Configuring sane scanning server on Tomato USB for Asus RT-N16

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As I wrote in my previous post, Tomato USB firmware is quite stable and functional. It was able to detect my Epson BX300F printer just of the box, but later I’ve noticed that the scanner on my printer does not work. It is possible to solve this problem with just a few lines of commands in command line, but it took quite a while for me to figure out what exactly was wrong.

This guide will focus on installing and configuring scanner server for Asus RT-N16 router on Tomato USB firmware. Before proceeding make sure you have configured ipkg optware, and if not, follow this article: http://www.shcherbyna.com/?p=960

Following is required to perform this task:

1. Asus RT-N16 router

2. Tomato USB firmware installed on router

3. Ipkg already configured on router

4. SSH enabled

Let’s get started. First of all we have to install required libraries before installing saned server. Connect to router via SSH and issue the following commands:

ipkg update

ipkg install libusb

ipkg install libtiff

ipkg install libjpeg

ipkg install libieee1284

mkdir /opt/var

Now we have to install xinetd and sane packages:

ipkg install xinetd

ipkg install sane-backends

It has to be done exactly in this order, otherwise things may go wrongly. Make sure you had no errors when executing above commands. Now it is time to test if sane can see your scanner. Run the following command:

sane-find-scanner

This should output any scanners attached to router, if sane is capable to detect them. Here is mine output:

found USB scanner (vendor=0x04b8, product=0x0848) at libusb:001:002

Now let’s try to issue some scanner test command, for example:

scanimage -L

It should output something like this:

device `epson2:libusb:001:002′ is a Epson NX300 flatbed scanner

If it shows errors use google to find solution for them :), otherwise it is time to change config files for xinetd and sane so that they can accept clients scanning from LAN. Open file /opt/etc/xinetd.d/saned and make sure it looks like this:

service saned
{
port = 6566
socket_type = stream
server = /opt/sbin/saned
protocol = tcp
user = root
group = root
wait = no
disable = no
}

Attention: settings below are only in case if your subnetwork is of type 192.168.1.* , if it is not the case, modify 192.168.1.0/24 accordingly.

Now open file /opt/etc/xinetd.conf and make sure it looks like this:

defaults
{
only_from = 192.168.1.0/24
instances = 60
log_type = FILE /opt/var/xinetd.log
log_on_success = HOST PID
log_on_failure = HOST
cps = 25 30
}

includedir /opt/etc/xinetd.d

Now open file /opt/etc/sane.d/saned.conf and add the following line somewhere:

192.168.1.0/24

You are done! It is time now to make xinetd to be run just after mounting, so that if you reboot router, it get’s started after /opt is mounted:

Save settings and reboot router. You are done on the server side.

Now it is time to configure your client machine(s).

Linux computers

If you are running Fedora install xsane package:

sudo yum install xsane

If you are running Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install xsane

Now you have to edit the file /etc/sane.d/net.conf and add into it the IP of router, i.e.

192.168.1.1 # My RT-N16 IP

Windows computers

1. Download xsane from ftp://ftp.sane-project.org/pub/sane/xsane/

2. Extract it to folder C:\sane (do not change folder, it may not work)

3. Edit file C:\sane\etc\sane.d\net.conf and make sure it looks like this: (attention: some people had problem when having multiple lines in this file, so make sure you have only one line!):

192.168.1.1 # My RT-N16 IP

Now you can run xsane and see if scanning works 🙂 Have fun!

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64 Comments

  1. Hi,

    Excellent article. Good work!

    The output from scanimage -L is:
    device `hpljm1005:libusb:001:002′ is a Hewlett-Packard LaserJet M1005 multi-function peripheral

    The printer is working ok. Unfortunately sane/scanning is not working in my system. I think that in my system the xinetd is not running. How can I check if the xinetd service is running?

    Should the xinetd write something to xinetd.log?

    I am a total newbie with this, so I am sorry if my questions are simple/stupid.

    Could You please give me a couple of hints where to start looking the solution?

