How to stay sane while using "sane": Scanning and printing under CrunchBang

sources: redchess
and Larry Ewing

Well, now that I am back in Belgium I bought myself a second hand Thinkpad X61 from Pro Used Computers, and of course installed good old CrunchBang Statler on it.

Today I am installing the multifunction Canon Pixma MP510 on my little machine, simply because I need some scanning to be done.

For all the other Debian-lovers out there, may be a quick overview on how to install the print and scan functions for easy use:

Warning, this is a work in progress and for now just a quick summary. Tips and hints are very welcome, feel free to contact me for more information or when you find something missing!

• To install sane, use the following commands:

sudo apt-get install sane
sudo apt-get install sane-utils
sane-find-scanner
scanimage -L
scanimage -d test -T

• If you like a GUI frontend, try xsane:

sudo apt-get install xsane

• Simply connect the scanner to the Linuxbox, now scan by using:

scanimage --format pnm > outfile.pnm
viewnior outfile.pnm

• To scan a document consisting out of several pages and combine them together as a PDF:

scanimage --format pnm > page01.pnm     (put new page under the scanner)
scanimage --format pnm > page02.pnm     (put new page under the scanner)
scanimage --format pnm > page03.pnm     ...
scanimage --format pnm > page99.pnm

gm convert *.pnm document.pdf

evince document.pdf

• By default, scanimage uses a resolution of 75 dots per inch, that might be too low if you want to scan text and have a readable result. Better than to augment the resolution as follows (to, for example, 150 dpi):

scanimage --resolution=150 > outfile.pnm

Sites I have been using:

• HowtoForge for the installation of cups (to print)
• NewbieDoc for the installation of sane (to scan)

More:

• the sane-project
• tutorial for ImageMagick/GraphicsMagick
• installation process of CrunchBang Statler
• buy second hands computers at Pro Used Computers