I have an old HP scanner that works fine with one of the drivers included in the kernel. I compiled the driver as a module since I don't use the scanner all that often. However, this means the scanner doesn't work unless it's switched on before booting.
Up till now, I've just su-ed to root, and removed and reinserted the appropriate module using modprobe. (I'm not sure if I could have just echoed the right thing to /proc/scsi/scsi, but modprobe certainly does the job). This is an ugly hack though, since anyone who wants to use the scanner either has to have the root password or has to reboot. So I tried getting it to insert the modules and scsi device as needed, by adding the following lines to /etc/modules.conf: pre-install sg modprobe sym53c416 alias char-major-21 sg post-install sg echo "scsi add-single-device 0 0 2 0" > /proc/scsi/scsi This didn't achieve much until I added a /dev/scanner symlink to the appropriate device under /dev/scsi/ (I'm still using devfs). With the symlink in place, it almost works. If I manually unload the scanner modules (actually, unloading the sg module is sufficient), then switch on the scanner and try scanning from a normal user account, the modules are inserted automatically and everything works. Unfortunately, this only works if I first unload the modules. For some inexplicable reason, the scanner driver and the sg modules are loaded at boot, even though they're *not* listed in /etc/modules.autoload.d/. And I guess with the modules already loaded, the sg module doesn't get loaded again when /dev/scanner is accessed, so the pre-install and post-install commands never get executed. Am I making a mess here, is there a better way to do what I want, or am I missing something simple? The SANE web site got me this far, but I can't find anything on the web, forums or lists to get me the last step. (For starters, I'd like to know why the scanner modules are loaded at boot. Is there any way to find out what's causing them to be loaded?) Thanks for any help, Toby Cubitt -- PhD Student Quantum Information Theory group Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics Garching, Germany email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: www.dr-qubit.org -- [email protected] mailing list
