This is what I did to enable the Epson Perfection 3170 Photo scanner in Ubuntu 8.10.
(1) Get the software from http://www.avasys.jp/lx-bin2/linux_e/scan/DL1.do for the Perfection 3170 PHOTO. As of 1/1/2009 there were two downloads for Ubuntu 8.10. Download both rpms to the Desktop: iscan-2.10.0-1.c2.i386.rpm iscan-plugin-gt-9400-1.0.0-1.c2.i386.rpm
(2) Open a terminal and enter the entire following string on one line, its okay if it wraps, just don't press enter until it is all entered correctly. You may get one or two non-fatal warnings as the deb packages are built and intalled - don't worry.
sudo apt-get install alien && cd $HOME/Desktop && sudo alien -d iscan*.rpm && sudo dpkg -i iscan*.deb
(3) Now add these packages, using the terminal:
sudo apt-get install libstdc++5 sudo apt-get install xsane sudo apt-get install sane-utils
In the terminal enter: sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/50-libsane-extras.rules Search for the line for the Perfection 3170, and change 0664 to 0666. Save and exit.
Reboot Run sane-find-scanner, you should see a line for your scanner. Run scanimage -L, you should see a line for your scanner. Sometimes it takes a couple of power cycles on the scanner before scanimage finds the hardware. Run xsane.
########## Also note /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh had previously been edited to support USB in Virtualbox. I have no idea if this is necessary for the hardware to be found in Ubuntu 8.10:
Note 5 lines added starting with "FOr Virtualbox..." do_start () { # # Mount a tmpfs on /dev/shm # SHM_OPT= [ "${SHM_SIZE:=$TMPFS_SIZE}" ] && SHM_OPT=",size=$SHM_SIZE" domount tmpfs shmfs /dev/shm tmpfs -onosuid,nodev$SHM_OPT
# # Mount /dev/pts. Master ptmx node is already created by udev. # domount devpts "" /dev/pts devpts -onoexec,nosuid,gid=$TTYGRP,mode=$TTYMODE # #FOr VirtualBox per http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/User_FAQ mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs domount usbfs "" /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644 ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices mount --rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb
} ###########