Uellue's Blog

HOWTO: Epson Perfection V200 Photo with Linux

[Update] I don't own this scanner anymore for quite some time, so I don't know if things still work the same way. Please also have a look at the comments below, because they contain some hints on how to fix problems. If you have an addition to make: Please leave a comment![/Update]

This howto describes the steps necessary to use the Epson Perfection V200 Photo scanner with Debian Testing (lenny) as of October 2007. The used kernel versions are 2.6.18 and 2.6.22. Other Epson scanners should work in a similar way, see list of supported devices. The scanner is perfectly supported, 8 bit and 16 bit color depth as well as the transparency unit work. This howto will probably also work with Ubuntu, but that's not tested.

Needed Debian packages

Download and install drivers

The drivers are available on the Japanese vendor's site. Choose your scanner and your distribution, fill out the small questionnaire and submit the form. You are directed to a download page. There get the RPM packages for "gcc 3.4 or later".

Now you need to convert the packages to the .deb format in order to install them:
sudo alien --scripts iscan-2.8.0-1.c2.i386.rpm
iscan_2.8.0-2_i386.deb generated
sudo alien --scripts iscan-plugin-gt-f670-2.0.0-1.c2.i386.rpm
iscan-plugin-gt-f670_2.0.0-2_i386.deb generated

To install the generated .deb packages we use dpkg:
sudo dpkg -i iscan_2.8.0-2_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i iscan-plugin-gt-f670_2.0.0-2_i386.deb

Test the installation

Now plug in and switch on the scanner. lsusb must show the scanner.
uellue@yggdrasil:~$ lsusb
[...]
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 04b8:012e Seiko Epson Corp.
[...]

With sane-find-scanner you can check whether Sane finds the device. With scanimage -L you can find out if the driver is properly installed. For now only root has access to the scanner.

uellue@yggdrasil:~$ sudo sane-find-scanner
  # sane-find-scanner will now attempt to detect your scanner. If the
  # result is different from what you expected, first make sure your
  # scanner is powered up and properly connected to your computer.
[...]
found USB scanner (vendor=0x04b8 [EPSON], product=0x012e [EPSON Scanner]) at libusb:005:002
  # Your USB scanner was (probably) detected. It may or may not be supported by
  # SANE. Try scanimage -L and read the backend's manpage.
[...]
uellue@yggdrasil:~$ sudo scanimage -L
device `epkowa:libusb:005:002' is a Epson Perfection V200 flatbed scanner

To allow ordinary users to access the scanner, they must be member of the scanner group. You also need to restart the udev daemon.

uellue@yggdrasil:~$ sudo adduser uellue scanner
Adding user `uellue' to group `scanner' ...
Adding user uellue to group scanner
Done.
uellue@yggdrasil:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart
Stopping the hotplug events dispatcher: udevd.
Starting the hotplug events dispatcher: udevd

After logging out and logging in again to make the altered group membership effective scanimage -L should show the scanner for all members of the group scanner. Now you can use the device for example with xscanimage or xsane.