Similar to how most modern network printers support "driverless" printing, using the universal vendor-neutral printing protocol, many modern network scanners and MFPs support "driverless" scanning.
Driverless scanning comes in two flavors:
- Apple AirScan or AirPrint scanning (official protocol name is eSCL)
- Microsoft WSD, or WS-Scan (term WSD means "Web Services for Devices)
This backend implements both protocols, choosing automatically between them. It was successfully tested with many devices from Brother, Canon, Kyocera, Epson, HP and Xerox both in WSD and eSCL modes.
For eSCL devices, Apple maintains a comprehensive list of compatible devices, but please note, this list contains not only scanners and MFP, but pure printers as well.
This backend doesn't require to install and doesn't conflict with vendor-provided proprietary software like ScanGear from Canon, HPLIP from HP and so on.
- One backend for two different protocols, eSCL and WSD
- Automatic and manual device discovery and configuration
- Scan from platen and ADF, in duplex and simplex modes, multi-page scan from ADF supported as well
- Scan in color and gray scale modes
- Line-by-line image unpacking, for low memory footprint
- The cancel operation is as fast as possible, depending on your hardware
- Both IPv4 and IPv6 are supported
Any eSCL and WSD apable scanner expected to work. Here is a list of devices that were actually tested. If you have success with a scanner not included into this list, please let me know.
Legend:
- Yes - device works perfectly
- No - protocol not supported by device
- Space - author has no information on this mode/device combination
| Device | eSCL mode | WSD mode |
|---|---|---|
| Brother MFC-L2750DW | Yes | Yes |
| Canon D570 | Yes | |
| Canon ImageCLASS MF743cdw | Yes1 | |
| Canon Lide 400 | Yes | |
| Canon TR4529 (PIXMA TR4500 Series) | Yes | |
| Canon TS 3100 | Yes | |
| Canon TS 3300 | Yes | |
| Canon TS 6151 | Yes | |
| Canon TS 6250 | Yes | |
| EPSON WF-7710 | Yes | |
| EPSON XP-7100 Series | Yes | |
| EPSON XP-8600 Series | Yes | |
| HP Color Laserjet MFP m178-m181 | Yes | |
| HP Color LaserJet MFP M281fdw | Yes | |
| HP DeskJet 2540 | Yes | |
| HP ENVY 4500 | Yes | |
| HP ENVY 5540 | Yes | |
| HP LaserJet MFP M227sdn | Yes | |
| HP LaserJet MFP M426dw | Yes | |
| HP LaserJet MFP M630 | Yes | |
| HP LaserJet Pro M28w | Yes | |
| HP LaserJet Pro MFP 148fdw | Yes | |
| HP LaserJet Pro MFP M125 series | No | Yes |
| HP LaserJet Pro MFP M428dw | Yes | |
| HP LaserJet Pro MFP M521 series | No | Yes |
| HP Officejet 4630 | Yes | |
| HP Officejet Pro 6970 | Yes | |
| HP OfficeJet Pro 6978 | Yes | |
| HP OfficeJet Pro 8730 | Yes | Yes |
| HP OfficeJet Pro 9010 series | Yes | |
| Kyocera ECOSYS M2040dn | Yes | Yes2 |
| Xerox VersaLink B405 | Yes | |
| TODO |
[1]: this device requires manual activation of AirPrint scanning on its web console: Home->Menu->Preferences->Network->TCP/IP Settings->Network Link Scan Settings->On.
[2]: this device requires manual action on its front panel to initiate WSD scan: Send->WSD Scan->From Computer
If you use one of the following Linux distros:
- Debian (9.0 and 10)
- Fedora (29, 30, 31 and 32)
- openSUSE (Leap and Tumbleweed)
- Ubuntu (16.04, 18.04, 19.04, 19.10 and 20.04)
Follow this link, where you will find packages and very detailed installation instructions.
Note, after a fresh build this link sometimes takes too long to update, so if you encounter "Resource is no longer available!" problems, there is a direct link to repositories: https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/pzz/
I strongly recommend you to choose "Add repository and install manually" option rather that "Grab binary packages directly", because it will enable automatic updates of the sane-airscan package.
Linux Mint users may use Ubuntu packages:
- Linux Mint 18.x - use packages for Ubuntu 16.04
- Linux Mint 19.x - use packages for Ubuntu 18.04
For Arch Linux, there are packages, maintained by Thomas Kiss [email protected]:
- https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/sane-airscan/ - latest release
- https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/sane-airscan-git/ - GIT snapshot
Big thanks to openSUSE Build Service, for providing package build infrastructure.
If your distro is not listed, see Installation from sources section below.
As root, execute the following commands:
dnf install gcc git make pkgconf-pkg-config
dnf install avahi-devel avahi-glib-devel
dnf install glib2-devel libsoup-devel libxml2-devel
dnf install libjpeg-turbo-devel sane-backends-devel
dnf install libpng-devel
As root, execute the following commands:
apt-get install libavahi-client-dev libavahi-glib-dev
apt-get install gcc git make pkg-config
apt-get install libglib2.0-dev libsoup2.4-dev libxml2-dev
apt-get install libjpeg-dev libsane-dev
apt-get install libpng-dev
git clone https://github.com/alexpevzner/sane-airscan.git
cd sane-airscan
make
make install
All contributions are welcome and greatly appreciated, assuming the following:
- Feature that you propose has a general interest for many people
- Your code is well-formatted and has a good quality
Please note, this project has two branches:
- stable branch: https://github.com/alexpevzner/sane-airscan
- development branch: https://github.com/alexpevzner/sane-airscan-wsd
Stable branch accepts mostly bug fixes and minor features with small change in code base. Major features should be contributed into the development branch.
If your business depends on my project, and you require any specific feature not currently implemented here, you may consider contracting me on a paid basis.
PVS-Studio is a static code analyser, supporting C, C++, C# and Java.
Once upon a time I was chatting with its authors in Russian software development forum and told them, that if their tool will find something interesting in my code, I will put a reference to their project here.
Their tool actually found a couple real bugs, so I had to fulfill my promise :-)
Now I regularly test this code with PVS-Studio, and it really helps. Their product is not free, but they offer free licenses for open source projects.
To report a bug, please create a new GitHub issue
To create a helpful bug report, please perform the following steps:
- Enable protocol trace in the sane-airscan, by adding the following
entries into the configuration file
(/etc/sane.d/airscan.conf):
[debug]
trace = ~/airscan/trace ; Path to directory where trace files will be saved
You may use an arbitrary directory path, assuming you have enough rights to create and write this directory. The directory will be created automatically.
-
Reproduce the problem. Please, don't use any confidential documents when problem is being reproduces, as their content will be visible to others.
-
Explain the problem carefully
-
In the directory you've specified as the trace parameter, you will find two files. Assuming you are using program xsane and your device name is "Kyocera MFP Scanner", file names will be "xsane-Kyocera-MFP-Scanner.log" and "xsane-Kyocera-MFP-Scanner.tar". Please, attach both of these files to the new issue.
The eSCL protocol is not documented, but this is simple protocol, based on HTTP and XML, easy for reverse engineering. There are many Internet resources around, related to this protocol, and among others I want to note the following links:
- kno10/python-scan-eSCL - a tiny Python script, able to scan from eSCL-compatible scanners
- SimulPiscator/AirSane - this project solves the reverse problem, converting any SANE-compatible scanner into eSCL server. Author claims that it is compatible with Mopria and Apple clients
- markosjal/AirScan-eSCL.txt - document, describing eSCL protocol, based on reverse engineering. Not complete and not always accurate, but gives the good introduction