    Reply to this comment

  2. Hi,

    Thx, I can install SANE on Tomato into my ASUS N16 router with the instructions you provided.
    When I use sane-find-scan, it can identify my multifunction Epson printer:

    “found USB scanner (vendor=0x04b8 [SEIKO EPSON], product=0x084d [USB MFP]) at libusb:002:003”

    Howeve the scanimage -L cannot identify my scanner. Any idea? My scanner is Epson TX110

    “No scanners were identified. If you were expecting something different,
    check that the scanner is plugged in, turned on and detected by the
    sane-find-scanner tool (if appropriate). Please read the documentation
    which came with this software (README, FAQ, manpages).”

    Alex

    Reply to this comment

  3. Hi,

    I was too tired last time when I tried to make this work :-(. I had two mistakes in configuration files, and that was the reason why it didn’t work:

    in xinetd.conf I had only_from = localhost 192.168.1.0/24, so the localhost was somewhow left there…. stupid mistake.

    The other error was sane port configuration, the = -mark was missing.

    So fixing the configs made it work

    Thank You again for the excellent instructions.

    So it is now proved that tomato USB 1.28 Beta can be used to turn a HP Laserjet 1005M to a network printer & Scanner. Thanks again!!!

    Reply to this comment

  4. I have managed to get the scanimage -Z working, by adding a line (usb vendorID and productID…) to the epson2.conf

    However the saned cannot be started
    I got the following message in the system log

    saned from sane-backends 1.0.20 starting up
    check_host: getpeername failed: Socket operation on non-socket
    init: access by host [error] denied
    saned: saned exiting

    Any idea

    Reply to this comment

  7. Hi Volodymyr,

    I had a hard time to set up MFC-7340 scanner to work on N16 with tomato. This scanner is not sane-supported. The “sane-find-scanner” command can detect the device but “scanimage -L” returns “No scanners were identified”.

    I followed your suggestions and downloaded the project for MFC-4600. But I do not know how to installed it as I am a Linux newbie. The readme information is below.

    Installation:

    1. Extract the contents into an existing SANE backend installation.

    2. Rebuild:

    make clean
    make

    Can you provide a more detailed help. Thanks a lot!

    Reply to this comment

      • Thanks for the information.
        It’s a difficult task to rebuild the driver and sane for a newbie like me…
        I found the driver on their website but it is in .deb or .rpm file. Is there anyway I can use these to get around of the difficult task of rebuilding driver and sane…
        Please advise, thanks…

        Reply to this comment

  8. Having problems getting HP F2210 to be detected by scanimage -L, it is however getting detected by sane-find-scanner:

    “found USB scanner (vendor=0x03f0 [HP], product=0x2404 [Deskjet F2200 series]) at libusb:002:002”

    I can’t seem to find anything using google as suggested. Anyone know how to fix this?

    Thank for any possible info!

    Reply to this comment

  9. scanimage -L

    No scanners were identified. If you were expecting something different,
    check that the scanner is plugged in, turned on and detected by the
    sane-find-scanner tool (if appropriate). Please read the documentation
    which came with this software (README, FAQ, manpages).

    Reply to this comment

  11. Hello,

    Good job for a well written guide =). However, I still couldn’t manage to get my scanner working.
    I can see my device with scanimage -L, but whenever I tried to use xsane.exe, it responded “No devices available” (I believe I have triple-checked the setting to match instructions above).
    My device is a multipurpose printer Canon MF3240. Any idea what is going wrong?

    Thanks

    Reply to this comment

    • First of all, thank you Volodymyr Shcherbyna for a great Ipkg and scanner install guides. I successfully applied them on the newest version of Tomato RAF.

      I had same problem as you Marco and I found out, that I wrongly left localhost 192.168.0.7 in the net.conf, which is there by default. I deleted it and left just the IP of my router and everything works well 🙂

      Hope it helps!

      Reply to this comment

    • I had the same problem with this install and a canon mf3240 initially. I had to update the install and backend, install python/etc from the hp walkthrough or the ddwrt forums, reboot and voila, it was working properly.

      I’m able to scan (and print) to the canon downstairs. The only part that is non-functional is the print to fax option.

      Reply to this comment

  12. Hi,
    I installed sane on my ASUS 520gu with Tomato USB. Everything look fine on the router. However, my windows 7 computer says “No scan device available.” Could that be the problem of setting “user = root” in file saned because the user is not root in my Windows 7 computer?

