I’m trying to connect an Epson Perfection 4490 scanner to my EeePC (it has a Debian based distribution of Linux called Xandros). Unfortunately, I only have a surface understanding of how LInux works. I installed GIMP easily enough and I can run things through the terminal window, but installing hardware that doesn’t want to be installed is a bit beyond me. Anyone think they might be able to help?
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-587371.html
This is the best I could do to find some info for you. I don’t know what your level of familiarity is with the topics covered, but your first step would be to install the sane libraries through your package manager. I never used Xandros before, but it’d be under one of the menus on the top left. Conversely, you can open up a terminal and type sudo apt-get install <package name> and that will probably do it too.
But the basic outline of this process is that you need to install this SANE stuff, then you need to download the drivers for your scanner, which only come in .rpm format which must then be converted to .deb, which is hopefully what Xandros uses. I know that Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian and it too uses .deb packages.
See if the solution on this page helps: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/sane-devel/2006-June/017072.html
Merkwurdigliebe, those are the instructions I was working off of. I’m using the Synaptic Package Manager to download the files, but I’m getting an error with libsane-extras.
E: Unable to parse package file /var/lib/dpkg/status (2)
E: Unable to lock the download directory
Any ideas on how to download the file?
Thank you for helping. I’ve helped people with Windows who didn’t know a mouse from a keyboard, which is a bit how I feel right now. I know that it isn’t easy.
On preview, KneadToKnow thanks!
Happy to help an old drinkin’ buddy. 
I’m not entirely sure it helped, but at this point I think that the most helpful thing I can do would be to take a step back before my brain explodes. I’ve been working on getting this scanner to work for about four hours now. I love my EeePC, but I don’t think the screen is supposed to be stared at for that long.
Sounds like a permission problem…
Try using apt-get to install it instead, but use sudo apt-get install to do it.
ETA: You don’t have another package manage open at the same time do you?
I have all of the files downloaded, I followed the directions in the third post down on the link you provided. Everything worked until I got to entering “sudo scanimage -L”. I got the following response:
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).
My scanner is turned on and plugged into my computer. When I run the diagnostics program, it recognizes that there is an Epson scanner plugged into my computer. The program that I need to recognize the scanner doesn’t though. 
Hmm, this sounds bad, did you install ALL of these?
sane
libsane
libsane-extras <— required!
sane-utils
xsane (optional)
xsane-common (required for xsane)
If not, I’d apt-get all of them, if they aren’t in apt get try sudo aptitude install <package> Aptitude is a bit more forgiving and will tell you related packages that apt-get won’t do because it requires the exact name.
If that doesn’t help, then I don’t know. I read that you need to power on the scanner and wait a minute so it can warm up.
Other than that i am out of ideas
At least you can have hope that there is a solution out there, MissMossie. After I hooked my scanner up to my Ubuntu Linux box and tried installing it, I came to discover that Linux doesn’t support my scanner at all.
I double checked and I hadn’t gotten libsane-extras. When I tried to use apt-get to get it, this is what happened:
sudo apt-get install libsane-extras
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libsane-extras
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/242kB of archives.
After unpacking 762kB of additional disk space will be used.
WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
libsane-extras
Install these packages without verification [y/N]? y
(Reading database ... 75974 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking libsane-extras (from .../libsane-extras_1.0.18.5_i386.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libsane-extras_1.0.18.5_i386.deb (--unpack):
trying to overwrite `/usr/share/man/man5/sane-epkowa.5.gz', which is also in package iscan
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/libsane-extras_1.0.18.5_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
I also got an error while trying to use aptitude. I can copy and paste that too, if you’d like. Please forgive my Linux ignorance, but is there a repository that I could add that might have a copy of this file that would work on my computer?
E: Unable to parse package file /var/lib/dpkg/status (2)
E: Unable to lock the download directory
This looks like what happens when two programs want to apt-get at the same time. For example when you’ve got a synaptic window open and then try to apt-get from the commandline.
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libsane-extras_1.0.18.5_i386.deb (--unpack):
trying to overwrite `/usr/share/man/man5/sane-epkowa.5.gz', which is also in package iscan
This seems to point out iscan as the culprit. Not really surprising, as it isn’t a official debian package. I’d try uninstalling it [sudo apt-get remove iscan or just use synaptic] and see if that allows libsane-extras to be installed. Ofcourse that leaves you with the problem of installing iscan (or at least the files that are specific to your scanner).
Best of luck!
That did allow libsane-extras. Now I’m working on reinstalling iscan. I got one of the files, but I’m getting an error with the other. Bleh. I’m starting to go a little nutty from this. I just want to scan my medium format negatives!
From the main post in Merkwurdigliebes link:
So the conflict between iscan and the debian sane-packages is also experienced by others and the step-by-step plan outlined there seems a trustworthy way to resolve the problem.
Note that the link also mentions installing quiteinsane – I don’t really think that that has got anything to do with your problems, but it’s an easy step, just to be sure.
Woohoo! Success! One of the beautiful things about the EeePC is how easy it is too reset it to factory settings. Everything is saved on an external drive, so all I lose is GIMP, which is fantastically easy to install. I did a hard reset, started from scratch, and now I have a scanner that works with my computer.
Congrats!
Great!
Linux isn’t so bad these days, it’s just really difficult to get certain things to work. You seem to be able to deal with the problems it throws your way though. Luckily your situation was solvable. My problem unfortunately wasn’t. I spent days trying to get a dual monitor setup in ubuntu and finally just gave up.
I find that really weird. Every day, but today, (I’m getting a new hard drive!) I use Suse 10.2 with dual monitors. It is Windows I can’t get to work right. It insists on making one a clone of the other.
How do you do it? Maybe I should switch to Suse, but it seems like it wouldn’t matter since it’s always the ATI drivers. I tried using BigDesktop and it wouldn’t properly recognize the maximum resolution of the other screen.
I hate xorg.conf
You’re not going to like this: I just plugged it in. Really!
Suse has something called Yast, which allows you to select “dual head”. I used that to set it up for a big ol’ honkin’ SGI monitor. When I replaced that with a flat panel, it just worked.