Epkowa

Most scanners are supported by SANE. As that page states, the SANE project maintains a searchable list of supported (and some unsupported) devices. This list includes many but not all Epson scanners; some Epson scanners are listed as supported by the Epkowa driver but not directly by SANE. This page is an attempt to provide some help in getting such scanners up and running in Gentoo. Epkowa is a proprietary driver for Epson scanners. It is not supported by a dedicated Gentoo package or by media-gfx/sane-backends but is included in media-gfx/iscan which is a proprietary Epson scanner utility. Gentoo users may prefer to use a non-proprietary utility such as media-gfx/xsane but these packages rely on media-gfx/sane-backends which provides no support for the Epkowa driver, probably because Epson firmware is involved. The Epkowa driver can be used in the same way as other backends in media-gfx/sane-backends, for help on how to achieve in the absence if a dedicated package see the Guide (below).

Environment variables

 * VAR1
 * VAR2

Files

 * - Global (system wide) configuration file.
 * - Local (per user) configuration file.

Issue 1
When X happens, Y is how to fix it.

External resources

 * Descriptive link name –

What is it?
Proprietary driver for some Epson scanners.

Why might I need it?
Your scanner is not supported by standard SANE backend.

SANE supported scanners list your scanner as supported by epkowa driver.

How does it integrate with Gentoo?
Installed as part of media-gfx/iscan which is an Epson scanner utility, like xsane without many of the bells and whistles.

Requires proprietary firmware plugin for relevant printer.

Plugins can be installed using media-gfx/iscan-plugin*

Plugins have a dependency on media-gfx/iscan and media-gfx/iscan-data

Once installed it can be used by other scanner utilities such as xsane and scan-image in the same way as any other SANE backend.

Issues with media-gfx/iscan-data
media-gfx/iscan-data currently broken (see bug).

Workaround (see also suggestions in bug reports)
Check dependencies of iscan-plugin*  and emerge these separately.

For iscan use --nodeps to avoid pulling in iscan-data which will cause build to fail.

Emerge you plugin using --nodeps to avoid pulling in iscan-data which will cause build to fail.

This should leave you with a system in which the scanner is found by scanimage -L and sane-find scanner using root account but not as normal user.

Manually adapt udev rules to add USB vendor and device id (see ref, man udev, SANE etc).