[sane-devel] SuSE 10.0 gets "Out of memory" for Epson 4870 (GT-X700)

[Roger Price]

Dear List, For a year my Epson Perfection 4870 Photo ran well with sane 1.0.14
and xsane 0.94 on SuSE Linux 8.1.  I recently upgraded to SuSE Linux OSS 10.0
with sane 1.0.15, xsane 0.97.  I use the epson backend. The kernel is 2.6.13.
The scanner is USB connected and recognized as a GT-X700.  The PC has 512
Mbytes of memory.

  sane-find-scanner reports

USB scanner (vendor=0x04b8 [EPSON], product=0x0128 [EPSON Scanner]) at libusb:001:003

At first the upgraded installation ran well: I managed to scan 20 postcards at
1200 dpi before getting the message

   "Failed to start scanner: Out of memory".

Restarting sane did not solve the problem.  Neither did logging out of the
user account and logging in again.

I ran "shutdown -r now" as root and tried again.  This time I managed to scan
8 postcards at 1200 dpi before getting the message "Failed to start scanner:
Out of memory".

I repeated "shutdown -r now" and tried again, but now I cannot even scan the
first postcard.

I set "export SANE_DEBUG_EPSON=255" and obtained the following trace from the
moment at which I clicked on "Scan" to the moment the "Out of memory" window
appeared:

[epson] sane_get_parameters()
[epson] Preview = 0
[epson] Resolution = 1200
[epson] get para 0x81b8c98 0x81b9388 tlx 11.270081 tly 3.646194 brx 158.444199 bry 96.458710 [mm]
[epson] params.format = 1
[epson] params.last_frame = 1
[epson] params.bytes_per_line = 41712
[epson] params.pixels_per_line = 6952
[epson] params.lines = 4385
[epson] params.depth = 16
[epson] sane_start()
[epson] open_scanner()
[epson] scanner is already open: fd = 0
[epson] sane_start: Setting data format to 16 bits
[epson] send buf, size = 2
[epson] buf[0] 1b .
[epson] buf[1] 44 D
[epson] receive buf, expected = 1, got = 1
[epson] buf[0] 06 .
[epson] send buf, size = 1

...many similar send-receive messages...

[epson] sane_start: set_color_correction( s, 0x80 )

...many more send-receive messages...

[epson] receive buf, expected = 1, got = 1
[epson] buf[0] 06 .
[epson] sane_get_parameters()
[epson] Preview = 0
[epson] Resolution = 1200
[epson] get para 0x81b8c98 0x81b9388 tlx 11.270081 tly 3.646194 brx 158.444199 bry 96.458710 [mm]
[epson] params.format = 1
[epson] params.last_frame = 1
[epson] params.bytes_per_line = 41712
[epson] params.pixels_per_line = 6952
[epson] params.lines = 4385
[epson] params.depth = 16
[epson] set_scan_area: 0x81b8c98 532 172 6952 4385
[epson] send buf, size = 2
[epson] buf[0] 1b .
[epson] buf[1] 41 A
[epson] receive buf, expected = 1, got = 1
[epson] buf[0] 06 .
[epson] send buf, size = 8
[epson] buf[0] 14 .
[epson] buf[1] 02 .
[epson] buf[2] ac .
[epson] buf[3] 00 .
[epson] buf[4] 28 (
[epson] buf[5] 1b .
[epson] buf[6] 21 !
[epson] buf[7] 11 .
[epson] receive buf, expected = 1, got = 1
[epson] buf[0] 06 .
[epson] out of memory (line 4860)
[epson] sane_get_parameters()
[epson] Preview = 0
[epson] Resolution = 1200
[epson] get para 0x81b8c98 0x81b9388 tlx 11.270081 tly 3.646194 brx 158.444199 bry 96.458710 [mm]
[epson] params.format = 1
[epson] params.last_frame = 1
[epson] params.bytes_per_line = 41712
[epson] params.pixels_per_line = 6952
[epson] params.lines = 4385
[epson] params.depth = 16
 
KDE's Kooka is still able to scan a postcard at 1200 dpi, but I would prefer
to use xsane which gives precise control of the gamma.  Although the upgrade
now includes GIMP (version gimp-2.2.0) which was not present previously, I
don't use GIMP, so this is probably not the problem.

Any suggestions or hints would be much appreciated.

Best Regards,
Roger