sane-st400(5)

📦
version 1.4.0 · 6 versions
, in centos-stream 10, fedora 43, fedora 44, opensuse-leap 16.0

✨ sane-st400(5) ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the manual page for sane-st400 — the SANE backend for Siemens ST/Highscan flatbed scanners 💅 like literally, this is your guide to making these vintage scanners work with SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy). it's giving retro tech realness and we're here for it 🎀

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

The sane-st400 library implements a SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) backend that provides access to Siemens ST400 flatbed scanners and compatibles. no cap, that's the whole vibe ✨

At present, the following scanners are supported by this backend:

  • Siemens ST400 (6 bit gray scale)
  • Siemens ST800 (6 bit gray scale)

The driver supports line art and gray scans up to 8bpp. lowkey iconic for such an old scanner ngl 💖

The Siemens ST/Highscan series includes several more models, e.g. the ST300 and ST600. If you own one of these scanners, or a scanner other than the ones listed above that works with this backend, please let us know by sending the scanner's model name, SCSI ID, and firmware revision to sane-devel@alioth-lists.debian.net. we're literally collecting data like pokémon cards over here 🦋

Have a look at http://www.sane-project.org/mailing-lists.html concerning subscription to sane-devel. iykyk 👑

🎀 DEVICE NAMES 🎀

This backend expects device names of the form:

special

Where special is the path-name for the special device that corresponds to a SCSI scanner. For SCSI scanners, the special device name must be a generic SCSI device or a symlink to such a device. Under Linux, such a device name could be /dev/sga or /dev/sge, for example. See sane-scsi(5) for details. periodt 💅

🦋 CONFIGURATION 🦋

The contents of the st400.conf file is a list of device names that correspond to Siemens scanners. Empty lines and lines starting with a hash mark (#) are ignored. a sample configuration file is shown below:

/dev/scanner
# this is a comment
/dev/sge

The default configuration file that is distributed with SANE looks like this:

scsi SIEMENS "ST 400" Scanner * * 3 0

In this configuration, the driver can only access the ST400 model at SCSI ID 3 LUN 0 (see section BUGS below for the reason). To use the driver with other scanner models, add an appropriate line to the configuration file. For example, to use it with an ST800 at SCSI ID 3 LUN 0, add the line:

scsi SIEMENS "ST 800" Scanner * * 3 0

ngl the config file is giving "choose your own adventure" energy and i'm obsessed 📖✨

🌈 FILES 🌈

  • /etc/sane.d/st400.conf — The backend configuration file (see also description of SANE_CONFIG_DIR below). this is where the magic happens bestie ✨
  • /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-st400.a — The static library implementing this backend. old school cool 🎀
  • /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-st400.so — The shared library implementing this backend (present on systems that support dynamic loading). the dynamic queen herself 👑

💜 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). the way this works is literally so specific and i respect it 😭

SANE_DEBUG_ST400

If the library was compiled with debug support enabled, this environment variable controls the debug level for this backend. E.g., a value of 128 requests all debug output to be printed. Smaller levels reduce verbosity. turn it up to 128 for maximum chaos 💀🔥

🫶 MISSING FUNCTIONALITY 🫶

Everything but the most basic stuff. and honestly? she's doing her best with what she's got 💅✨

⚠️ BUGS ⚠️

Currently, the backend does not check if the attached device really is a ST400. It will happily accept everything that matches the configuration entries. This makes it easy to test the backend with other scanners: Just add an appropriate line to the configuration file.

The configuration file as distributed (see above) only works with the ST400.

Be careful: If there is no config file at all, the backend defaults to /dev/scanner. not me warning you about this fr fr 🙈

The ST400 answers on all eight SCSI LUNs. Normally this is not a problem, as LUN support is usually disabled in SCSI drivers, but if you are seeing multiple instances of the scanner in a device list, either disable LUNs in your SCSI setup or change the entry in the configuration file to match LUN 0 only. she's extra like that and we still love her 💖

🔥 DEBUG 🔥

If you encounter a bug please set the environment variable SANE_DEBUG_ST400 to 128 and try to regenerate the problem. Then send me a report with the log attached. we're literally debugging together bestie, teamwork makes the dream work 🫶

If you encounter a SCSI bus error or trimmed and/or displaced images please also set the environment variable SANE_DEBUG_SANEI_SCSI to 128 before sending me the report. more data = more better, periodt 💅

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

sane(7), sane-scsi(5)

http://www.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de/~ingo/sane/

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Ingo Wilken <Ingo.Wilken@informatik.uni-oldenburg.de>

and that's the whole manual bestie! this page is literally from 14 Jul 2008 and it's still out here slaying for the vintage scanner girlies 🌸 if you're out here with a Siemens ST400 and you made it this far, you're a real one. go forth and scan ✨💖🌺

📦 where this page comes from