New Sane version 1.0.20 released

Today, great news for all Pixma MFP owners and Linux users !

After more than now 14 months, since the last Sane version released (1.0.19), the Sane team is proud to announce the new 1.0.20 version of the Sane library, available since Monday, 3 May 2009.

This new version includes as usual, many backend updates and fixes, and especially all the latest pixma backend stuff for driving Canon Pixma scanners, formerly available only in the CVS tree.

As soon as Linux distros will have incorporated this new Sane release into new distribution releases or updates, you will not need getting and building anymore by your own, the Sane CVS code, as you probably used to do for several months.

I would like to take the opportunity of this event, to congratulate all people, contributors, testers, developers, authors, bloggers, ... who participated into this important and complex project, leading today to a very successful and satisfying result.

Thanks.

Nicolas Martin

Canon printer driver and CUPS error

Maybe you experienced this particular error message while trying to install the cnij_usb Canon printer driver for your PIXMA, on recent CUPS version (or recent Linux distributions):

"Error-Client-Not-Possible"

This error message will be raised by CUPS during the printer installation, as the name formerly used by Canon for its CUPS backend: namely cnij_usb, does not conform to the CUPS standard (RFC 3986), as it contains an underscore character "_" in its name.

Older version of CUPS did not reject this, but this is filtered out now in recent CUPS releases, available on recent Linux distributions.

Canon has released a fix for that, and has renamed the backend: cnijusb simply throwing out the underscore character.

This new backend is only available in the 3.00 release of the Canon drivers, in the package:
cnijfilter-common_3.00-1_i386

This package is one of the 2 packages to install for a PIXMA printer.

You can get this package on canon-asia web site, for e.g. the MP638. Simply install it (no need to unistall a previous package, it will override it), it can be used along for instance with the 2.80 driver (for MP610) or 2.70 (for MP600) Canon printer specific package (cnijfilter-mpXYZ_2.80-1_i386).

Choose the .deb or .rpm package according to your distribution.

This is good news anyway: Canon is following the Linux move, and bring the necessary updates to its Linux software accordingly.

New MP620 and MP630 printers PPDs

If you're an MP620 or MP630 owner, you've perhaps struggled a bit to set up the printer part under Linux.

Those 2 models support the Canon MP610 printer driver, but the print parameters require a little "tune up":
They can work only if the "paper switch" option is either set to "Cassette" or "Rear Tray". But never set it to "Paper Feed Switch", or it will just print a blank page ...

Unfortunately, this latest option is the default for MP610, so a MP620 or MP630 newly installed printer requires a manual change to this option in the CUPS printer settings menus.

This is a bit annoying, and ... so easy to fix by tweaking again the PPD file ...
So I uploaded along with the MP600/MP610 PPDs, 2 new PPDs for MP620 and MP630 (in English and French), that simply remove the "Switch" option, and select "Cassette" as default paper source.

Installing this MP620-MP630 PPD will let you use now your printer out of the box without tweaking first the paper select option, and prevents from selecting a wrong paper source when printing.

Hope this helps ;-)

Canon PIXMA scanners now network ready on Linux !

A major update of the PIXMA backend is now available through Sane CVS.

Door is opened to scanning over a network on Linux, with (presumably) all PIXMA multifunction scanners offering a network connexion.

On Linux, older PIXMA models offering network connexion were only able to print, under the JetDirect protocol, using the well known port 9100.
Scanning over the network without a Windows or Mac box was unfortunately not possible, because involving a Canon proprietary protocol, named BJNP, coming with absolutely no information or documentation, and thus very difficult to approach.

Recent PIXMA models offering network connexion have been "enhanced" by Canon, in the way they now accept ... only the BJNP protocol for printing and scanning!
Bye bye JetDirect, welcome to Canon's world!

The situation then for Linux users? print and scan only with USB, forget about network ...

Until ...

Until Louis Lagendijk, a Linux user like many of us, acquired his new PIXMA MP970, and started to work on demystifying this BJNP Canon protocol, for his own needs, to have his printer work over the network.
Louis first designed a Cups printing driver, that works with all network PIXMA printers running the BJNP protocol. This cups-bjnp driver is available here.

