sane-mustek_usb(5)

💅 sane-mustek_usb(5) — the manual page, but make it make sense

okay so you found the page for sane-mustek_usb, which lives in the SANE section 5 of the manual (Scanner Access Now Easy, iykyk) — bestie, this is your whole guide to the Mustek USB flatbed scanner backend ✨

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🎀 NAME

sane-mustek_usb — the SANE backend for Mustek USB flatbed scanners. that's it, that's the vibe 💖

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🌸 DESCRIPTION

so the sane-mustek_usb library implements a SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) backend that gives you access to Mustek USB flatbed scanners — and yes, that includes a clone from Trust 👑. right now, these are the scanners known to work more or less with this backend:

Mustek 600 CU
Mustek 1200 UB
Mustek 1200 CU
Mustek 1200 CU Plus
Trust Compact Scan USB 19200

more deets live on the Mustek USB backend homepage, http://www.meier-geinitz.de/sane/mustek_usb-backend/ — go look, it's giving lore 🦋

heads up bestie, scanner families are a whole nepo situation — the Mustek BearPaw 1200 and 2400 scanners are supported by the plustek backend. see sane-plustek(5) for the tea. the Mustek BearPaw 1200F is supported by the MA-1509 backend, so check sane-ma1509(5). and other Mustek USB scanners are supported by the gt68xx backend — that's sane-gt68xx(5) 🫶

this backend can only work with scanners that are already detected by the operating system. see sane-usb(5) for the whole detection situation, no cap.

if you own a Mustek (or Trust) scanner that isn't in the list above and it works with this backend, please let the author know 😭 — send the scanner's exact model name plus the USB vendor and device ids (like, from /proc/bus/usb/devices or syslog) and they'll be obsessed with you fr fr.

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💫 DEVICE NAMES

this backend expects device names shaped like this:

special

where special is a path-name for the special device that corresponds to a USB scanner. with Linux, that could be /dev/usb/scanner0 or /dev/usbscanner1, for example 🌈

for FreeBSD, use /dev/uscanner0 💜

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✨ CONFIGURATION

the contents of the mustek_usb.conf file is a list of options and device names that correspond to Mustek USB scanners. empty lines and lines starting with a hash mark (#) are ignored — they're just background noise 💅

if a device name is placed in mustek_usb.conf, it must be followed by a line containing the keyword option and an option specifying the scanner type. the following options can be used: 600cu, 1200cu, 1200cu_plus, 1200ub. for the Trust Compact Scan USB 19200, use option 1200ub 🎀

instead of using the device name, the scanner can be autodetected by usb vendor_id product_id statements which are already included into mustek_usb.conf. this is only supported with Linux 2.4.8 and higher and all systems that support libusb. "vendor_id" and "product_id" are hexadecimal numbers that identify the scanner. if this doesn't work, a device name and the option specifying the scanner type must be placed in mustek_usb.conf as described above 🙈

the global option max_block_size can be used to limit the amount of data acquired in one turn from the USB system. it may be worth trying if USB errors occur — lowkey a vibe-check move for flaky cables 🔥

a sample configuration file is shown below, and honestly? iconic:

# Comment
option max_block_size 1024
usb 0x055f 0x0001
/dev/usb/scanner0
option 600cu

let's break it down line by line, bestie:

1. the first line is ignored (it's a comment, main character energy but no substance).
2. the second line sets the buffer size to a maximum of 1024 bytes.
3. the third line tries to autodetect a scanner with vendor id 0x055f and product id 0x0001 (Mustek 1200 CU).
4. the fourth line tells the backend to attach to /dev/usb/scanner0.
5. the fifth line specifies that /dev/usb/scanner0 is a Mustek 600 CU.

periodt. 💖

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🦋 FILES

• /etc/sane.d/mustek_usb.conf — the backend configuration file (see also the description of SANE_CONFIG_DIR below). your home base 💅
• /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-mustek_usb.a — the static library implementing this backend.
• /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-mustek_usb.so — the shared library implementing this backend (present on systems that support dynamic loading).

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🌟 ENVIRONMENT

• SANE_CONFIG_DIR — this environment variable specifies the list of directories that may contain the configuration file. on *NIX systems, the directories are separated by a colon (:), under OS/2, they are separated by a semi-colon (;). if this variable is not set, the configuration file is searched in two default directories: first, the current working directory (".") and then in /etc/sane.d. if the value of the environment variable ends with the directory separator character, then the default directories are searched after the explicitly specified directories. for example, setting SANE_CONFIG_DIR to "/tmp/config:" would result in directories tmp/config, ., and /etc/sane.d being searched (in this order). it's giving search-path scavenger hunt 🧚
• SANE_DEBUG_MUSTEK_USB — if the library was compiled with debug support enabled, this environment variable controls the debug level for this backend. higher debug levels increase the verbosity of the output. honestly the pipeline from "quiet" to "spills everything" is a whole journey 😭
  • 0 — no output
  • 1 — print fatal errors
  • 2 — print important messages
  • 3 — print non-fatal errors and less important messages
  • 4 — print all but debugging messages
  • 5 — print high level debugging messages
  • 6 — print medium level debugging messages
  • 7 — print low level debugging messages

example, copy-paste responsibly bestie:

export SANE_DEBUG_MUSTEK_USB=4

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🫶 SEE ALSO

sane(7), sane-usb(5), sane-mustek(5), sane-mustek_pp(5), sane-plustek(5), sane-gt68xx(5), sane-ma1509(5), /usr/share/doc/sane-backends/mustek_usb/mustek_usb.CHANGES, /usr/share/doc/sane-backends/mustek_usb/mustek_usb.TODO, http://www.meier-geinitz.de/sane/mustek_usb-backend/ ✨

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👑 AUTHOR

Henning Meier-Geinitz <henning@meier-geinitz.de> — legend behavior.

this backend is based on the Mustek 1200ub backend from Mustek, maintained by Tom Wang. tag team fr fr 🌸

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💀 BUGS

okay so this is the part where we get real 😭

these devices have a hardware bug: once data is written to them, they can't be reset (toggle = DATA0). that means any operation that tries to reset the device will result in running into timeouts. so like... don't fight the hardware, it will win 💀

in earlier versions this backend failed when it was loaded the second time in some configurations. the only choice was to replug the scanner in this case. the backend uses a workaround for that bug now, but it's only tested on Linux. reports for other operating systems are appreciated 🫶

more detailed bug information is available at the Mustek backend homepage http://www.meier-geinitz.de/sane/mustek_usb-backend/ 🦋

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ngl, if your scanner is being dramatic, check the debug level and that config file before you spiral. the manual said what it said 🙈

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and that's the whole page bestie — brought to you by SANE Scanner Access Now Easy, this edition dated 13 Jul 2008 ✨ go forth and scan, you're literally the main character of USB peripherals 💖🎀🦋