    Reply to this comment

    • Hello twinclouds,

      I don’t think so. Most likely something is wrong on the router side. Usually when you have this error in Windows it means that the port is closed on router.

      Did you try to scan your router ports (if port is not open, it means your configuration is wrong) or/and see the sane logs?

      Reply to this comment

  13. Hi,
    Excellent article. Everything is very clear but as many people got the same problem.

    sane-find-scanner

    “found USB scanner (vendor=0x04e8/0x342e [SAMSUNG], product=0x04e8/0x342e [USB MFP]) at libusb:002:003″
    Something like this.

    But on scanimage -L

    No scanners were identified. If you were expecting something different,
    check that the scanner is plugged in, turned on and detected by the
    sane-find-scanner tool (if appropriate). Please read the documentation
    which came with this software (README, FAQ, manpages).

    As I cheked this link, my device is on the supported list:
    http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html#Z-HEWLETT-PACKARD
    my devise Samsung SCX-4300
    any advise, thanks…

    Reply to this comment

    • Did Ge2tis’ issue ever get resolved? I have the exact same problem with a Samsung SCX-4623f MFP.

      It’s found by sane-find-scanner. But not by scanimage -L (same “No scanners were identified” error).
      I have modified /opt/etc/sane.d/xerox_mfp.conf to include the line “usb 0x04e8 0x3434”.

      I’m using sane-backends 1.0.22-1, so the scanner should be supported.
      How should I go about debugging this?

      Reply to this comment

        • Hi Volodymyr,

          It looks like 2_LuDe and Roger Santos were able to get scanimage -L to work. However, I can’t get scanimage -L to work on my Samsung SCX-4623. If I execute “SANE_DEBUG_XEROX_MFP=9 scanimage -L”, the output is:

          [sanei_debug] Setting debug level of xerox_mfp to 9.
          [xerox_mfp] sane_init: Xerox backend (build 12), version != null, authorize != null
          [xerox_mfp] sane_xerox_mfp_get_devices: 0x7fff5c18, 0
          [xerox_mfp] list_one_device: libusb:001:005

          No scanners were identified. If you were expecting something different,
          check that the scanner is plugged in, turned on and detected by the
          sane-find-scanner tool (if appropriate). Please read the documentation
          which came with this software (README, FAQ, manpages).

          Any ideas on what’s going wrong here?

          Reply to this comment

  14. Hi Volodymy,

    First I want to say great article and a great job of doing all the research to gather the tools needed to accomplish this. Thanks for putting this up, I would have never been even close to figuring out all this stuff. Everything is well written and easy to follow.

    I spent around 2 days figuring out how to get my setup working and figured that others may run into a similar issue that I saw. I have a supported printer and cut and pasted everything in this article. I was able to get a response back from my scanner through the scanimage -L command. However, every time I run xsane.exe, it will respond with “No devices available”

    I was able to finally root cause it to the C:\sane\etc\sane.d\net.conf file. I deleted everything in the file and only put in my router IP: 192.168.1.1. If I added any other commands or lines, it doesn’t work. I am using the Windows frontend. Now it works like a charm and I can scan from any computer!

    Reply to this comment

    • I am glad it works for you 🙂 Btw, your comments is 500th on my blog 🙂

      Thank you for pointing out the issue with net.conf. I just checked my file, and indeed, I have only one line:

      volodymyr@sv1:/media/C/sane/etc/sane.d$ more net.conf
      # This is the net config file. Each line names a host to attach to.
      # If you list “localhost” then your backends can be accessed either
      # directly or through the net backend. Going through the net backend
      # may be necessary to access devices that need special privileges.
      # localhost
      192.168.1.1

      I am going to modify article to indicate this.

      Thank you, Volodymyr.

      Reply to this comment

      • LuDe and Volodymyr,
        Thank you both. Now my xsane works according to the change. However, I cannot make sanetwain work. It always give the error “Time out reading word from socket”. The exact same setup works with sane on Debian, though. Any suggestions to make it work?

        Reply to this comment

  15. Hello twinclouds,

    I am sorry, I have never setup sanetwain, so I don’t know the details. Tell me why it is so good, maybe I will get interested? 😉

    Speaking on a troubleshooting part. Do you have wireshark? You can do “sudo apt-get install wireshark” to install it in debian or download a version for Windows. Now, you can filter traffic for both cases: when it works, and when it does not work, and try to analyze the traffic.

