How to debug xsane "no devices available" error on 64 bit Ubuntu 10.04

Question

I have a Brother MFC-J615W printer/scanner and I wish to use the scanning feature across a network with a computer running 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04. I have installed the drivers from the Brother website and followed all of the instructions, and printing works fine, but xsane (installed from repositories) produces a popup with the message "no devices available" on startup. I recently had success with a similar approach when installing drivers for a Brother MFC-495CW on 32-bit Unbuntu 9.10, so I am aware of issues such as requiring root access if the driver permissions are not set correctly, but running xsane as root does not solve this problem.

Are there any tools available to debug this problem further or does anyone have advice on how to proceed?

Answer 1

Start by making sure the scanner-part is really supported: for a list of scanners supported by Ubuntu, see HardwareSupportComponentsScanners on Ubuntu wiki.

Also, in Ubuntu's community wiki, there is specifically section describing "What if it says 'no devices available'?". I am pretty sure this page would be helpful to you!