Common Issues Specifically Related to Scanning
Before trying to troubleshoot scanning, please make sure you are using the latest version of the driver from the repository. For network-connected scanners, it is particularly important that the suld-network-* package be up to date. If you installed the driver manually, you are on your own; there are too many library conflicts for scanning to be reliable, and many problems specific to particular releases of the driver from Samsung (such as mixing 64-bit and 32-bit installations). The repository addresses most of them, and I won't provide details here on how to reconstruct all of them manually (that information is available in various locations on this website and in the provided links.
Solutions to scanning problems depend on how the scanner is connected (USB, network, or parallel) and specific details of where the communication breakdown is, so the approaches below are broken down accordingly. I also highly recommend that you ensure you can print to your printer before worrying about scanning; if you can't print, you are almost certainly going to be unable to scan, and most of the suggestions below assume you have already sorted out how to get printing working.
S0. HELP! I Updated the Packages and Now I Can't Scan!
S1. The Scanner of a Multifunction Printer Doesn't Work
S2. USB-connected Scanner Is Not Recognized by sane-find-scanner
S3. USB-connected Scanner Is Recognized by sane-find-scanner But Does Not Work
S4. Which Printer Models Work With Which Scanning Driver?
S5. USB-connected Scanner Is Inconsistent/Often Fails and I'm Using an Old Distribution
S6. Network-connected Scanner Is Not Recognized by netdiscovery (v3.00.xx to 4.01.xx)
S7. Parallel-connected Scanner Is Not Working
S8. My CJX-xxxx Printer Does Not Scan
S9. My Scanner Worked Until I Updated to Ubuntu 12.04
S10. Imagemanager Will Not Start
S11. Network-connected Scanner Is Not Working
S12. smfpnetdiscovery (driver2 v1.00.xx) Produces No Output
S13. USB scanner not working with USB 3.0 port
S0. HELP! I Updated the Packages and Now I Can't Scan!
On rare occassions, something may not go smoothly in an upgrade process. You can try uninstall all your packages from this repository and then reinstalling the ones you still need. Otherwise, post to the forums for help.
S1. The Scanner of a Multifunction Printer Doesn't Work
Make sure you have followed all the following steps, or no other fix will have any success:
- You have installed a suld-driver-* package that is listed as supporting your printer.
- If your printer/scanner is connected over the network, you may benefit from having one of the suld-configurator-* packages installed.
- You have added yourself to the "lp" group, for example when installing the driving (you may have been prompted or silently added if you were not already in the group) or by entering "sudo usermod -G lp -a " in a terminal, and then logging out and back in to your session (or rebooting). (Under specific circumstances with newer distributions, this is not actually required, but it almost always improves success rates.)
- In some rare cases, you may also need to be a member of the "saned" group, similarly to the "lp" bit above.
- Have you tried to access the scanner using "sudo" or as the root user? (For example, the "superuser" version of the Configurator available in your menu.) In rare cases, this appears to be the only solution.
Once you have completed these steps, and if your scanner still does not work, proceed to the appropriate next question. In some cases, a different suld-driver-* versions may help, but testing this is not a strict requirement of proceeding to other solutions. Some scanners may only work with particular driver versions, although this is relatively rare.
S2. USB-connected Scanner Is Not Recognized by sane-find-scanner
If you enter "sane-find-scanner" in a terminal and do not get output indicating that your computer "sees" your scanner, you can try the following:
- Install the suld-scanner-usblp-fix package. This is most likely to be effective if you are using CUPS 1.5.0 (Ubuntu 11.10), but may also be useful for later distributions/CUPS versions. Earlier CUPS versions are highly unlikely to be improved with this fix. Essentially, this fix ("hack") works around the new blacklisting of the usblp module. The downside is that re-activating that module may interfere with printing, to the same or other printers, although usually it works okay. Printers that may benefit from this approach can print, but not scan.
- In certain older versions of Debian/Ubuntu, mainly released around 2009-2010, there are specific printers that benefit by temporarily removing the USB 2.0 kernel module. To test this, run "sudo modprobe -r ehci_hcd" in a terminal, then try to scan. If it works, you will need to perform this command each time you wish to enable the scanner. When done scanning, run "sudo modprobe ehci_hcd" in a terminal to re-enable other USB devices.
S3. USB-connected Scanner Is Recognized by sane-find-scanner But Does Not Work
If you enter "sane-find-scanner" in a terminal and do get output indicating that your computer "sees" your scanner, but xsane or "scanimage -L" or similar programs do not recognize the scanner, you can try the following:
- Ensure your printer/scanner is connected to a main (usually powered) USB port, not a hub or secondary port. This is most often a problem with external hubs or monitor ports, but occasionally it happens even when connecting directly to a computer. If this is the problem, printing will usually work fine, but scanning will fail.
- Ensure that libusb-0.1 is installed (automatic if using repository, but otherwise may not be by default on modern distributions).
- You can try the suld-scanner-usblp-fix, described in the previous question, but it will only work in rare cases, even if you apparently meet all the criterea.