Recently, Louis has also worked on adding BJNP support to the Sane pixma backend ...
The result now: you can scan over a LAN network on Linux with Xsane, and your PIXMA network scanner !

Great job.

With the arrival of Canon's new PIXMA 2008 series, models like MP620, MP980, ... which propose network and Wifi, are very likely (but feedback needed!) to be used on Linux with Sane, Cups, for printing and scanning over network ...

Good news again for Linux Canon users!

Give your scanner a new fresh SANE installation ...

Many Canon Pixma models are supported directly by the Sane Library (through the pixma backend), and the use of an older specific driver is not necessary anymore. Support is either natively brought by the Linux distribution you're running, latest models or bug fixes become available by using the git version

So it became necessary to rationalize all the older articles posted on that blog, in order to guide users to the sole and correct solution to install the pixma backend on their system. Old articles have been retailored, this main tutorial has now all the necessary stuff to get your Pixma scanner ready to use with Sane.

This little guide will explain you how to get the latest Sane git version to be installed on your system. As always, the Sane git version contains the latest release of the Sane pixma backend.
Note that the procedure here can be used also for installing the version 1.0.20 of the Sane library.

All recent PIXMA and ImageClass models are supported, see the man pages or sane-project.org doc pages for more information.
The following models have at least been tested or reported to work fine with Sane.

• PIXMA MP210, MP220, MP240, MP250, MP260, MP270
• PIXMA MP450, MP460, MP470, MP480, MP490
• PIXMA MP500, MP510, MP520, MP530, MP540, MP560
• PIXMA MP600, MP600R, MP610, MP620, MP630, MP640, MP710
• PIXMA MP800, MP800R, MP810, MP830, MP960, MP970, MP980, MP990
• PIXMA MX300, MX310, MX330, MX700, MX850, MX860, MX7600
• MultiPASS MP700, MP730, PIXMA MP750 (no grayscale)
• ImageCLASS MF3110, MF4010, MF4018, MF4120, MF4122, MF4140
• ImageCLASS MF4150, MF4270, MF4370dn, MF4380dn
• ImageCLASS MF4660, MF4690, MF5770, D480
• I-SENSYS MF4320d, MF4330d
  
  

All models are now supported through USB or network BJNP (Canon's proprietary) protocol, Wired Ethernet or Wifi.

As compile Sane can be sometimes tricky, I'll try to give you the way to avoid pitfalls and have it working at the end, without too much efforts.

Hope it helps !! Let's go.

• Download latest Sane git package
  
  2 methods to get the latest Sane git package are possible.
  
  
  • HTTP access method
    
    The HTTP access method should be used only if you are restricted by a firewall that won't let you use the git protocol. HTTP is slower and requires more bandwidth than any other access methods.
    
    You can download an http snapshot at the address hereafter, where Sane git is hosted:
    
    http://git.debian.org/?p=sane/sane-backends.git
    
    Download the latest (upper, named MASTER) tar.gz snapshot image
    
    Do a quick check after download, that the directory contained in the archive is at a current date.
    Then, untar the package into a directory.
    
    
  • Or use git to download it, as developers do ...
    
    This is actually better than the previous method, as you can later easily update (using git again) the content of the downloaded files, simply issuing a git pull command.
    You patch just the modified files, and you will recompile only what has changed, not the whole thing.
    
    So first, you must install the git application on your system, it should be available already packaged in your distribution repositories, the name should be something like: git-core or git-scm
    
    Then, in a terminal, enter the following command:
    
    $ git clone git://git.debian.org/sane/sane-backends.git
    
    Files download will begin. You’ll get in your current directory, a new directory named sane-backends. This is the main directory were all the Sane source files are located.
    
    Updating to the latest source files from the repository
    
    If you want later to update your git directory with the latest version available from the public Sane git repository, in order to build the latest Sane code, you just need to enter the following command, from the sane-backends directory:
    
    $ git pull
    
    This will download the latest changes to the files in your directory sane-backends.
    
    Then, to build Sane, you can apply the following procedure from the "make", then "make install" statements as indicated here below. Only changed files will be recompiled.
    

• Build Sane
  
  Enter the directory sane-backends created after downloading Sane git.
  
  The procedure is then “almost” classical, with a few points to take into account instead of running a trivial ./configure, make, make install.
  
