Epson NX510 scanner and Ubuntu 9.04

My wife got a printer/scanner/copier/fax combo machine for Christmas. Today I finally got around to setting it up for her.

1. I found the drivers for it here: http://avasys.jp/eng/linux_driver/
   There are drivers for a number of Epson printers there also.
   
2. I downloaded these files:
   
   • Epson-Stylus_NX510-pipslite-en.ppd
   • pipslite_1.4.0-5_i386.deb
   • iscan-network-nt_1.1.0-2_i386.deb
   • iscan_2.23.0-3_i386.deb
3. Installed pipslite first. It whined about libltdl3 being missing, so I did:
   
   sudo ln -s libltdl.so.7 libltdl.so.3
   
   then
   
   sudo dpkg --ignore-depends=libltdl3 -i pipslite_1.4.0-5_i386.deb
4. Now the printer driver (the ppd file) can be installed using the printer manager, just choose the ppd file when it asks for one.
5. It turns out the iscan-network package isn't necessary since I didn't set the printer up as a network printer.
6. To install the iscan app, first ensure xsane > 1.0.3 is installed. I already had xsane 1.0.14, so I was good.
7. Install iscan:
   
   sudo dpkg --ignore-depends=libltdl3 -i iscan_2.23.0-3_i386.deb
   
8. Now try to start xsane. It will likely complain about permissions. Run:
   
   lsusb
   
   Find your scanner in the output, making note of the bus and device number. My scanner was bus 001, device 008, so now do this:
   
   sudo chmod a+w /dev/bus/usb/001/008
   
   Now xsane and iscan both start with no trouble.
9. If you tried to start xsane as root befor step 8, you'll get some errors when quitting xsane. That's because root owns the config files in ~/.sane. Just delete the ~/.sane directory and all will be well.
10. Since I installed 2 packages with "ignore-depends", both dpkg and synaptic will complain about broken packages and want to uninstall them when trying to install some new package. To fix this:
    
    • Make a backup of /var/lib/dpkg/status
    • Edit /var/lib/dpkg/status, find the iscan package.
    • Find the dependencies line, and remove the reference to libltdl.so.3.
    • Repeat for pipslite.
    • Save /var/lib/dpkg/status.
    • Now dpkg and synaptic will not try to remove your newly installed scanner apps and printer driver.