SDB:KIWI-LTSP scanner

Warning: This has worked in some cases and not in others . Please provide your valuable feedback in the Discussion Page

Getting a scanner to work on a Kiwi-LTSP client is very easy now.

Define the scanner host

The thin-client connected to the scanner needs to have a fixed IP address:
- Modify /etc/dhcpd.conf so it contains the MAC 'hardware-address' of the thin client and assign an IP-address.
- Remove dhcpd.leases and restart dhcpd.
- Restart the thin client and it should receive its fixed IP-address.

Verify the sane backends

Check if /etc/sane.d/<scanner>.conf contains proper info about the ScanSnap.
- To find this info for your scanner connect it directly to the LTSP server and as root issue the command sane-find-scanner

 #scansnap HP Scanjet 3550c
 usb 0x04c5 0x1155

This is just an example, the actual value(s) may differ

Define the scanner host, clients and sane-backends to use

In /etc/sysconfig/kiwi-ltsp define SCANNER_CONF_n="<scanner_n_host_mac>;<comma separated hostnames, host or network ip addresses for scanner_n>;<sane-backend file for scanner_n>" where n>=0

 SCANNER_CONF_0=00:0c:76:82:43:df; 10.0.0.0/24, foo.digitalairlines.com; hp3500.conf
 SCANNER_CONF_1=00:0c:76:82:43:df; 10.0.0.0/24, bar.digitalairlines.com; canon630u.conf

This shall configure the scanners whose backend information is defined in hp3500.conf and canon630u.conf at the LTSP client with MAC address 00:0c:76:82:43:df. These scanners shall be accessible to the network 10.0.0.0/24 (both) and the host foo.digitalairlines.com and bar.digitalairlines.com respectively.

Finally run setup to auto-generate the requisite configuration

 kiwi-ltsp-setup -c

Setup the saned service to be started once the scanner host is up

In /srv/tftpboot/KIWI/lts.conf add a parameter SCANNER_HOST="1" in the sub-section [client-mac-address] to indicate that this client has scanners connected to it and hence the sane daemon needs to be started :

 [00:0c:76:82:43:df]
 SCANNER_HOST="1"

At client boot-time, this shall start the sane-port service.

Note: SCANNER_HOST is a new variable introduced in kiwi-ltsp to facilitate the efforts towards smoother client-end peripheral integration. As yet, no other distribution provides such an easy method for scanner configuration and setup. This can't be easily moved upstream as well due to the differences in the way xinetd services are defined and handled in different distributions.

Configure server for network scanning

Add the thin client fixed IP address to /etc/sane.d/net.conf. If your scanner is connected to 10.0.0.20, the entry would look like

 10.0.0.20
 connect_timeout=60

Reboot the ltsp-client connected to the scanner. Thereafter a standard scanner setup in YAST on the server for Scanning via Network should recognise and configure the scanner. Henceforth the scanner shall be available to all the clients running their session from the server.

Grant access to users

Users should be in the lp group to be able to use the scanner, hence grant access to the users by adding them to it.

References

Please feel free to post your findings/queries in the discussions section.