"epkowa" driver installation on Ubuntu 8.10

[Olav Lavell]

Hello, I noticed that developers of the "epkowa" Epson scanner driver
and Image Scan application are present on this list. So hopefully, my
feedback on their work is not terribly off-topic here.

If not, there's more ;)

(I tried using the forum at
<http://www.avasys.jp/english/linux_e/bbs_scan.html> but it seems one
must have an account to be able to post there, and I see no way to sign
up. Could be my deteriorating eyesight, who knows...)

My problem is I downloaded the deb packages from avasys.jp but
iscan_2.18.0-2_i386.deb would not install (on Ubuntu 8.10) because of an
unresolved dependency libltdl3. The Ubuntu repository offers libltdl7,
which actually does work but is not recognised by the iscan package as
an acceptable alternative. Forcing the install just creates a mess.

I am not much of a developer but I devised this little workaround:

- ln -s /usr/lib/libltdl.so.7 /usr/lib/libltdl.so.3
- Using checkinstall, I created and installed a dummy package named
  libltdl3 (it just copies a text file into /opt).

I guess I could also have made a package that installed the symlink.

Anyway, after this procedure iscan_2.18.0-2_i386.deb installs without a
complaint and the program seems to work just fine.

Perhaps if the problem with the original package can't be solved for
some reason, other people could use the same workaround "solution". I do
hope, of course, that the official package can be fixed.

There is another (minor) issue, but as far as I am aware it could also
be caused by my method of installing the program. Since installing iscan
this way I get the following warning sometimes when I use apt-get:

W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package
iscan-interpreter

I do not know precisely what it means but it doesn't look particularly
harmful. There is no package iscan-interpreter to be found either on
avasys.jp or elsewhere but I guess I don't need it since iscan works
just fine.





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Olav Lavell <olavell@...>


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[Alesh Slovak]

Hi, I'm a developer on epkowa and iscan. Let's see if I can be of any help.

> (I tried using the forum at
> <http://www.avasys.jp/english/linux_e/bbs_scan.html> but it seems one
> must have an account to be able to post there, and I see no way to sign
> up. Could be my deteriorating eyesight, who knows...)
I have to admit, I've never even looked at that site, and now that I
have I wish I hadn't, it's quite horrible.

But it seems that you do not need an account, the password you enter
just allows you to delete the post later, but why you would want to do
so is anyone's guess.

> My problem is I downloaded the deb packages from avasys.jp but
> iscan_2.18.0-2_i386.deb would not install (on Ubuntu 8.10) because of an
> unresolved dependency libltdl3. The Ubuntu repository offers libltdl7,
> which actually does work but is not recognised by the iscan package as
Ah, yes, we are aware of this problem, but as far as we are concerned
this is Ubuntu's mess. There isn't much we can do, unfortunately. This
should sort itself out when Debian migrates to libltdl7, which isn't
going to be for another few years, I guess.

The forum thread below mentions that you can download the libltdl3
package for hardy and install it on intrepid:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6150240

That is probably the easiest way to get this working.

> I do not know precisely what it means but it doesn't look particularly
> harmful. There is no package iscan-interpreter to be found either on
> avasys.jp or elsewhere but I guess I don't need it since iscan works
> just fine.
iscan-interpreter is a virtual package used for determining
compatibility between versions of iscan and its plugins, so yes, you
won't find it anywhere. I am not exactly sure why this message is being
displayed, but it shouldn't be a problem.


Alesh

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alesh.slovak@...          http://avasys.jp

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[Alesh Slovak]

Hi,

> Thank you very much, Alesh. Since you are replying off list, do I
> understand correctly that questions about the epkowa/iscan software
> should rather not be posted on sane-devel?
No, that's not the case at all. I replied to the list as well as
directly to you. I usually do this just to make sure that the original
poster gets my reply in case they miss it on the list.

>> Ah, yes, we are aware of this problem, but as far as we are concerned
>> this is Ubuntu's mess. There isn't much we can do, unfortunately. This
>> should sort itself out when Debian migrates to libltdl7, which isn't
>> going to be for another few years, I guess.
>
> Again, I'm not a developer, but I have been using Debian and Ubuntu for
> quite some time now. I think I have seen packages that had "either or"
> dependencies (or whatever they were called).
 From what I understand, we can't just do that because it would still
require recompiling for each type of system. Ones with libltdl7 and ones
with libltdl3. There are fairly simple workarounds, so we mentioned it
in the documentation and left it at that.