  According to your Linux distribution, you need to run the ./configure command with a set of parameters.
  
  As it is not possible to cover here all existing distributions, details are given for Ubuntu and Mandriva, as samples.
  
  For these 2 distributions:
  
  
  • Check first that the development libusb library is present and installed.
    
    On Mandriva, the rpm is called something like:
    
    libusb0.1_x-devel-...
    
    on Ubuntu, it is called: libusb-dev.
    
    Install the package, if not already installed.
    
    Be warned that if not installed, compilation will success, but the backend will not work, and no error message will be prompted!
    
    
  • On both distributions, run the ./configure command like this:
    
    $ ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
    
    This will choose /usr/lib/sane as SANE lib directory, /etc/sane.d as SANE config files dir, and /var/lock/sane as state directory: The ones that are used by Mandriva and Ubuntu.
    
    Check in the logs coming in the terminal window, at the end of the configure, that it will compile with usb support.
    
    
  • Then compile as usual
    
    $ make
    
    This will take ... a significative amount of time ... Can have a cup of coffee.
    
    
  • Install on Ubuntu
    
    $ sudo make install
    
    
  • Or install on Mandriva
    
    $ su
    # make install
    

• Set non-root users permissions
  
  Now, permissions for non root users to access the scanners need to be set up, as not achieved by the “make install” statement.
  
  These permission settings depend also on the Linux distribution: whether it uses hotplug, udev, …
  
  Ubuntu Hardy and later (Intrepid, ...)
  This tweak is not necessary as hardware detection is performed by HAL and not udev, the scanner should be available for non root users, as long as permissions are set to enable scanning from menu: System/Administration/Users and Groups (need a logout/login for changes to be taken into account).
  However, if you experience permissions problems for non root users (ressource not available) on these latest Ubuntu releases, you should try Lee's suggestion, for tweaking the /etc/udev/rules.d/40-basic-permissions.rules.
  
  Ubuntu Jaunty
  Try Darryl's tweak on Jaunty 9.04 to set up persistent-to-upgrades udev rules.
  
  
  
  Ubuntu (releases before Hardy Heron 8.04) and Mandriva both use udev to detect USB devices.
  SANE compilation produces a udev rules file, covering all scanners handled.
  It is named: sane-backends/tools/udev/libsane.rules
  You'll need to install it, by simply replacing the current installed file (coming from the SANE package installed by your Linux distribution), with this new one.
  
  • Locate first this file
    in the /etc/udev/rules.d directory, it should be called XX-libsane.rules
    
    
  • Backup this file somewhere
    
    
  • Copy over it, the SANE GIT generated libsane.rules
    Keep the same name as the original one.
    This should give you the following statements, for instance, on Ubuntu:
    
    $ cp /etc/udev/rules.d/70-libsane.rules ~/
    $ sudo cp tools/udev/libsane.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/70-libsane.rules
    
    
  • Have udev take into account the new rules
    Simply reboot, or unplug/replug your scanner USB cable.
    
    

• Test Sane installation
  
  Now, check that the new Sane git is correctly installed.
  
  Current Sane git sane-backends version is 1.0.21, check it:
  
  $ scanimage -V
  scanimage (sane-backends) 1.0.21cvs; backend version 1.0.21
  
  At that point, you should be able to run some scans with scanimage, and if OK, with Xsane :
  
  $ scanimage -L
  device `pixma:04A91725_10484D' is a CANON Canon PIXMA MP610 multi-function peripheral
  
  Next statement will perform a short test of the scanner, you may hear it start scanning and promptly stop.
  
  $ scanimage –T
  scanimage: scanning image of size 640x877 pixels at 24 bits/pixel
  scanimage: acquiring RGB frame, 8 bits/sample
  scanimage: reading one scanline, 1920 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: reading one byte... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 2 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 4 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 8 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 16 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 32 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 64 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 128 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 256 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 512 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 1024 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 2048 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 2047 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 1023 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 511 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 255 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 127 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 63 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 31 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 15 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 7 bytes... PASS
  scanimage: stepped read, 3 bytes... PASS
  
  And the final result:
  
  $ xsane
  

Hope you'll succeed to that point !

