SMB Share fo Canon ScanFront 220/220P

[stu]

I have just installed my new ScanFront 220 that is a network scanner capable of scanning to a network share.  The problem comes when trying to attach to the Alfresco SMB/CIFS share.

I am able to connect to any number of Windows shares with no problem.  I believe it comes down to the fact that Alfresco is still not showing up in any visible workgroups (even from a Windows XP box).

Below is an excerpt from my file-servers-custom.xml:

    <config evaluator="string-compare" condition="CIFS Server"> 
        <serverEnable enabled="true"/>
        <host name="Alfresco" domain="Alfresco"/>
        <broadcast>255.255.255.255</broadcast>
        <tcpipSMB platforms="linux,solaris,macosx"/>
        <netBIOSSMB platforms="linux,solaris,macosx"/>

        <hostAnnounce interval="5"/>

      <!– Use Win32 NetBIOS interface on Windows –>
      <Win32NetBIOS/>
      <Win32Announce interval="5"/>

      <sessionDebug flags="Negotiate,Socket,Tree,Errors,State"/>
   </config>

   <config evaluator="string-compare" condition="NFS Server">
     <serverEnable enabled="false"/>
   </config>
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Any tips or suggestions as to why I can't see the workgroup??

Thanks,
Stu

[mikeh]

It doesn't really solve the "visible in a workgroup" issue, but this PDF from Canon detailing connection methods might let you workaround the problem…

Thanks,
Mike

[sebp]

Hi,
I ran into the same problem. Did anyone find a solution? The proposed pdf file is only visible for registered users. Registration on the cannon website is checked manually and can take up to 72hours. Now I'm waiting and hope that maybe someone has already found the workaround.

[browdee]

HI,

My (new startup) company is going to use Alfresco as a key part of its Information Management strategy, and in addition I'm looking to set up a couple of international offices with suitable hardware.

We want to purchase a Canon Scanfront 220p for each of our offices.  Can anyone tell me whether this compatibility issue with Alfresco lingers on?

Additionally, any advice on integrating the 220P with Alfresco or the wider network implications would be very much appreciated,

Regards,

Browdee

[sebp]

Hi Browdee,
I wanted to connect the canon 220 to Alfresco using the cifs share of Alfresco. That was not possible because the scanner did not "see" Alfrescos' cifs share. I didn't find a solution for that so I now use Alfrescos' FTP interface. The scanner sends the documents to Alfresco over FTP now.

In our setup both, Alfresco and the scanner, authenticate the user against an LDAP. We want that all users authenticate themselves at the scanner with their own user name and password and that the connection to Alfresco is set up with this user name and password. This makes sure that the creator property of the document in Alfresco will be set to the user who scanned the document. The problem is that if you use FTP to send the document to Alfresco then you have to enter a user name and a password for the FTP connection. That means you have to login to the scanner first and if you want to send the document to Alfresco you have to enter your user name and password again (for the FTP connection). To work around this problem the scanner administrator can use the scanner web interface to create an address book for each user on the scanner. In the address book the admin can create FTP connection addresses containing FTP server, directory path, user name and password. The scanner user can then take one of the predefined addresses and scan to this address. Now the user does not have to enter user name and password because this is stored in the address.
Problems in our scenario:

• An address in the address book always contains the folder to scan to. Therefore using the address book the users only have a limited amount of folders to scan to.


• If the user changes his ldap password then all the FTP connection addresses in the scanners address book must be updated manually.


• The admin can create shortcut buttons for the user to enable 'single click scanning'. These shortcuts use the addresses from the address book. But there seems to be a bug in the scanner software: If an address in the address book is updated (e.g. because the password of a user has changed) then all shortcuts using this address have to be recreated.

Btw.: The Web Interface of the Canon 220 only works properly in Internet Explorer.

After setting all this up the scanner works quite fine.