The GENERIC kernel includes the device drivers needed to support USB scanners. Users with a custom kernel should ensure that the following lines are present in the custom kernel configuration file:

device usb
device uhci
device ohci
device ehci

To determine if the USB scanner is detected, plug it in and use dmesg to determine whether the scanner appears in the system message buffer. If it does, it should display a message similar to this:

ugen0.2: <EPSON> at usbus0

In this example, an EPSON Perfection® 1650 USB scanner was detected on /dev/ugen0.2.

If the scanner uses a SCSI interface, it is important to know which SCSI controller board it will use. Depending upon the SCSI chipset, a custom kernel configuration file may be needed. The GENERIC kernel supports the most common SCSI controllers. Refer to /usr/src/sys/conf/NOTES to determine the correct line to add to a custom kernel configuration file. In addition to the SCSI adapter driver, the following lines are needed in a custom kernel configuration file:

device scbus
device pass

Verify that the device is displayed in the system message buffer:

pass2 at aic0 bus 0 target 2 lun 0
pass2: <AGFA SNAPSCAN 600 1.10> Fixed Scanner SCSI-2 device
pass2: 3.300MB/s transfers

If the scanner was not powered-on at system boot, it is still possible to manually force detection by performing a SCSI bus scan with camcontrol:

# camcontrol rescan all
Re-scan of bus 0 was successful
Re-scan of bus 1 was successful
Re-scan of bus 2 was successful
Re-scan of bus 3 was successful

The scanner should now appear in the SCSI devices list:

# camcontrol devlist
<IBM DDRS-34560 S97B>              at scbus0 target 5 lun 0 (pass0,da0)
<IBM DDRS-34560 S97B>              at scbus0 target 6 lun 0 (pass1,da1)
<AGFA SNAPSCAN 600 1.10>           at scbus1 target 2 lun 0 (pass3)
<PHILIPS CDD3610 CD-R/RW 1.00>     at scbus2 target 0 lun 0 (pass2,cd0)

Refer to scsi(4) and camcontrol(8) for more details about SCSI devices on FreeBSD.

The SANE system is split in two parts: the backends (graphics/sane-backends) and the frontends (graphics/sane-frontends or graphics/xsane). The backends provide access to the scanner. Refer to http://www.sane-project.org/sane-supported-devices.html to determine which backend supports the scanner. The frontends provide the graphical scanning interface. graphics/sane-frontends installs xscanimage while graphics/xsane installs xsane.

After installing the graphics/sane-backends port or package, use sane-find-scanner to check the scanner detection by the SANE system:

# sane-find-scanner -q
found SCSI scanner "AGFA SNAPSCAN 600 1.10" at /dev/pass3

The output should show the interface type of the scanner and the device node used to attach the scanner to the system. The vendor and the product model may or may not appear.

Next, check if the scanner will be identified by a scanning frontend. The SANE backends include scanimage which can be used to list the devices and perform an image acquisition. Use -L to list the scanner devices. The first example is for a SCSI scanner and the second is for a USB scanner:

# scanimage -L
device `snapscan:/dev/pass3' is a AGFA SNAPSCAN 600 flatbed scanner
# scanimage -L
device 'epson2:libusb:/dev/usb:/dev/ugen0.2' is a Epson GT-8200 flatbed scanner

In this second example, 'epson2:libusb:/dev/usb:/dev/ugen0.2' is the backend name (epson2) and /dev/ugen0.2 is the device node used by the scanner.

If scanimage is unable to identify the scanner, this message will appear:

# scanimage -L

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).

If this happens, edit the backend configuration file in /usr/local/etc/sane.d/ and define the scanner device used. For example, if the undetected scanner model is an EPSON Perfection® 1650 and it uses the epson2 backend, edit /usr/local/etc/sane.d/epson2.conf. When editing, add a line specifying the interface and the device node used. In this case, add the following line:

usb /dev/ugen0.2

Save the edits and verify that the scanner is identified with the right backend name and the device node:

# scanimage -L
device 'epson2:libusb:/dev/usb:/dev/ugen0.2' is a Epson GT-8200 flatbed scanner

Once scanimage -L sees the scanner, the configuration is complete and the scanner is now ready to use.

While scanimage can be used to perform an image acquisition from the command line, it is often preferable to use a graphical interface to perform image scanning. The graphics/sane-frontends package or port installs a simple but efficient graphical interface, xscanimage.

Alternately, xsane, which is installed with the graphics/xsane package or port, is another popular graphical scanning frontend. It offers advanced features such as various scanning modes, color correction, and batch scans. Both of these applications are usable as a GIMP plugin.

In order to have access to the scanner, a user needs read and write permissions to the device node used by the scanner. In the previous example, the USB scanner uses the device node /dev/ugen0.2 which is really a symlink to the real device node /dev/usb/0.2.0. The symlink and the device node are owned, respectively, by the wheel and operator groups. While adding the user to these groups will allow access to the scanner, it is considered insecure to add a user to wheel. A better solution is to create a group and make the scanner device accessible to members of this group.

This example creates a group called usb:

# pw groupadd usb

Then, make the /dev/ugen0.2 symlink and the /dev/usb/0.2.0 device node accessible to the usb group with write permissions of 0660 or 0664 by adding the following lines to /etc/devfs.rules:

[system=5]
add path ugen0.2 mode 0660 group usb
add path usb/0.2.0 mode 0666 group usb

Finally, add the users to usb in order to allow access to the scanner:

# pw groupmod usb -m joe

For more details refer to pw(8).