In Xsane, you may need to adjust the colors precisely (white, black, gray), using the 3 pipette tool in the preview window.
Read Xsane documentation on how to do that. This is very easy to do, and you'll get after that beautiful scans.

To finish, here are some samples obtained with an MP610, scanning at 600 dpi, and an extra view of a small detail on a stamp, scanned at 4800 dpi.

Comments are welcome, feel free to report anything missing or incorrect ...

Canon MP210 and MP520 join the party!

UPDATE:

This article is now DEPRECATED.

For any Pixma device, install instead the latest Sane library.

Read the article on this blog here



May look out of topic here ?

Good news anyway for Canon Pixma MP210 and MP520 owners...

They will now be able to use their scanners with Sane frontends like Xsane, Kooka, ... as MP610.

Following some exchanges in this blog and the libsane mailing list, the driver updates made for MP610 appeared to be fully compatible with MP520 (message posted in this Blog by Thomas) and MP210 scanners.

The reason?

Simply, those 3 all-in-one use exactly the same USB protocol, at least for their scanner part.
Remember they were released by Canon at the same time ...

Let's congratulate this Canon's initiative, as a step towards device standardization is a major help for the programmers planet, a single driver working for at least 3 different models ... this is eden world!

Note: this latest driver version does not bring anything new to MP610 (uh ... what else could we bring anyway??)

Installation procedure

The procedure to install the pixma updated libsane driver is the same as for MP610, only the model PID needs to be correctly set in the udev rules for permissions:

• Download latest 0.14.2u version of the libsane-pixma library, (either full package or patch for libsane-pixma 0.13.1 available) and follow the installation instructions given in this previous post.
  
  
• When setting the permissions rules (see the same post) for MP210 or MP520, adjust the corresponding USB PID:
• MP210 USB address: 04a9:1721
• MP520 USB address: 04a9:1724
  
  This would give udev rules like for instance:
  # Canon PIXMA MP210
  SYSFS{idVendor}=="04a9", SYSFS{idProduct}=="1721", MODE="664", GROUP="scanner"
  
  or
  # Canon PIXMA MP520
  SYSFS{idVendor}=="04a9", SYSFS{idProduct}=="1724", MODE="664", GROUP="scanner"
  
  
• Remember, to have udev take into account the rules changes, either unplug the USB cable, wait a few seconds, and plug it back, or issue the following command:
  $ sudo udevcontrol reload_rules
  
  
• You're ready to scan! Select in your frontend (Xsane, Kooka, …) a scan resolution proposed, and start scanning:
• for MP210: available 75, 150, 300, or 600 dpi
  
• for MP520: available 75, 150, 300, 600, 1200, or 2400 dpi

Someone else has got another compatible model ? ;-)

Borderless printing on Pixma ... now painless ?

So you got this nice Pixma printer that is claimed to do "borderless" printing …

You installed the latest Canon Linux drivers for your MP600/610, run fine ...

And now, you try to print borderless photos from your favorite Desktop application … and you learn in Canon's documentation that borderless printing:

• Requires a dedicated Canon utility (cifmp600 / cifmp610)
  
• run from the command line,
  
• with limited image type support (no jpeg!!!)
• no network gui, just localhost
  
• and … only available to the root user!!!

Hey, Whatzat ??

IMHO, a good reason for … reworking a little bit original ppd files, and… turnaround some buggy code.

In fact, Canon’s software already includes borderless printing with cups/ppd files, if the papersize name (in the printer ppd file) ends with “.bl”
Simply create such lines in the ppd file, and you add borderless paper types …

So simple?

Well, add also some driver bug for paper sizes with an X: 4X6, 5X7, … To avoid modifying/recompile any source code, add a small modification to Canon’s driver config file, namely:
/usr/lib/bjlib/cifmp610.conf (or /usr/lib/bjlib/cifmp600.conf for MP600), to add lines with a small x like 4x6, 5x7 in the [papersize] section.

The new packages files to download include those new ppds, along with the modified cifmp610.conf / cifmp600.conf files.

