Please support /usr/lib64/sane

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

[Impact]

The patch 0125-multiarch_dll_search_path.patch makes /usr/lib/sane be recognized as a directory for SANE backends. However, some .deb files with scanner drivers, typically provided by Brother, install files in /usr/lib64/sane.

This issue has been discussed in bug #1728012, but was broken out from there to not block another more important change in bionic.

sane-backends 1.0.31-1~experimental1 adds support for /usr/lib64/sane, and so do the debdiffs attached to this bug report for focal and bionic.

[Test case]

* Configure an affected scanner with drivers installed via
  e.g. brscan2

* Try to scan with simple-scan

-> Find that the scanner is not found

* Install libsane{,1}, libsane-common and sane-utils from
  {focal,bionic}-proposed

* Try to scan again

-> Scanner found and scanning works

[Regression risk]

This only adds a directory to the lib search path via an existing patch, so the regression risk should be minimal.

[Bartosz Kosiorek (gang65)]

Thanks! It will be great to also backport it to Xenial.
So following workaroun would no be needed:
https://kitson-consulting.co.uk/blog/ubuntu-brother-printer-scanner-network-setup

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

@Bartosz: Well, this bug should have been fixed +10 years ago. Finally it was fixed in Debian, and I decided to backport to focal and bionic. Skipped xenial since it will be EOL in less than a year. But please feel free to do it if you think it's worth it.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Hello Gunnar, or anyone else affected,

Accepted sane-backends into focal-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sane-backends/1.0.29-0ubuntu5.2 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, what testing has been performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-focal to verification-done-focal. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-focal. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Hello Gunnar, or anyone else affected,

Accepted sane-backends into bionic-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sane-backends/1.0.27-1~experimental3ubuntu2.4 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, what testing has been performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-bionic to verification-done-bionic. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-bionic. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Did the verification using a Brother MFC-240C USB scanner.

Preparations:

* Installed brscan2 (brscan2-0.2.5-1.amd64.deb)
* Installed libusb-0.1-4 (ought to be a dependency of brscan2
  but that's not the case)
* Added myself to the lp group (sudo adduser $USER lp)

focal
-----
Verified the test case using version 1.0.29-0ubuntu5.2 of libsane, libsane-common and sane-utils from focal-proposed. The scanner was found and I could scan.

bionic
------
Verified the test case using version 1.0.27-1~experimental3ubuntu2.4 of libsane1, libsane-common and sane-utils from bionic-proposed. The scanner was found, which is an improvement, but I could not scan.

brscan2 installs files not only in /usr/lib64/sane, but also directly in /usr/lib64, and to be able to scan I had to add one of the symlinks previously used to work around the absence of the proposed fix:

$ ls -l /usr/lib/libbr*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 sep 19 02:49 /usr/lib/libbrscandec2.so -> ../lib64/libbrscandec2.so.1.0.0

So in my case this proved to be a fragile solution for bionic. But for drivers which only installs in /usr/lib64/sane it should be a safe solution of a long standing issue.

Conclusion
----------
Even if the solution isn't sufficient for bionic in my case, it's a step in the right direction, and I would consider the proposed upload verified for both focal and bionic.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

sane-backends 1.0.31-1~experimental1 has now migrated to groovy-release.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Out of curiosity I also tried to scan on groovy. To make it work I had to take two additional steps:

* Added brscan2 to /etc/sane.d/dll.conf (without that my scanner
  wasn't even found by scanimage -L)

* Added the same symlink as proved to be needed on bionic; see
  comment #7

So the situation for 3:d party scanners is anything but ideal. Nevertheless, the conclusion is still that the change in question improves the situation a bit. (And in focal it proved to be it.)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package sane-backends - 1.0.29-0ubuntu5.2

---------------
sane-backends (1.0.29-0ubuntu5.2) focal; urgency=medium

  * debian/patches/0125-multiarch_dll_search_path.patch:
    - Support /usr/lib64/sane as location for SANE backends
      (LP: #1835220)

 -- Gunnar Hjalmarsson <email address hidden> Thu, 17 Sep 2020 14:47:00 +0200

[Łukasz Zemczak (sil2100)]

The verification of the Stable Release Update for sane-backends has completed successfully and the package is now being released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regressions.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package sane-backends - 1.0.27-1~experimental3ubuntu2.4

---------------
sane-backends (1.0.27-1~experimental3ubuntu2.4) bionic; urgency=medium

  * debian/patches/0125-multiarch_dll_search_path.patch:
    - Support /usr/lib64/sane as location for SANE backends
      (LP: #1835220)

 -- Gunnar Hjalmarsson <email address hidden> Thu, 17 Sep 2020 14:50:00 +0200