Anyone ever get a Canon MF8080Cw to work with Lubuntu 18.04 for scanning?

[misterprimus]

Printing works fine, both over USB and network.

I spent hours and hours on ChatGTP trying all of its solutions to get scanning to work. Manual port assignments, network vs USB, etc... It just will not be detected as a scanner. I finally gave up and just decided I'd use the front USB port to scan to a USB drive when I need to. The closest I've gotten to making it work is an XP virtual machine with the port forwarded to that machine, and then it works with Canon scan exe. However, it remains unreliable, with printer restarts and scan button pressing needed to get it to work. It's so many steps, it's faster to just scan to a USB drive.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Hello @misterprimus - are you aware that your distro reached EOL (end of life) a little over 4 years ago?

We can't really advise on distros that are no longer supported.

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

 

[Condobloke]

Lubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) was released April 27, 2018 and will reach End of Life on Friday, April 30, 2021. This means that after that date there will be no further security updates or bugfixes released.

 

[Brickwizard]

No guarantees, you could try

1] update your OS to the latest Ubuntu LTS
then from terminal
2]sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thierry-f/fork-michael-gruz
3]sudo apt install scangearmp2
4]sudo apt install cnijfilter2
5] Depending on your location install ONE of the following sudo apt install [cnrdrvcups-lipslx, cnrdrvcups-ufr2-uk, or cnrdrvcups-ufr2-us]

 

[misterprimus]

Lubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) was released April 27, 2018 and will reach End of Life on Friday, April 30, 2021. This means that after that date there will be no further security updates or bugfixes released.

Has it been that long? It's an OS on an old used PC my dad uses to read the news, shop on amazon, check his email, and pay his credit card. Also some word processing. Perhaps it's time to upgrade! I got a Linux distro for him since he kept breaking the Windows XP installs (kept getting malware on the PC). So I put Linux on it to make it hard for him to break it. It's mostly worked. But yes it's probably time to upgrade.

 

[Condobloke]

But yes it's probably time to upgrade.

Yes. Especially seeing he pays his credit card etc on there, and do shopping with Amazon !

 

[bob466]

With your Distro up to date...you could try this scanner...https://www.naps2.com

Works with many printers they say...I have it installed in Mint Cinnamon 22.1...hope this helps.

 

[MikeWalsh]

Despite Epson providing scanner software for their all-in-ones & standalone scanners ('ImageScan for Linux!'), I've actually found that the KDE Project's own 'Skanlite' seems to work way better than Epson's own, dedicated app.

The up-to-date builds of this are, apparently, now only available as Flatpaks or Snaps.....both of which require a sizeable framework to already be in place before they'll condescend to 'play ball'. If you're running an older machine, that doesn't have so much in the way of resources, these will eat up a LOT of space. And being KDE-based, this means they need the entire set of Plasma desktop dependencies in order to run, since everything in KDE is tightly linked together......and current Plasma, from what I understand, is HUGE. A lot of this is down to the way that Qt just gets ever larger & more complex from one generation to the next......Qt6 is now something like 6 to 7 times larger than, say, Qt4 was.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

I found an older Skanlite AppImage - from around 7 years ago - based on Plasma 3 or 4, I believe. Point being, the older Plasma DE's required Qt toolset was much smaller than the current release needs. And this particular AppImage is what I think of as being properly built......containing absolutely everything needed to run. Yes, it's quite a size at 150 MB, but that's small compared to Flatpaks or Snaps.....and older generations of Qt were very much smaller than they are now.

Skanlite, it seems, is apparently designed to work with virtually every model or make of scanner out there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

Trawling through the bowels of the Puppy Forum eventually unearthed the thread where this thing had been originally linked to/from. It's located in one of the many tens of thousands of Amazon's AWS S3 'buckets".

It's worth a try, but it is of course entirely up to you. Your decision. If you want to try it, the link is below:-

AppImages from aci.pangea.pub

S3 Bucket for aci.pangea.pub

s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com

.....and the link for the AppImage itself is near the top of that page, a few lines down.

(I can't make any guarantees about how 'secure' it may or may not be with more recent all-in-one printer/scanners, which are exclusively wireless these days. My old Epson is 15 yrs old, and is USB-only......so the 'issue' simply doesn't exist for me.)

May work for you, it may not. Let us know the outcome whatever you end up doing, please. Thanks.


Mike.

 

[hasser33]

Printing works fine, both over USB and network.

I spent hours and hours on ChatGTP trying all of its solutions to get scanning to work. Manual port assignments, network vs USB, etc... It just will not be detected as a scanner. I finally gave up and just decided I'd use the front USB port to scan to a USB drive when I need to. The closest I've gotten to making it work is an XP virtual machine with the port forwarded to that machine, and then it works with Canon scan exe. However, it remains unreliable, with printer restarts and scan button pressing needed to get it to work. It's so many steps, it's faster to just scan to a USB drive.

That sounds incredibly frustrating, especially after sinking so much time into it. You’ve basically ruled out all the usual suspects, and the fact that printing works fine makes the scanner issue even more annoying. Falling back to scanning via the front USB port is honestly a very pragmatic call at that point. The XP VM workaround proving it can work, but only unreliably, really highlights how broken the driver/support side is. If it takes restarts and button gymnastics, it’s no longer worth it. Sometimes the “dumb” workaround is the most efficient solution.

 

[Brickwizard]

Please avoid resurrecting the dead, the OP has not been seen since July 2023

 

[KGIII]

Please avoid resurrecting the dead, the OP has not been seen since July 2023

Their post contained a link to some other site, making it spam. (Don't blame me, I didn't let 'em through the queue.)

They've been appropriately dealt with.

Thread locked to prevent further comments. If OP returns and wishes to revive the thread, they can PM me.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Just a note to Staff - the OP joined in 2023, posted this Thread in July 2025, and was last seen on the site today

Should have gone to SpecSavers, anyone? Lol.

I'll leave it to one of you to reopen if you are good with that.

Avagudweegend

Wiz

 

[KGIII]

Should have gone to SpecSavers, anyone? Lol.

There's a missing post. Someone decided to post spam in this thread (not the OP). They were nuked. I locked the thread as it has had no activity, and I do not want to invite more activity to a dead thread.

But, yeah, there's a missing post.