Installation

Download here the latest package for the printer and language (English or French) you want.
The package contains:

• a new ppd file to install as explained in this previous post
• a cifmp6x0.conf file to replace Canon’s existing one (keep a backup of Canon’s original just in case):
• MP610 : copy over /usr/lib/bjlib/cifmp610.conf
• MP600 : copy over /usr/lib/bjlib/cifmp600.conf
  

Then, you can start printing borderless images, simply by selecting the new “borderless” paper formats that appear in the paper sizes list, in your application printing dialog.

A simple live test under Gnome’s EOG and Ubuntu Gutsy

Under Gnome, simply double click an image, this trigs “Eye Of Gnome”, Gnome’s standard picture viewer. Note that many other picture viewers (KDE’s, Gnome’s …) will have the same ability, EOG is used here as sample.

EOG supports now Gnome’s standard printing dialog.

Select first the menu "File/Page setup":

Choose in the printers list, the MP610 or MP600, and in the papers list, the new borderless format you want. Choose also the image orientation.

Click apply

Now, in the printing dialog "File/print", look at the “image parameters” tab. In the preview pane, EOG will show your photo as printed on paper, the borders will be 0 if image matches paper format.

Important: choose a combination of paper type and print quality that match. Check Canon's driver user manual (see cifmp610 or cifmp600 "Print Option Combinations" section) for compatible combinations.
If you select an incompatible combination, nothing will be printed, and you won't get any error message ...

Choose also options in the "advanced" tab, and check the quality, halftoning options to match for the paper type selected.

Click print

Et voila!
Your image is printing on paper without borders ;-)

Tips:

• PPD files have been updated for borderless A4, 4"x6", 5"x7", 4"x8", 8"x10" formats.
  If you need to add other paper formats, simply create new .bl papersizes in the ppd file.
• Files proposed here are for MP600/MP610 printers, but the same method can be used for many other Canon printers that use the same drivers. Again, modify the same way the ppd and .conf files.
  

Notes:

• You might notice that the printed image extends a little bit outside the paper. This is due to the cifmp6x0 utility, that uses a --extend parameter, which defaults to 2. This makes image extend a little bit outside the paper. See Canon’s driver cifmp6x0 documentation (borderless and extend options) for more information.
• Borderless printing on A4 is not very accurate, as stated in Canon's documentation (the 'Doze documentation). Please take a look at this Canon documentation to get info on borderless printing.
  

4800x4800 dpi ... The eye of the ... Scanner

Puzzled...

Not just because the MP610 (and also MP630, MP970...) can now scan at 4800 dpi under Linux … before any 'Doze driver propose it ...?

But simply consider this Pixma scanner: can we call it a scanner? Or rather an electronic microscope?

Cannot see a detail on a photograph? just scan it with your Pixma at 4800 dpi …
and you get about 50 x zoom magnification!

Just take a look at the rightmost image. Open, it. Guess a new carpet design? Nope, simply a detail of a classic French "Marianne" stamp (here, a full view at 600 dpi), as seen by the Pixma MP610, at 4800 dpi...

Scanning at 4800 dpi is not for everyday’s usage, but this is a nice feature to have for particular tasks.

Now, some simple orders of magnitude...

• 4800 dpi means a resolution of 2.54 cm/4800 = 5.3 µm
  
• this is ~1/1.000 of a millimeter, or 1/1.000.000 of a meter
  
• and also simply… ~10000 times the atom size (1 Angström = 1E-10 meters) …
  

So ... Will future scanners be able to display … the paper sheet atoms?!

Installation
Nothing new, the same procedure as for previous version of this driver applies:

• simply install the latest sane-backends library (either 1.0.20 or latest git development and follow the installation instructions given in this post.
  
• Then, select in your frontend (Xsane, Kooka, …) a scan resolution of 75, 150, 300, 600, 1200, 2400, or 4800 dpi ... and start scanning...

WARNING:

Be very careful when scanning at such high dpi values, because you’ll get TREMENDLY HUGE ENORMOUS amount of data and file sizes!

You could fill up your entire disk space in one scan!

Watch carefully the frontend indications about file sizes, before clicking the scan button!

Note also that in case of very large images (like more than 20000 pixels width or height in Xsane...), a frontend crash might occur, due to the large image size...

Multi-page scanning using MP610 scanner buttons

Scanning several pages at a time is easily achieved with an ADF scanner, however, the MP610 does not have one.