> Perhaps Ubuntu users should at least be forewarned about this issue, or
> they will all have the same problem.
As mentioned above, this problem is mentioned in the documentation
included in the package, but it isn't exactly easily accessible. It
might be a good idea to put this information on the website as well.

>> iscan-interpreter is a virtual package used for determining
>> compatibility between versions of iscan and its plugins, so yes, you
>> won't find it anywhere. I am not exactly sure why this message is being
>> displayed, but it shouldn't be a problem.
>
> That's what I gathered. But I still think it is a (cosmetic, low
> priority) bug. Perhaps it can be registered as such.
We haven't seen this error in our testing, and seeing as how you
installed with a very unorothodox method, I am tempted to chalk it up to
that.

If you do see this again using the workaround I mentioned, then please
let me know.

Alesh

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alesh.slovak@...          http://avasys.jp

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[DamienC]

Hello all,

Googling on the Internet, because of the "W: Ignoring Provides line with DepCompareOp for package iscan-interpreter" issue, I found this.

I experienced this on a freshly installed i386 Debian Lenny.
I got the packages iscan-plugin-gt-x750_2.1.0-4_i386.deb and iscan_2.19.0-4_i386.deb from http://www.avasys.jp/lx-bin2/linux_e/scan/DL2.do

I have installed them with dpkg (did not use the Ubuntu workaround).
Installation and setup went fine except for the same error as Olav, as reported below.

I have tried to cleanup the apt database without success.

Please could you tell me how to solve this? I can also provide more info if needed.

Cheers,
Damien

Alesh Slovak wrote:

Hi,

> Thank you very much, Alesh. Since you are replying off list, do I
> understand correctly that questions about the epkowa/iscan software
> should rather not be posted on sane-devel?
No, that's not the case at all. I replied to the list as well as
directly to you. I usually do this just to make sure that the original
poster gets my reply in case they miss it on the list.

>> Ah, yes, we are aware of this problem, but as far as we are concerned
>> this is Ubuntu's mess. There isn't much we can do, unfortunately. This
>> should sort itself out when Debian migrates to libltdl7, which isn't
>> going to be for another few years, I guess.
>
> Again, I'm not a developer, but I have been using Debian and Ubuntu for
> quite some time now. I think I have seen packages that had "either or"
> dependencies (or whatever they were called).
 From what I understand, we can't just do that because it would still
require recompiling for each type of system. Ones with libltdl7 and ones
with libltdl3. There are fairly simple workarounds, so we mentioned it
in the documentation and left it at that.

> Perhaps Ubuntu users should at least be forewarned about this issue, or
> they will all have the same problem.
As mentioned above, this problem is mentioned in the documentation
included in the package, but it isn't exactly easily accessible. It
might be a good idea to put this information on the website as well.

>> iscan-interpreter is a virtual package used for determining
>> compatibility between versions of iscan and its plugins, so yes, you
>> won't find it anywhere. I am not exactly sure why this message is being
>> displayed, but it shouldn't be a problem.
>
> That's what I gathered. But I still think it is a (cosmetic, low
> priority) bug. Perhaps it can be registered as such.
We haven't seen this error in our testing, and seeing as how you
installed with a very unorothodox method, I am tempted to chalk it up to
that.

If you do see this again using the workaround I mentioned, then please
let me know.

Alesh

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[e-mail]          http://avasys.jp

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[Alesh Slovak]

Hi,

> Googling on the Internet, because of the "W: Ignoring Provides line with
> DepCompareOp for package iscan-interpreter" issue, I found this.

It seems that our plugin packages violate Debian policy.

Specifically, we used versions in the Provides line:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html#s-virtual

If you want to get rid of the warnings, first make sure you are not
installing any updates or performing any other package management
operations.

Now, as root, open the file /var/lib/dpkg/status and look for a line
that looks like this: "Provides: iscan-interpreter (= 2.1)" and delete it.

This should fix the warnings for now. We hope to fix this packaging
problem for the next release.

Thanks to all those who reported this problem.

Alesh

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