    Reply to this comment

  16. I followed all the steps in this tutorial and scanning in Windows didn’t work for me.
    Both sane-find-scanner and scanimage -L find the scanner. Also, scanimage -T apparently scans something. But when I try to connect to the server via xsane win32 client, it always gives me an error before connecting (No Devices Available). By the way, the only version I found downloadable over the internet was the 0.991 of this client. Could you help me, please? I’m totally lost in this. I’ve already tried to install CUPS as an alternative solution and it’s returning Segmentation fault. Do you have a guide on this too?

    Thank you,
    Roger

    Reply to this comment

    • Hello Roger,

      A few questions to understand what is your problem:

      1. Can you provide here the content of your file C:\sane\etc\net.conf in Windows machine? The file should contain only and only one line: the IP of the router. If it contains multiple lines, it would not work.

      2. What is the IP of your router?

      3. Check if your sane port is open on the router using the following command:

      netstat -l -e -t -n | grep 6566

      4. Check that you can connect to router port 6566 from your Windows machine via telnet

      Reply to this comment

      • Hello again! Thanks for helping me.

        Answering your questions:
        1) C:\sane\etc\sane.d\net.conf does have exaclty one line:
        192.168.1.1 #My RT-N16 IP

        2) 192.168.1.1

        3) Command returns the following:
        tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:6566 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN

        4) Keeps like this forever:
        Microsoft Telnet> open 192.168.1.1 6566
        Connecting To 192.168.1.1…

        Putty simply returns an alert: “Connection closed by remote host”

        I’ve already tried LuDe’s fix without success.

        Thank you again,

        Roger

        Reply to this comment

        • Now I noticed the command
          telnet 192.168.1.1 6566
          is generating this log on the router:
          11/6/21@23:28:03: START: saned pid=9652 from=192.168.1.223

          The sane windows client isn’t.

          Reply to this comment

  17. With SaneTwain I was able to list available scanners but not to scan. This is a real progress! It’s crashing when I try to scan, but scanimage -T returns this error:
    process 4543: arguments to dbus_connection_send() were incorrect, assertion “connection != NULL” failed in file dbus-connection.c line 3141.
    This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.
    D-Bus not compiled with backtrace support so unable to print a backtrace
    Aborted

    This is strange because scanimage -T was working yesterday… such a pain to configure this stuff!

    Any clues?

    Thanks.

    Reply to this comment

  19. Finally I got it working!

    I formatted the opt partition and started from scratch. Here you are the steps I followed in order to get it working:

    – installed optware

    ipkg update
    ipkg install vim
    ipkg install transmission
    /opt/bin/transmission-daemon -g /opt/etc/transmission-daemon

    – configure settings.json and reboot
    – Transmission working

    ipkg install ink

    – ink utility working

    ipkg install libusb
    ipkg install libtiff
    ipkg install libjpeg
    ipkg install libieee1284
    ipkg install xinetd
    ipkg install sane-backends

    – sane-find-scanner works
    – scanimage -L doesn’t find scanner

    ipkg install hplip
    ipkg remove python25 -force-depends
    ipkg install python
    ipkg install py25-dbus-python

    – sane-find-scanner works
    – scanimage -L works
    – scanimage -T fails with dbus connection error

    – manually start of dbus resulted in segmentation fault

    – downgraded dbus optware to 1.1.1-3
    ipkg remove dbus -force-depends
    ipkg install /opt/dbus_1.1.1-3_mipsel.ipk

    – reinstalled hplip
    – manually started dbus

    /opt/etc/init.d/S20dbus start

    – sane-find-scanner works
    – scanimage -L works
    – scanimage -T works

    – the start of dbus daemon is a bit buggy, so I found the solution here http://wl500g.info/showpost.php?p=226557&postcount=167 and added the following line to .autorun file:

    rm /opt/var/run/dbus/*

    Now I’m scanning from SaneTwain utility!

    Thanks for helping.

    Reply to this comment

  20. Just to let people know my working configuration:

    Printer/Scanner: HP PhotoSmart C4480
    Printer works with default driver (p910nd) and scanner works with hplip and sane.

