Install Canon LiDE 300 / 400 on Ubuntu 18.04

Question

Unable to install Canon LiDE 300 on Ubuntu 18.04. How to solve it?

Answer 1

For Ubuntu 20.04, this scanner does not work straight forward. The ippusbxd driver tries to get the USB device, and it locks it. In dmesg -w there is a line:

usb 1-11: usbfs: process 5756 (ippusbxd) did not claim interface 0 before use

To resolve the problem:

sudo apt remove ippusbxd

and replug the scanner ! (tested on live USB unmodified Focal).

Answer 2

Download the scanner's linux driver from the Canon website. It's the same driver for related models: scangearmp2-3.70-1-deb

Unpack and install the driver from the download directory:

./install.sh

Canon's own driver is not enough though, to get the Canon scanner working. It only half works. Assuming you have installed Sane. Sane will recognise the scanner.

$ sane-find-scanner

found USB scanner (vendor=0x04a9 [Canon], product=0x1912 [LiDE 400]) at libusb:003:008

But it won't work.

$ scanimage -L

No scanners were identified

$ scanimage --format=png > test.png

scanimage: no SANE devices found

Likewise, SimpleScan won't yet detect the scanner.

It will scan at this stage by running Canon's own scanning software, supplied with the scanner download: scangearmp2. But this software is as rudimentary as toddler's tea set. It won't even let you change the resolution, filetype or scan area.

But thanks to the good work being done by @pekhterev and Rolf Bensch, the scanner will run if you install some more home-grown software.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sane-project/sane-git
sudo apt-get update

(source here)

sudo apt install libsane-common
sudo apt install sane-utils
sudo apt install xsane

(source)

The scanner worked from Xsane, after doing this. And from Gimp, by calling Xsane (it sees it as a pixma:04A91912 scanner). But the image was dull.

Thankfully, it now also works from SimpleScan.

---

By the way, when I contacted Canon for help because their scanner wasn't working, they told me that they "don't support Linux". I replied by pointing out that they had taken the time to supply a driver, so surely they would want to make sure it actually worked when people installed it. But they simply repeated that they "don't support Linux".

Answer 3

Finally found a USA Linux driver from Canon: USA driver link Linux 64 bit

Answer 4

Just to add my amateur advice. After all the above, xsane still could not find the USB scanner on my system.

Make sure the scanner is not asleep, plug it out and then in, then run:

sudo sane-find-scanner

you should see this or something like it:

found USB scanner (vendor=0x04a9 [Canon], product=0x1913 [LiDE 300]) at libusb:001:009

Go to the directory /etc/sane.d/canon_dr.conf and put the vendor and product numbers in that file.

At the bottom of the files I added the following lines:

# LiDE-300
usb 0x04a9 0x1913

I also stuck that in canon630u.conf (just to be sure)

After that, xsane finds the scanner and I can use it.