How can I get a CanoScan 8400F flatbed scanner working in Ubuntu?

I'd like to use a CanoScan 8400F scanner with my laptop, which is running Xubuntu 18.04. I can detect the scanner with both lsusb, which returns

Bus 002 Device 006: ID 04a9:221e Canon, Inc. CanoScan 8400F

and sudo sane-find-scanner, which returns

found USB scanner (vendor=0x04a9 [Canon], product=0x221e [CanoScan], chip=GL842) at libusb:002:006

However, neither scanimage nor SimpleScan will detect the scanner. I note that running sane-find-scanner without permissions also does not detect the scanner. A visit to the Sane supported devices page suggests that my scanner should be supported, though that's apparently as of Sane 1.0.31. I appear to be running Sane 1.0.27. I've run sudo apt-get update to no effect.

What am I missing? Is there any way to get this to work short of compiling the latest version of Sane myself? (Because I'm not going to do that. It's not worth the trouble.)

Thanks,

--John

I am using Ubuntu 21.04

Have you renamed ~/.sane to ~/.sane-bkup to clear away old settings?

For my own install, I had previously installed older versions of "backends" and had to remove them. ippusbxd is not installed, it has been replaced by ipp-usb whose current version is installed.

Have you cleaned up old attempts at getting this working? They will impact your results.

Have you ensured that in the /etc/sane.d/genesys.conf file has the line for the 8400F usb 0x04a9 0x221e uncommented.

My tests:

1. simple-scan automatically detects my Canon CanoScan 8400F.
2. xsane 0.999 automatically detects 8400F.
3. gscan2pdf automatically detects 8400F.
4. Disappointingly scangearmp2 does not detect scanner. I liked the "auto-crop" features when scanning multiple photos. Shame it cannot use the code present in tested options 1-3. Contained in /lib/bjlib are two files canon_mp2.conf and cifmx530.conf which may limit detected scanners.
5. skanlite installed from a snap also disappointingly did not detect scanner. This is because the /snap/skanlite/current/etc/sane.d/genesys.conf is out-of-date.
6. skanlite installed from apt-get install automatically detects 8400F.

When the 8400F is powered up and turned ON find-sane-scanner generates: found USB scanner (vendor=0x04a9 [Canon], product=0x221e [CanoScan], chip=GL842) at libusb:002:009 similar to yours.

scanimage -L returns genesys:libusb:002:009 which shows it does detect scanner scanimage --device-name 'genesys:libusb:002:009' --format=jpeg > me.jpeg generates a gray scaled image. I haven't played with option settings as I prefer simple-scan, gscan2pdf, and xsane

I also have a Canon MX530 series network multi-function scanner, printer, fax and that is detected by options 1-3.

If

    scanimage -L  

does not provide a list of scanners it finds, then

maybe

    sudo scanimage -L  

will work. Because scanimage offers a lot of parameters on the command line, you may be able to try different combinations.

The Canon website doesn't offer any Linux drivers, though the Windows driver section looks pretty rich. Would you consider installing a dual boot on your machine for Windows or set up a VM under Ubuntu to try them?