In order to get a Plustek scanner connected to the parallel port working under Linux two things are required:
Possibly in your distribution of Linux the SANE is
already installed per default or someone else did
it while you were not looking? So let's check if
it's there. Since SANE isn't a single program, we
check for scanimage or xscanimage.
So I log into a text console an use which scanimage
to see if some responses occur.
Welcome to SuSE Linux 7.2 (i386) - Kernel 2.4.4-4GB (tty2). mathplanet login: root Password: Last login: Sat Sep 1 14:28:40 on tty1 Have a lot of fun... mathplanet:~ # which scanimageIf SANE is installed already, there should be some response, e.g.
Welcome to SuSE Linux 7.2 (i386) - Kernel 2.4.4-4GB (tty2). mathplanet login: root Password: Last login: Sat Sep 1 14:28:40 on tty1 Have a lot of fun... mathplanet:~ # which scanimage /usr/X11R6/bin/scanimage mathplanet:~ #If you get the line /usr/X11R6/bin/scanimage or some similar line, is SANE installed already. If not it isn't and you have to install it first.
To install the SANE the easiest way to do so surely is to install it from your Linux distribution. Using SuSE e.g. you would probably use the yast, when using Mandrake, you would use the paketmanager. The installation of SANE itself has not directly to do with the Plustek driver, but is rather a SANE topic and therefore covered at the SANE-home page and in the SANE specific documentation. Thus we just refer the reader to those documents and assume in the sequel, that the user has somehow managed to install the SANE, whether from your distribution or via download from the net.
There are several versions of the Plustek driver. Not every version of the Plustek driver is compliant with every version of SANE. To determine which version of the Plustek driver you need, you must first determine which version of SANE you have installed. For that, log in and write at the command line:
Welcome to SuSE Linux 7.2 (i386) - Kernel 2.4.4-4GB (tty2). mathplanet login: root Password: Last login: Sun Sep 2 05:06:14 on tty2 Have a lot of fun... mathplanet:~ # scanimage --version scanimage (sane-backends) 1.0.4 mathplanet:~ #This example shows, that the installed SANE is version 1.0.4. The version number might be different in your system. Good. Which version of the Plustek driver is now compliant with this/your version of SANE? As mentioned before, this depends on the SANE version. Possible choices while this document was written were:
| SANE-Version 1.0.3: | only Plustek driver plustek-module-0_36_38.tar.gz |
| SANE-Version 1.0.4: | only Plustek driver plustek-module-0_37_23.tar.gz or plustek-module-0_39_3.tar.gz |
| SANE-Version 1.0.5: | use only Plustek driver plustek-module-0_37_23.tar.gz or plustek-module-0_39_3.tar.gz |
Next download the Plustek driver archive found appropriate in the preceeding step. In my case this is plustek-module-0_39_3.tar.gz. As soon as this is done, you only have to unpack it, before the real installation can begin. To do this we create a subdirectory somewhere, e.g. under /tmp and copy our Plustek archive to this location. Then we go there:
mathplanet:~ # md /tmp/Scanner mathplanet:~ # cp plustek-module-0_39_3.tar.gz /tmp/Scanner/ mathplanet:~ # cd /tmp/Scanner/ mathplanet:/tmp/Scanner # ls -la total 176 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 2 05:47 . drwxrwxrwt 17 root root 4096 Sep 2 05:47 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 166123 Sep 2 05:47 plustek-module-0_39_3.tar.gz mathplanet:/tmp/Scanner #OK. It's there. Now we unpack it:
mathplanet:/tmp/Scanner # tar xvfz plustek-module-0_39_3.tar.gz plustek_driver/src/dac.c plustek_driver/src/detect.c plustek_driver/src/genericio.c plustek_driver/src/image.c plustek_driver/src/io.c plustek_driver/src/map.c plustek_driver/src/misc.c plustek_driver/src/models.c plustek_driver/src/motor.c plustek_driver/src/p12.c plustek_driver/src/p12ccd.c plustek_driver/src/p48xx.c plustek_driver/src/p9636.c plustek_driver/src/procfs.c plustek_driver/src/ptdrv.c plustek_driver/src/scale.c plustek_driver/src/tpa.c plustek_driver/h/plustek_dbg.h plustek_driver/h/plustek_hwdefs.h plustek_driver/h/plustek_procs.h plustek_driver/h/plustek_scan.h plustek_driver/h/plustek_scandata.h plustek_driver/h/plustek_sysdep.h plustek_driver/h/plustek_types.h plustek_driver/COPYING plustek_driver/ChangeLog plustek_driver/INSTALL plustek_driver/INSTALL.GER plustek_driver/FAQ plustek_driver/README plustek_driver/BUILD plustek_driver/TEST.txt plustek_driver/TODO plustek_driver/Makefile plustek_driver/VERSION0 plustek_driver/VERSION1 ./plustek-share.h mathplanet:/tmp/Scanner #In my case, the directory now look like this:
mathplanet:/tmp/Scanner # ls -la total 196 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Sep 2 05:54 . drwxrwxrwt 17 root root 4096 Sep 2 05:47 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 166123 Sep 2 05:47 plustek-module-0_39_3.tar.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 517 200 15805 Apr 19 22:09 plustek-share.h drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Sep 2 05:54 plustek_driver mathplanet:/tmp/Scanner #If you have got an older version of the plustek-module, there might be only a directory backend. That's perfectly fine. In this case, just change into the directory backend and there you'll find the subdirectory plustek_driver as mentioned in the example above. In any case, next cd into the plustek_driver directory, so that the actual installation can begin:
mathplanet:/tmp/Scanner # cd plustek_driver/ mathplanet:/tmp/Scanner/plustek_driver # ls -la total 120 drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Sep 2 05:54 . drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Sep 2 05:54 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 517 200 2 Apr 22 16:06 BUILD -rw-r--r-- 1 517 200 15131 Dec 30 2000 COPYING -rw-r--r-- 1 517 200 3673 Apr 19 12:57 ChangeLog -rw-r--r-- 1 517 200 13040 Apr 19 12:57 FAQ -rw-r--r-- 1 517 200 11085 Apr 22 15:45 INSTALL -rw-r--r-- 1 517 200 12519 Apr 14 16:17 INSTALL.GER -rw-r--r-- 1 517 200 5595 Apr 22 14:43 Makefile -rw-r--r-- 1 517 200 12035 Apr 19 12:59 README -rw-r--r-- 1 517 200 3049 Apr 22 16:03 TEST.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 517 200 696 Apr 19 21:05 TODO -rw-r--r-- 1 517 200 3 Apr 9 20:04 VERSION0 -rw-r--r-- 1 517 200 1 Apr 9 20:04 VERSION1 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 2 05:54 h drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Sep 2 05:54 src mathplanet:/tmp/Scanner/plustek_driver #The source code of the Plustek driver is now ready. Fine.