net.conf file, but it didn't work here.

Also be sure that in the file /etc/sane.d/dll.conf is a line with the word “net”

#/etc/sane.d/dll.conf
# enable the next line if you want to allow access through the network:
net
...
Testing the client-configuration

With the command scanimage -L we can check if the scanner is recognized by the system

markus@Samsung ~ $ scanimage -L
device `net:192.168.98.10:hpaio:/usb/PSC_1400_series?serial=CN619D724804DZ' is a Hewlett-Packard PSC_1400_series all-in-one.

Now if you open xsane on the client you should be able to use the scanner.

Sources

* Originally written by markush

 howtos:network_services:scanning_with_sane_in_a_network ()