Fujitsu ScanSnap in Linux

Fujitsu ScanSnap in Linux

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There was a discussion recently on Twitter over whether the ScanSnap was supported in Linux.

Out of the box, none of the models come with Linux drivers – the S510 and S300 come with Windows software, and the S510 and S300M come with Mac OSX software.

However, there is a project called SANE – Scanner Access Now Easy that’s goal is to enable as many scanners as possible in Linux.

This post by Mark J Cox outlines how he got the S510 to work in RedHat Enterprise Linux.

# echo “usb 0x04c5 0x1155” >> /etc/sane.d/fujitsu.conf

Then you can use any scanning front-end, or from the command line say you wanted to scan at 150dpi colour, double-sided, then use “scanimage -L” to figure out where your scanner is, and replace the 005:004 below with the location:

# scanadf –device fujitsu:libusb:005:004 –source “ADF Duplex” –mode Color -v –resolution 150 –y-resolution 150

Mark’s post is from September 2007 and from looking at the SANE documentation, it looks like both the S510 and S300 are on the list of supported devices, so it may actually be that Mark’s hack is no longer required as long as you have the latest sane-backend (at least 1.0.19).

Do you have the ScanSnap working in Linux or any other *nix flavor? Let us know in the comments how it’s working for you and how easy it is to do.

About the Author

Brooks Duncan helps individuals and small businesses go paperless. He's been an accountant, a software developer, a manager in a very large corporation, and has run DocumentSnap since 2008. You can find Brooks on Twitter at @documentsnap or @brooksduncan. Thanks for stopping by.

Leave a Reply 32 comments

frozenjim - July 3, 2018 Reply

Update – 2018-07-03: Installed Mint 17, plugged in my ix500 and it just worked. I installed nothing.

To be clear, it worked as a scanner only. To get the button to work you need to go to the scansnap site and install the button driver. And the scansnap software just is not available.

Dear Fujitsu: Please help the Linux community; soon Microsoft will make Windows 100% online only and you will have no user base. Like Macintosh, Linux is your friend.

    Daniel Cardin - August 3, 2019 Reply

    Well said, frozenjim

Josh Archer - October 10, 2016 Reply

Seeing as this post ranks high in Google for searching for the Linux driver for the scansnap s1300 I thought I’d post this here:

http://josharcher.uk/code/install-scansnap-s1300-drivers-linux/

This post will walk you through getting the scanner working on Linux and includes the necessary drivers so you can download the right one for your machine.

Andreas - November 2, 2012 Reply

Any help with the ScanSnap s1300i would be highly appreciated 🙂

Alphydan - June 18, 2011 Reply

Any news about the ScanSnap s1100? Any help appreciated. Cheers.

    jeremy - July 6, 2011 Reply

    i’m curious about the S1100 as well. Thinking of buying but want to make sure I can use it in linux first.

      Brooks Duncan - July 7, 2011 Reply

      It seems from this as if the epjitsu backend is in testing for the s1100, so you might want to check in on bios you can help with the testing? No personal experience, I'm afraid. http://www.sane-project.org/cgi-bin/driver.pl?man

Heinfried Karlson - February 23, 2011 Reply

I want to buy a Fujitsu Scansnap 1500 Deluxe to work under Ubuntu. My question is: Does the Fujitsu OCR work?

    Brooks Duncan - February 23, 2011 Reply

    Well, the OCR software that ships with the ScanSnap is a Windows EXE so it wouldnt work under Linux without emulation of some sort.I know that some people do thru scanning and OCR in Windows and then do all the rest in Linux but that may or may not be religiously acceptable. :)As for Linux OCR options, I'll have to dig into that.

      Heinfried Karlson - February 25, 2011 Reply

      Thanks a lot for answer! I know that these days OCR is really weak in Linux as an OSS application. So, we are waiting for OCRopus from Google (http://code.google.com/p/ocropus/) right?

      All the best and
      warm regards from Germany,
      HK

        Martin - October 21, 2011 Reply

        Have you tried tesseract?

