Brother scanner no longer recognized by scanimage

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1

Hi Everyone! I have a Brother ADS-2700W scanner that I’ve been using via the network with NixOS for over a year. However, about two weeks ago it stopped being recognized by scanimage and I can no longer use it. Here’s what I get when running it:

$ scanimage -L

No scanners were identified. If you were expecting something different,
check that the scanner is plugged in, turned on and detected by the
sane-find-scanner tool (if appropriate). Please read the documentation
which came with this software (README, FAQ, manpages).

$ sudo scanimage -L

No scanners were identified. If you were expecting something different,
check that the scanner is plugged in, turned on and detected by the
sane-find-scanner tool (if appropriate). Please read the documentation
which came with this software (README, FAQ, manpages).

I’m using (I think) the brscan5 SANE backend (also tried brscan4), but it still doesn’t show up. I’m now trying to run it via USB, but I still get the same results. NixOS sees it as a USB device in both lsusb and sane-find-scanner:

$ lsusb | grep Brother
Bus 001 Device 013: ID 04f9:03fd Brother Industries, Ltd ADS-2700W

$ sudo sane-find-scanner 
found possible USB scanner (vendor=0x04f9 [Brother], product=0x03fd [ADS-2700W]) at libusb:001:013
  # Your USB scanner was (probably) detected. It may or may not be supported by
  # SANE. Try scanimage -L and read the backend's manpage.

I’m able to get it working in an Ubuntu 22.04 VM so I know there’s nothing wrong with the scanner itself.

Here’s what my configuration.nix looks like:

...
  hardware = {
    sane = {
      enable = true;
      brscan5 = {
        enable = true;
      };
    };
  };
...

NixOS Info

$ nixos-version
3.05pre472020.db24d86dd8a (Stoat)

$ sudo nix-channel --list
nixos https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable

Does anyone see something I’m missing? Or have any ideas to continue troubleshooting?

Thank you!

2

Just wanted to share a similar issue with the scanner part of my Brother HL-2280DW multi-function printer/scanner. The scanning function used to work fine earlier (maybe a couple of months ago, I don’t use it regularly so I don’t know when it stopped working). In my case, the driver is brscan4 connecting to my printer/scanner via WiFi. The printer functionality still works, so I know it’s not a connectivity issue.

Like the OP, I tried scanimage -L and sane-find-scanner commands with and without sudo but no sane devices are detected. I, too, am on the nixos-unstable channel (using flake)

I don’t know where I should look for any potential error messages. Any pointers to track down the issue?

Thanks

3

Hi,

Did you try to add your scanner with hardware.sane.brscan5.netDevices option ?

4

I should also mention that I tested with the stable nixos-22.11 channel and it works there. So perhaps something is broken in unstable given that @padhia is also using it?

5

@hansenschnokeloch I did have that option set when using it over the network, but it still stopped working. I’ve now been trying with USB so I don’t think I need the netDevices attribute, but perhaps I do and use the name instead of IP address?

6

This is a regression on nixos-unstable that should have been fixed by sane_backends: disable parallel install by symphorien · Pull Request #225339 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub a few days ago.

7

Thank you! That indeed fixed the issue for me (I am not the OP).

8

Thank you, @symphorien! I’m away from my computer, but when I’m back I’ll do an update and see if this fixes it. I’m very hopeful considering @padhia results :slight_smile:

9

Hm. I had a similar issue recently trying to use my canon usb scanner; not detected, though it worked previously.

I was hoping it would also be fixed by this, but seemingly not. sane-find-scanner lists it as “possible” but gnome simple-scan doesn’t find it, even with today’s -unstable, abe7316dd51 should include this change.

10

I updated my nixos-unstable channel and can confirm things are working again! Running scanimage -L now lists my scanner, and I’m able to successfully scan documents. Thank you so much everyone, especially @symphorien for letting me know about the fix!