    Router and Firmware: RT-N16 and TomatoUSB v1.28.9054 MIPSR2-beta K26 USB Ext

    Optwares installed: basically vim, transmission and sane.
    All packages and dependencies (from list_installed):
    adduser – 1.10.3-1
    bzip2 – 1.0.6-1
    cups – 1.4.6-1
    cyrus-sasl-libs – 2.1.23-2
    dbus – 1.1.1-3
    dbus-glib – 0.82-1
    expat – 2.0.1-1
    gdbm – 1.8.3-2
    glib – 2.20.4-1
    hplip – 3.11.3a-1
    ink – 0.5.0-1
    ipkg-opt – 0.99.163-10
    libcurl – 7.21.6-1
    libdb – 4.2.52-3
    libevent – 2.0.11-1
    libieee1284 – 0.2.11-1
    libinklevel – 0.8.0-1
    libjpeg – 6b-3
    libpng – 1.2.44-1
    libtiff – 3.9.5-1
    libuclibc++ – 0.2.2-9
    libusb – 0.1.12-2
    ncurses – 5.7-1
    ncursesw – 5.7-1
    net-snmp – 5.4.2.1-1
    openldap-libs – 2.3.43-2
    openssl – 0.9.7m-5
    psmisc – 22.13-1
    py25-dbus-python – 0.83.0-2
    python – 2.5-1
    python25 – 2.5.6-1
    readline – 6.1-2
    sane-backends – 1.0.22-1
    sqlite – 3.7.3-1
    transmission – 2.31-1
    uclibc-opt – 0.9.28-13
    vim – 7.3-2
    xinetd – 2.3.14-11
    zlib – 1.2.5-1

    Reply to this comment

  22. Gents I am following you guide but coming up against some issues with the same firmware, router and an HP LJ3030 and would appreciate some advice?

    Following Roger’s list…

    – installed optware

    ipkg update
    ipkg install vim

    ipkg install ink

    – ink utility working, but says its an unsupported printer 🙁

    ipkg install libusb
    ipkg install libtiff
    ipkg install libjpeg
    ipkg install libieee1284
    ipkg install xinetd
    ipkg install sane-backends

    – sane-find-scanner does not work 🙁

    Reply to this comment

  23. Please help to find xsane for Windows. Official site (http://www.xsane.org) does not provide it:
    “The downloads for xsane-win32 make too much traffic for my server,so please use an other download location for xsane-win32 downloads.”
    Could you please help me with link to your own server. Please send me to email.
    Thanks a lot in advance!

    Reply to this comment

  24. I have followed the howto step-by-step, but I couldn’t get my SCX-4200 scanner working. I have also tried Roger Santos’ recipe without success.

    sane-find-scan can find my scanner, but scanimage -L didn’t work

    Has someone been able to get SCX-4200 working?

    Reply to this comment

  25. Hi Volodymyr,

    you have such a great blog!! now i know my asus wl-520gu on tomato can do more than just network printing! I’m a newbie in linux environment, but your tutorial is so easy to follow until my epson tx111 recognized successfully on my router and on xsane win32 0.991.
    even on sanetwain the scanner is recognized. all “sane-find-scanner” and “scanimage -L” recognize the epson scanner like in your tutorial.

    But i have a problem, everytime it starts to scan, after a moment it goes : “device i/o error” i tried with xsane and sanetwain both results are the same.

    when i try “scanimage -T” from putty also has message like this:

    scanimage : scanning image of size 632-877 pixel at 1 bits/pixel
    scanimage : acquiring gray frame, 1 bit/sample
    scanimage : reading one scanline, 79bytes… FAIL error : error during device I/O

    what could possibly go wrong? i was that close to successfully scanning from my router..
    here’s my system setup:
    asus wl-520gu router
    usb flash disk 1gb for configure and installing ipkg as yaour previous tutorial
    epson tx 111 MFP connected to 4-port usb hub with the 1gig usb.

    thanx a lot before… sorry for my bad english.

    Reply to this comment

  29. Hey, i try to get this working with my Epson Perfection V33. Turns out the V33 needs the external backend epkowa (iscan 2.29.1/iscan-data 1.23.0).

    Is there any chance to get it working on the RT-16N??

    Reply to this comment

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