i have been using it under linux for many years sporadically, the scanner never got linux support, at one point i got it working using a driver someone made and i had to install it by hand, later the kernel, still saying it was not supported, started to make it work, i had success with xsane and other programs many years ago
i tried to use it again on linux in recent years, lately there has been more problems with what supports it for some reason, most programs will see it there, but few will make it work
document scanner now is the only one that sees it and will make it respond and finish doing a preview and generate a document
but after the latest kernel, i tried to scan a document, it sees very pale the left side of the page with a yellowish color and the right side is darker with a redish color
for a moment i was sure it was something related to the hardware itself dying, but on win 11 using old win 7 drivers just scans fine as it always have
any ideas why is misbehaving like this or if perhaps i should try to make the old linux driver work again? i guess i should get a new scanner but i no longer scan that much and is hard to justify a purchase of a flatbed scanner that is used like 5 or 10 times per year
Would running an older Linux OS in a VM and passing the scanner’s connection to it be an option? Obviously you would not want the outdated and insecure VM connected to the internet, but I would think you could mount a directory into the VM (maybe a 9p mount) and get your scanned documents out of it that way?
at the risk of adding noise, I have an old HP MFP, but it’s not as old as your ScanJet 2400c. It’s a cm1312nfi. I had to install HPLIP Graphical Tools and then every now and then, it downloads something from HP (it claims it’s a driver). I don’t know what it is because I haven’t had issues scanning docs from flatbed, other than “turn it on ID10T!”. I am using IP/Ethernet not USB.
I get a icon in HPLIP Actions for my printer that says “Scan”, I then get the root elevation password prompt and then SANE loads and I click Scan button.
Have you installed the HPLIP package for Linux? If have, does the ScanJet show up in the LHS device sidebar?
interesting question, i have not installed anything from hp
i was told many years ago that hplip focused on printers and it was split between printers and the all in one solutions and nothing for flatbed scanners was there
just tried to install it thanks to your comment, nothing there about scanner nor it finds anything, it still talks about mfp or printers, even mentions parallel printers, but no, no flatbed scanner
after installing hplip i tried again a test scan in document scanner after discover told me it had some hplip updates available
it refused to work, scanner turned off and refused to wake up, turning it off and on by unplugging the power adapter helped, but i just realized something
document scanner is working again well, when i plug it on a usb 2 port, on a usb 3 port now doesnt even show up and system wont even mention i plugged anything
good thing i have document scanner working again, hplip did something, but not sure what, the usb3 situation was not happening before
HPLIP does do something to or for or with SANE. I couldn’t get scanning to work until I installed it but I could print w/o it because I use IP/Ethernet (e.g. JetDirect style) and my MFP has Postscript capability.
well, xsane was not working for me since like last year, it finds scanner and then does nothing
just tried again, still does nothing, well, apart to have to force it to close
xsane is a very problematic program, complains too much about colors, brightness and contrast, so tbh i dont miss it
it seems to be a bit random, but some scans do show with saturated right side and pale left side, seems to be related to darker texts getting weird colors, so something is wrong, but at least is less problematic now
supposedly sane is just backends for specific scanners and this one never got any support of that, only a usb driver and some support made by someone that used to work but i cant find anymore, the scanner sort of was forgotten by everybody around 2011
so, it is doing better but still has lots of problems, in usb 2, in usb3 is not even detected now
i was offered not long ago a portable scanner, i wish i took it lol
the scanjet 2400c is fully suported by sane. Once you sort out the usb issue this should work. hplip adds support for the scan feature on many MFC printers.
And there is also VueScan
But probably not worth the license fee to scan only just once every few years.
There are 2 different parts to hplip.
Fedora provides the hplip package by default which is only a command line version. There is also the hplip-gui package which is a graphical management interface.
For single function HP printers one or both those are all that is required, though for me it seems allowing fedora default software to define the print queue for an HP printer does not work. I need to use hplip to configure the printer and define the print queue.
The same applies to an HP MFP printer but the caveat is that an additional step is required. With HP MFPs it seems the scanner requires a binary plugin that is loaded directly from HP (which is usually installed during initial setup using hplip). This can be done either from the GUI or by using the command hp-plugin from the cli after the fact as well.
The plugin version must match the hplip version so each time there are updates to hplip the user must repeat the plugin install each time.
I don’t remember whether it is installed by default when xsane is installed, but the package libsane-hpaio must also be installed for sane to function with an HP MFP printer and be able to scan.
For my HP printer to function and scan using sane I have these packages installed (with the matching plugin for hplip)
Old printers that no longer work as printers but still support scanning are being discarded. You may be able to find one through local computer users groups or social media.
there is no issue with usb to sort out, it was working on usb 3, but or the kernel made changes or hplip did and still not working at all, it might say it is supported but i know it is not doing a thing
i tried to run via console to see if something changed and the hp-setup came with a uglier interface and did exactly the same, nothing, did not found a scanner and the scanner is there
hplip is of no use to me with this scanner, many years ago i read about something in this scanner being sort of special so hp sold it and ignored it after that because it had something proprietary in it and seems to be still on a abandoned state
just because hplip was not doing a thing for me, i unistalled all of it
after that, none of the scanner apps could find the scanner but lsusb could saw it just fine
i had to reinstall hplip, then update it, then restart and unplug and plug back scanner and make sure sane backends was there too
now document scanner app can see scanner again, but only document scanner, skanlite, xsane and similar tools cant see scanner
i imagine it is sane backends what is giving me problems, but hplip is not helping me at all, have hp not offering a linux driver for this scanner surely is not making things easy, after like 21 years i doubt they will release it lol
i would like to thank hp for selling crap, expensive ink and toners, what would we do without hp? be happy with epson, canon, kyocera and brother i guess
Some older scanner models do not work when connected via an USB3 port. If you experience this issue, try setting the SANE_USB_WORKAROUND=1 environment variable before starting your frontend
the hplip package is a waste of time for you. It does not support any scanners, only printers and MFC printers.
I can’t recall if sane requires some additional configuration. You’ll find more info in the arch wikl link above.
Do you have the libsane-hpaio package installed? If not then sane cannot access hp scanners even if hplip is properly setup and the scanner plugin is installed.
As noted above, hplip does not support the scanner, only printers, but sane still requires the hpaio library to access the scanner.
I think this is only required for the multi-function devices.
according to the sane project the 2400c is fully supported by the genesys backend
man sane-genesys
The sane-genesys library implements a SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) backend that provides access to USB flatbed scanners based on the Genesys GL646,
GL841, GL843, GL847 and GL124 chips. At present, the following scanners are known to work with this backend:
my comment about usb 3 and 2 is related to it working before, like weeks before, now not working, not really pointing to sane, because i didnt mentioned it
i do know that printers and scanners can cause problems when connected to usb 3 and one prefers to use usb 2, but it was working not long ago, so i found it weird that it not only didnt worked, it was not detected by the kernel, so something changed for sure, not a big deal, it is preferable always to connect printers, scanners, mouse and keyboard on usb 2 when possible
from years ago when my scanner was not supported at all, from the very little i remember, no, sane has no interface, it is more a service that is used by document scanner, xsane, skanlite and others, and that is weird, because why some work and others do not?