A small command line utility included in libsane-pixma library, named “scan” , can manage the MP610 scan buttons, which greatly helps for scanning several pages.

But a graphic frontend, like Xsane, is more comfortable to achieve this. Multi-pages scanning feature has been added to latest versions of Xsane, as well as in other frontends (like gscan2pdf…), for scanning multi-pages documents with an ADF scanner.

Xsane can only perform ADF multi-pages for now, as said in Xsane documentation.
As the MP610 does not have an ADF, setting more than 1 page to scan in Xsane will simply produce … an I/O error ;-(

Fix proposed
Scanning multi-pages images, documents, projects, from various Sane frontends is now possible with the Sane library.
This fix should also work (but not confirmed) with other Pixma - non ADF - scanners too.
Install the latest Sane library as explained in this post.

Example with Xsane
When Xsane detects a MP610, a window (here on the right) gives access to several parameters. Note that this window can be activated from the main menu, "Window/Standard options".

• Select the “Button-controlled scan (experimental)” option.
• Set several pages to scan in Xsane main window, and the output document format,
  
• Click Xsane “scan" button. The MP610 does _not_ start scanning yet.
• Now go in front of the MP610, and select the scanner mode using MP610 rotating wheel. Choose saving documents to a folder.
• Place the first page to scan, and press the MP610 "color" button. The first page is scanned, then scanner pauses.
  
• Place the second page and again, press color button, and so on …
  

Scanning can be stopped at anytime by pressing the "B/W" button (note you will receive an I/O error in your Frontend ; this is currently working as designed, altough a bit clumsy. This behavior could be easily changed).

When finished, go back to your computer: the scanned pages will be waiting in Xsane…

Isn't time to archive on DVD, those old piles of invoices, papers …that fill your drawers…?!

New Sane scanner driver for Canon Pixma MP610 !

Good news, Canon MP610 is now fully operational, scanner ready under Linux !

Successfully added some modifications to the sane pixma library (home page here), to get the MP610 scanner start dozing off ... using utilities like scan, scanimage, or Xsane and hopefully many other sane frontends ... You can take a look at a 300 dpi scan, produced using Xsane / Ubuntu.

Using Canon's 'Doze driver, I snooped those little USB packets traveling between the MP610 and the computer, and discovered ... several new USB messages added by Canon, which significantly changes the protocol from previous Pixma MPs. The rest was a matter of adding this new stuff (or what I've understood it was !) into the libsane-pixma driver ... and here it is.


Several "thingies" appeared also in this Pixma driver, presumably affecting others MPs ... Fixed the I/O error bug when scanning a full page under Xsane ... Hope this new version can help also other older Canon MP users, as I bet they should fall on it also. Looks like most functions seems to be OK for now.

Of course, let me know if you discover any bugs too. Presumably, it is still in a "beta" state.

Important Note: this first MP610 driver version is currently a clone of "what the 'Doze Canon driver does on USB", and gets the same functionalities. That is to say, It scans - only for the moment I hope - up to 600 dpi. The point is that I don't know how to scan - under 'Doze - at upper resolutions ! If someone can explain how to scan at 4800 dpi using 'Doze, I'll greatly appreciate to upgrade the sane driver to do the same !

So here is now the complete stuff. As it is not yet "officialy" integrated into the libsane-pixma library, I've added the letter "u" at the end, for "unofficial". I'll take contact with the libsane-pixma maintainer to request an add-on and probably a new libsane-pixma version package.

Procedure:

Please go to this page of the blog, to install the latest Sane git version of the pixma backend.

This old procedure here below is not to be used anymore, but I've left it here just for reference only.
Please use the pixma backend that is now included either in the 1.0.20 Sane version, or Sane git version.

