[ubuntu-uk] Loss of scanner .....

[Rob Beard]

On 22/07/10 06:18, Barry Drake wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-07-21 at 13:32 +0100, Rob Beard wrote:
>> Some scanners will work fine straight out of the box, some will maybe
>> need a firmware file and others may need drivers.  Just one of those things.
>
> Out of interest, I dug out an old scanner to see what happens.  This one
> was recognised, but as you say, I had to download a device script to get
> it to work.  The Brother, OTOH did not get recognised at all.  it just
> doesn't present to the OS as a scanner.  Maybe because it's a combi?
>
> Barry.
>

Possibly, or it could be that the device hasn't been reverse engineered 
so a driver can be incorporated into the kernel.

I could be wrong but it sounds to me like it needs a driver building for 
the specific kernel (maybe as a module) and it compiles it for the 
running kernel, when your kernel is updated the driver won't work and 
will have to be re-compiled.  I've seen this with Virtualbox and VMWare, 
although with Virtualbox it seems to be smart enough (at least with the 
one in the Ubuntu repository) to rebuild it's driver when the kernel is 
upgraded.

There is an application which will trigger a rebuild of a kernel module 
when the kernel is updated, I can't remember though what it's called but 
I'm sure someone on the list could tell you.

Rob