HomelessOnWheels - September 5, 2010 Reply

The S1300 uses the sane-epjitsu backend, while the other ScanSnaps use sane-fujitsu. Could that be why you are having trouble? Also looks like if your main o/s is Linux, the S1500 is more thoroughly supported than the S1300, so it might be worth spending the extra $$$ if you have room for the bigger one.

david - April 24, 2010 Reply

how do i get the scansnap s1300 working?

CappyCaffeine - June 2, 2009 Reply

Above post regarding the ScanSnap S510

CappyCaffeine - June 2, 2009 Reply

To duplex scan with this printer, go to the Edit–>Preferences setting in gscan2pdf and choose the "scanadf" frontend instead of "scanimage". Then use "Extended Page Numbering" with an increment of "1" to prevent numbering by 2.

gscan2pdf is intelligent enough to advance the starting number of the next batch to the next number in the scans.

I am really digging my scanner!!

    Brooks Duncan - June 2, 2009 Reply

    Awesome, thanks so much for the info!

tjcarter - May 19, 2009 Reply

Has anyone looked at the S1500/M under Linux yet?

    kitno455 - May 20, 2009 Reply

    I've had no reports of it.

      alanthompson - October 15, 2009 Reply

      I got it running this evening after installing 1.20 under Jaunty. I had to use an "untrusted" repository, but it works great!! Thanks!!!

    alanthompson - October 15, 2009 Reply

    I just tried it under Ubuntu (sane-fujitsu 1.0.21) and it wasn't recognized. I'll be digging into it (hints welcome ;-))

      alanthompson - October 15, 2009 Reply

      OK, the installed version is 1.0.19 (the man page is 1.0.21) in Jaunty. The updated backend doesn't seem to be available in the trusted software sources.

Richard - May 19, 2009 Reply

I'm actually re-writing a good portion of the epjitsu driver now. I previously re-wrote the calibration routines to get better color balance and even lighting, but these new routines only work with the S300. Now I'm refactoring the whole driver so that the FI-60F can also be supported. Hopefully this will be included in the next sane release.

    Charly - June 29, 2012 Reply

    Hi Ricahrd
    I have a scansnap s300 and it not work with my LINUX MINT 13 KATYA release.
    Please would suggest me how Can I solve the problem ?
    Thanks a lot in advane

    Charly

      Richard - July 6, 2012 Reply

      Hello Charly,

      The SANE driver should work for your s300. I would recommend posting the details of your problem in a Mint forum to find someone to help you. It's probably a problem with permissions, groups, system configuration, etc.

      Richard

        Brooks Duncan - July 6, 2012 Reply

        Thanks Richard. <p style=”color: #A0A0A8;”>

kitno455 - May 19, 2009 Reply

sane-backends 1.0.20 was recently released. It features significantly updated drivers for both fujitsu and epjitsu. Its a highly recommended upgrade.

Richard - April 30, 2009 Reply

The S300 doesn't work with the fujitsu driver – apparently it's different than the other fujitsu scanners. For the S300 you need to use the epjitsu backend.

    Brooks Duncan - April 30, 2009 Reply

    Thanks a lot for letting us know about the S300 Richard. I appreciate it.

racerx90 - April 19, 2009 Reply

SANE works just fine with those scanners now – they're now under their supported scanner list.

For the S300/S300M scanners, you need to use the PC-based firmware file (300_0C00.nal) from the Windows device drivers (c:\windows\ssdriver\s300 directory). Once you get that file, you need to edit the epjitsu.conf configuration file to where you placed it or you can just put it in the default location specified in the config file.

I tried the the S300M firmware file from the MAC driver, but I couldn't get it working so I recommend just using the S300 firmware file even if you have an S300M (it seems to be compatible.)

You might also have to put a PCI DevID entry in for the S300M (as I seem to remember that's not in their by default) if you're using that scanner – which is 0x117F (Fujitsu VenID 0x04c5.)

Brooks Duncan - December 9, 2008 Reply

Cool, thanks for your feedback cycloon!

cycloon - December 9, 2008 Reply

Just plugged mine into my Ubuntu box. Started xsane. Scanned. To do nice document scanning, gscan2pdf seems to be a nice solution. (Just install it from repository on Ubuntu)

    racelife - February 28, 2012 Reply

    What version of Ubuntu?

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