Image Scan! with 16 bits scanning capability for Ubuntu 20.04/22.04/24.04

The ImageScan! backend for Linux does not support 16 bits scanning. Henrik Andersson fixed that a while ago in his iscan fork:

https://github.com/hean01/iscan

However, the Linux environment evolved since then and it does not compile on my current Ubuntu 20.04 environment.

Thanks to

• https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=244017
• http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/iscan/build/

I was able to fix a few of the issues. I used the debugger to fix the other ones I found.

As the title says, these instructions are for Ubuntu, more precisely Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04 and 24.04. They may work as is or with modifications in other environments.

Please also read the original README file from Epson.

Compiling

Make a directory called iscan-16 and cd into it. Then clone this repository:

mkdir iscan-16
cd iscan-16
git clone https://github.com/patrickfournier/iscan.git

Then compile the package:

cd iscan
git checkout master
ln -s libesmod-x86_64.c2.so non-free/libesmod-x86_64.so
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot --no-sign

If there are any missing dependency reported by dpkg-buildpackage, install them and run dpkg-buildpackage again.

You should end up with a file named iscan_2.30.4-2_amd64.deb.

Installing on 20.04/22.04

The installation method that worked for me was to install this package over the Epson drivers. So first, go on the Epson website and download the drivers for your scanner. This fork is based on iscan 2.30.4-2 so you would need to download iscan 2.30.4-2 from Epson (the "All-in-one package" published on "03-31-2023" in the search results).

Extract the downloaded archive and run the install script to install the required packages.

Test your installation. Make sure you are able to scan an 8 bit image with iscan or xsane. Check that the software displays the scan options that you would expect from your scanner (transparency unit, etc.) If the expected options are not there, your scanner was not recognized. In this case, seek help on the Internet. This page may help you for the V600.

Now, go back to the iscan-16 directory, where you compiled iscan, and install the compiled package over the existing iscan package (do not remove Epson package before installing this one, as it may contain a plugin specific to your scanner):

sudo dpkg --install iscan_2.30.4-2_amd64.deb

Installing on 24.04

On Ubuntu 24.04, the installation script in the Epson package does not work, because the libsane package was renamed to libsane1. So instead of using the script to do installation, we will do it manually.

First, go on the Epson website and download the drivers for your scanner. This fork is based on iscan 2.30.4-2 so you would need to download iscan 2.30.4-2 from Epson (the "All-in-one package" published on "03-31-2023" in the search results).

Extract the downloaded archive but do not run the install script in it.

Instead, go in the extracted directory and run

sudo dpkg --install data/iscan-data_1.39.2-1_all.deb

If there are any missing dependencies at any point, install them.

Then, go to the iscan-16 directory, where you compiled iscan, and install the compiled package:

sudo dpkg --install iscan_2.30.4-2_amd64.deb

Finally, go back to the extracted directory (the one that contains the downloaded package) and run

sudo dpkg --install plugins/iscan-plugin-gt-x820_2.2.1-1_amd64.deb
sudo cp 60-iscan.rules /lib/udev/rules.d/

Extra notes

These are notes for myself.

IScan sources

http://support.epson.net/linux/src/scanner/iscan/

Dependencies

cdbs debhelper (>= 9) libsane-dev libltdl7-dev | libltdl3-dev libgtk2.0-dev libpng-dev libjpeg-dev libgimp2.0-dev libtiff5-dev libxml2-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev

Compiling manually

make distclean

LDFLAGS="-ldl -lpng" \
./configure \
  --prefix=/usr \
  --sbindir=/usr/bin \
  --libdir=/usr/lib${LIBDIRSUFFIX} \
  --mandir=/usr/man \
  --docdir=/usr/doc/$PRGNAM-$VERSION \
  --localstatedir=/var \
  --sysconfdir=/etc \
  --enable-dependency-reduction \
  --enable-frontend \
  --enable-jpeg \
  --enable-tiff \
  --enable-png \
  --enable-gimp \
  --program-prefix= \
  --program-suffix=

make

Manual install

• Install epsonscan2
• Install iscan
• make DESTDIR=<some-dir-abs-path> install-strip

cd /usr/bin
sudo cp <some-dir-abs-path>/usr/bin/iscan .

cd /usr/lib/sane
sudo cp <some-dir-abs-path>/usr/lib/sane/libsane-epkowa.la .
sudo cp <some-dir-abs-path>/usr/lib/sane/libsane-epkowa.so.1.0.15 .

cd /usr/sbin
sudo cp <some-dir-abs-path>/usr/sbin/iscan-registry .

Debugging Epkowa

export SANE_DEBUG_EPKOWA=<VALUE>

with one of

FATAL
MAJOR
MINOR
INFO
CALL
DATA
CMD
HEX
IMG