- You can try to apply the Xerox backend fix for a printer not covered by the package, using the information output from sane-find-scanner. To do this, take the "ID" value output from sane-find-scanner, which will be something like 04e8:####. Add the following line to the end of /etc/sane.d/xerox_mfp-smfp.conf (without quotes): "usb 0x04e8 0x####", replacing #### (and 04e8 if needed) with the actual values. Then add the following to the file /etc/udev/rules.d/99-libsane-samsungmfp.rules:
ACTION!="add", GOTO="label_end"
SUBSYSTEM!="usb_device", GOTO="label_end"
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04e8", ATTRS{idProduct}=="####", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"
LABEL="label_end"
Changing #### (and 04e8 if needed) to the appropriate values again.
Note that you will need to have the suld-driver-common-* package installed, or else create the indicated files manually. That package already includes support for all printers marked with "Xerox MFP" (without a "*") on the supported printers list. Models with the "*" may work if manually applied. Other models without any indication may also work, but probably won't.
- With Ubuntu 11.10 and 12.04, and possibly other distributions, there have been scattered, inconsistent reports of problems with the USB subsystem. This is not specific to Samsung. In some cases, devices work when plugged into a USB 2.0 port but not a USB 3.0 port; in other cases, unplugging other USB devices may enable the scanner. If you encounter issues of this type, you should file a bug report with your distribution.
S4. Which Printer Models Work With Which Scanning Driver?
Click here for supported models. Most supported USB models work through standard libsane libraries and utility varies with the libsane version; you can get updated information here and here if you search for "samsung". Some additional printers appear to be supported by foomatic to varying degrees. This is erratic, version-dependent, and sometimes breaks later. Additional support cannot easily be forced, but you can try the previous the answer to the previous question.
S5. USB-connected Scanner Is Inconsistent/Often Fails and I'm Using an Old Distribution
Occasionally and only in distributions released prior to 2008 (Debian 4.x (Etch), Ubuntu 7.10 (Feisty) and earlier), the USB support will be quirky or broken using these packages. I don't know why this is, but there isn't a good solution due to limitations in the way the Samsung drivers themselves work. Your best bet is to update your distribution. Most of the above solutions are only available with newer distribution releases. Although less common, distributions released prior to 2010 also are often best dealt with simply by updating the whole system, as several kernel versions between 2.6.33 and 3.0 seemed to have problems with CONFIG_USB_DEVICES="n" being set during compilation, but effects are highly erratic, and better work-arounds usually exist if you have more recent system libraries installed. One potentially useful approach that may still of interest is described here and with more details and a script here.
S6. Network-connected Scanner Is Not Recognized by netdiscovery (driver 3.00.xx to 4.01.xx)
First, make sure that you are using the most recent version of the suld-network-1 or suld-network-2 package. Second, run the following command in a terminal: "/opt/Samsung/mfp/bin/netdiscovery --all --scanner". If it reports a scanner found and the model matches yours, then you should be ready to go; if not, post to the forums. On the other hand, if 0 scanners are found (in recent versions, only the line "# DEBUG: Network printers discovery utility" will appear) or the model is incorrect, you need to consider the following:
- Do you have a firewall running? You need to allow incoming UDP packets from the printer, on all ports. Configure this through whatever firewall interface you are using.
- In some cases, the netdiscovery broadcast fails. To test this, run "/opt/Samsung/mfp/bin/netdiscovery -s --snmp" and see if snmp_send fails as network unreachable. If so, read the solution and details described in rlar's post.
- Network scanning requires that your computer be on the same IPv4 local area network as the printer (same network segment, so that the all the "x"s in x.x.x.??? are the same for your computer and the scanner and there are not multiple routers between the two). There is a work-around for this issue which is derived from here and here.
S7. Parallel-connected Scanner Is Not Working
Good luck. I suggest updating to a newer model printer.
S8. My CJX-xxxx Printer Does Not Scan
I am not aware of any method for supporting this printer, but have very limited information.
S9. My Scanner Worked Until I Updated to Ubuntu 12.04
There appears to be some subtle conflict with some (many?) printers and the Qt4 libraries if you scan using the Configurator interface (or smfpscan directly). Until I have time to track down the actual problem and possibly identify a solution, a simple fix is to install suld-configurator-*-qt3 instead of the default suld-configurator-*-qt4. The interface isn't as pretty, but otherwise it works the same (and it works with scanning under Ubuntu 12.04).
S10. Imagemanager Will Not Start
Newer releases of the Qt4 Imagemanager must be given a valid image file as a command parameter when starting. After that it works fine. This will be observed in the suld-configurator-2-qt4 package but not in other versions.
S11. Network-connected Scanner Is Not Working
In some cases, network connected scanners using the Xerox MFP backend may benefit from replacing USB information in /etc/sane.d/xerox_mfp.conf with the IP address of the printer. See this post for the (little) available information. At least with driver2 versions, setting SANE_DEFAULT_DEVICE to 'smfp:net;xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx' where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP address of your printer can solve problems with multiple network interfaces causing detection problems. See this post for additional information regarding setting up xerox_mfp.conf for some printers. It has also been reported that SNMP must be enabled for network scanning to work with at least some printer, see this post.
S12. smfpnetdiscovery (driver2 v1.00.xx) Produces No Output
This appears to be its normal mode. Unlike the older netdiscovery, smfpnetdiscovery does not seem to produce any human-readable output, whether or not the printer is detected.
S13. USB scanner not working with USB 3.0 port
A SANE update (1.00.27, Ubuntu 17.10 or later) may require enabling an environment variable to allow a USB 2.0 printer/scanner to work on a USB 3.0 port. See this forum topic.