• Get the full new package that includes MP610: mp150-0.14.0u.tar.bz2, and untar it :
  $ tar xvjf mp150-0.14.0u.tar.bz2
  
  
• Or you can get only the MP610.0.14.0u.patch file (patch over the latest official libsane-pixma 0.13.1). To use this patch file only, download it and the libsane-pixma 0.13.1 library, untar, navigate into its main directory, and apply the patch:
  $ patch -p1 < path_to_MP610.0.14.0u.patch

Then, the installation procedure is the same (from the full package or from the patch), go into the main directory where you have you new driver files:

1. Compile:
   $ make
   
   or better, if you want to optimize size (1/3 size!) and speed:
   $ make NDEBUG=yes
   
   
2. Test
   From here, you can use the classic "scan" utility provided with the package. See the pixma home page for details on it. Example:
   $ ./scan -x 10 -y 15 -w 51 -h 25 -1 -d 20 -W pixmascan.pnm
   
   
3. Install for Xsane, Kooka, ...
   To install for use with sane, you need to copy the libsane-pixma.so file freshly compiled, to replace you current one coming with the sane library (latest one is 1.0.18). Keep a backup of your current one.
   So you need first to locate your sane libsane-pixma.so currently installed, depending on your distribution.
   For instance, Mandriva and Ubuntu places it at: /usr/lib/sane/libsane-pixma.so.1.0.18
   Simply rename: /usr/lib/sane/libsane-pixma.so.1.0.18 to: /usr/lib/sane/libsane-pixma.so.1.0.18.old
   And copy your new: libsane-pixma.so to: /usr/lib/sane/libsane-pixma.so.1.0.18
   
   The statements are:
   # mv /usr/lib/sane/libsane-pixma.so.1.0.18 /usr/lib/sane/libsane-pixma.so.1.0.18.old
   # cp libsane-pixma.so /usr/lib/sane/libsane-pixma.so.1.0.18
   
   
4. Try it with scanimage, Xsane, Kooka, ...
   You're almost finished.
   Under root, you can try to run scanimage -L (sane command line scan utility) for instance.
   To use Xsane, or Kooka with your non-root user account, read now next section ...
   

Setting permissions to access the scanner:

Now that you've installed your new scanner, maybe you've noticed that you can only use it ... as a root user !

This behavior may vary between Linux distributions.
The MP610 is detected by udev, the universal linux hotplug device manager, as a usb device, with a unique MP610 usb address: 04a9:1725

According to your distribution's udev rules settings, udev and some scripts may add this device to a particular group, change its permissions, so that non root users can use it. If no udev rules exist, the device belongs to root, with generally too restrictive permissions for non-root users, to access it.

Here are 2 examples, on Mandriva, and Ubuntu, to adjust the udev rules, groups and permissions, to make the MP610 usable by non-root users:

On Ubuntu
As Ubuntu do not create any udev rule for it, MP610 will default to the root group, with too restrictive permissions so that non-root users won't be able to access it.

Ubuntu sets by default all users to belong to a particular group named "scanner".

So the easiest way is to tell udev to make the MP610 belong to the scanner group too.

Modify the file:
/etc/udev/rules.d/45-libsane.rules

And simply add the 2 following lines in it:
# Canon PIXMA MP610
SYSFS{idVendor}=="04a9", SYSFS{idProduct}=="1725", MODE="664", GROUP="scanner"

To have udev take into account this new change, simply... unplug the MP610 USB cable, wait a few seconds, and plug it back.
Or issue the command:
$ sudo udevcontrol reload_rules

On Mandriva
udev and some Mandriva scripts automatically add the MP610 into the "usb" group. This way, a normal user can access the scanner if he belongs to the "usb" group too. <user> can be added to the "usb" group, either with the mcc, or the following command line:
# adduser -G usb <user>

Check that <user> is added correctly to the "usb" group:
$ groups <user>
<user> : <user> usb

Other distros ...
Based on those 2 examples, you'll need either to set:

• your udev rules and groups, so that:
• udev changes MP610 group to a non root group (modify the file /etc/udev/rules.d/xx-libsane.rules as with Ubuntu)
  
• your normal user belongs to the same group (see for Mandriva, above).
  
  
• or wider permissions for MP610 or all usb devices, but this is less "secure", (r+w for everyone to all USB devices).
  For enabling all usb devices to be accessed by anyone, add a udev rule like:
  SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", MODE="0666"
  
  or to open access to MP610 only:
  SYSFS{idVendor}=="04a9", SYSFS{idProduct}=="1725", MODE="666"
  

Remember that any change to a udev rule needs to be taken into account. For that, simply unplug and replug the USB cable, or run the command, under root:
# udevcontrol reload_rules

Good scans, and fell free to report any comment!