Arch Linux

crem

Member

Registered: 2018-01-14

Posts: 41

Canon network scanner - is "push" mode possible?

Hi people,

I have a network scanner/printer "Canon i-SENSYS MF4780w", and it has two modes of scanning:

• "Remote scanner" (it listens for clients for requests, pull-mode)

• "Computer" (you initiate/configure scanning from the device itself, in push-mode fashion)

I've got it working in the "Remote scanner" way. However I'd really like if it was possible also to use the push mode. That way would be able to set up a headless server which would wait for scans to come and upload them to Google Drive automatically.

In Windows, that "Computer" scan mode works like this: you install "MF Network Scan Utility", and register the computer in the printer/scanner using that tool, and sets up a background service. After that, the computer is listed in the printer's scan destinations, and you can start scanning from the device without need to touch the computer.

Does anyone know whether it's possible to make it work in push/"Computer" mode in Linux? If there are no ready solutions, do you maybe know if there were any attempts to reverse engineer the protocol or something like this?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,334

Re: Canon network scanner - is "push" mode possible?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Scanner_Button_Daemon ?

crem

Member

Registered: 2018-01-14

Posts: 41

Re: Canon network scanner - is "push" mode possible?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Scanner_Button_Daemon ?

Thanks, will try that.

I've actually seen that page but assumed that it polls the device in "listen" more rather than waits a signal from a printer (what I thought printer does).

I'll give it a try, it's quite possible that my assumption about how it works were wrong.

crem

Member

Registered: 2018-01-14

Posts: 41

Re: Canon network scanner - is "push" mode possible?

Scanner button daemon indeed turned out to be something else, it's mostly for a local scanner, or maybe for a network scanner that is not supposed to be shared.
It still uses the scanner in "pull" mode.

I've dug a bit more what's going on by sniffing a traffic from windows machine to the printer/scanner.

It seems that Windows advertises itself as a possible scan destination via MFNP protocol.
In the printer/scanner settings, it's also possible to enable WSD protocol (both for "push mode" and "pull mode").

So far while I can scan in "pull" mode using either of those protocols, I wasn't able to advertise linux machine to printer.

I'll dig some more, but so far things are not looking very promising.