Warning: This document is for an old version of SANE Standard. The latest version is 1.06.

5 Network Protocol

The SANE interface has been designed to facilitate network access to image acquisition devices. In particular, most SANE implementations are expected to support a network backend (net client) and a corresponding network daemon (net server) that allows accessing image acquisition devices through a network connection. Network access is useful in several situations:

  • To provide controlled access to resources that are inaccessible to a regular user. For example, a user may want to access a device on a host where she has no account on. With the network protocol, it is possible to allow certain users to access scanners without giving them full access to the system.

    Controlling access through the network daemon can be useful even in the local case: for example, certain backends may require root privileges to access a device. Rather than installing each frontend as setuid-root, a system administrator could instead install the SANE network daemon as setuid-root. This enables regular users to access the privileged device through the SANE daemon (which, presumably, supports a more fine-grained access control mechanism than the simple setuid approach). This has the added benefit that the system administrator only needs to trust the SANE daemon, not each and every frontend that may need access to the privileged device.

  • Network access provides a sense of ubiquity of the available image acquisition devices. For example, in a local area network environment, this allows a user to log onto any machine and have convenient access to any resource available to any machine on the network (subject to permission constraints).

  • For devices that do not require physical access when used (e.g., video cameras), network access allows a user to control and use these devices without being in physical proximity. Indeed, if such devices are connected to the Internet, access from any place in the world is possible.

The network protocol described in this chapter has been design with the following goals in mind:

  1. Image transmission should be efficient (have low encoding overhead).

  2. Accessing option descriptors on the client side must be efficient (since this is a very common operation).

  3. Other operations, such as setting or inquiring the value of an option are less performance critical since they typically require explicit user action.

  4. The network protocol should be simple and easy to implement on any host architecture and any programming language.

The SANE protocol can be run across any transport protocol that provides reliable data delivery. While SANE does not specify a specific transport protocol, it is expected that TCP/IP will be among the most commonly used protocols.

5.1 Data Type Encoding

5.1.1 Primitive Data Types

The four primitive types of the SANE standard are encoded as follows:

SANE_Byte

A byte is encoded as an 8 bit value. Since the transport protocol is assumed to be byte-orientd, the bit order is irrelevant.

SANE_Word

A word is encoded as 4 bytes (32 bits). The bytes are ordered from most-significant to least-significant byte (big-endian byte-order).

SANE_Char

A character is currently encoded as an 8-bit ISO LATIN-1 value. An extension to support wider character sets (16 or 32 bits) is planned for the future, but not supported at this point.

SANE_String

A string pointer is encoded as a SANE_Char array. The trailing NUL byte is considered part of the array and a NULL pointer is encoded as a zero-length array.

SANE_Handle

A handle is encoded like a word. The network backend needs to take care of converting these integer values to the opaque pointer values that are presented to the user of the network backend. Similarly, the SANE daemon needs to take care of converting the opaque pointer values it receives from its backends into 32-bit integers suitable for use for network encoding.

enumeration types

Enumeration types are encoded like words.

5.1.2 Type Constructors

Closely following the type constructors of the C language, the SANE network protocol supports the following four constructors:

pointer

A pointer is encoded by a word that indicates whether the pointer is a NULL-pointer which is then followed by the value that the pointer points to (in the case of a non-NULL pointer; in the case of a NULL pointer, no bytes are encoded for the pointer value).

array

An array is encoded by a word that indicates the length of the array followed by the values of the elements in the array. The length may be zero in which case no bytes are encoded for the element values.

structure

A structure is encoded by simply encoding the structure members in the order in which they appear in the corresponding C type declaration.

union

A union must always be accompanied by a tag value that indicates which of the union members is the currently the active one. For this reason, the union itself is encoded simply by encoding the value of the currently active member.

Note that for type constructors, the pointer, element, or member values themselves may have a constructed type. Thus, the above rules should be applied recursively until a sequence of primitive types has been found.

Also SANE had no need for encoding of circular structures. This greatly simplifies the network protocol.

5.2 Remote Procedure Call Requests

The SANE network protocol is a client/server-style remote procedure call (RPC) protocol. This means that all activity is initiated by the client side (the network backend)—a server is restricted to answering request by the client.

5.2.1 SANE_NET_INIT

This RPC establishes a connection to a particular SANE network daemon. It must be the first call in a SANE network session. The parameter and reply arguments for this call are shown in the table below:

request

reply

SANE_Word version_code

SANE_Word status

SANE_String user_name

SANE_Word version_code

The version_code argument in the request is the SANE version-code of the network backend that is contacting the network daemon (see Section 4.1). The “build-revision” in the version code is used to hold the network protocol version. The SANE network daemon receiving such a request must make sure that the network protocol version corresponds to a supported version since otherwise the encoding of the network stream may be incompatible (even though the SANE interface itself may be compatible). The user_name argument is the name of the user on whose behalf this call is being performed. If the network backend cannot determine a user-name, it passes a NULL pointer for this argument. No trust should be placed in the authenticity of this user-name. The intent of this string is to provide more convenience to the user. E.g., it could be used as the default-user name in subsequent authentication calls.

In the reply, status indicates the completion status. If the value is anything other than SANE_STATUS_SUCCESS, the remainder of the reply has undefined values. 2 The version_code argument returns the SANE version-code that the network daemon supports. See the comments in the previous paragraph on the meaning of the build-revision in this version code.

5.2.2 SANE_NET_GET_DEVICES

This RPC is used to obtain the list of devices accessible by the SANE daemon.

request

reply

void

SANE_Word status

SANE_Device ***device_list

There are no arguments in the request for this call.

In the reply, status indicates the completion status. If the value is anything other than SANE_STATUS_SUCCESS, the remainder of the reply has undefined values. The device_list argument is a pointer to a NULL-terminated array of SANE_Device pointers.

5.2.3 SANE_NET_OPEN

This RPC is used to open a connection to a remote SANE device.

request

reply

SANE_String device_name

SANE_Word status

SANE_Word handle

SANE_String resource

The device_name argument specifies the name of the device to open.

In the reply, status indicates the completion status. If the value is anything other than SANE_STATUS_SUCCESS, the remainder of the reply has undefined values. The handle argument specifies the device handle that uniquely identifies the connection. The resource argument is used to request authentication. If it has a non-NULL value, the network backend should authenticate the specified resource and then retry this operation (see Section 5.2.10 for details on how to authorize a resource).

5.2.4 SANE_NET_CLOSE

This RPC is used to close a connection to a remote SANE device.

request

reply

SANE_Word handle

SANE_Word dummy

The handle argument identifies the connection that should be closed.

In the reply, the dummy argument is unused. Its purpose is to ensure proper synchronization (without it, a net client would not be able to determine when the RPC has completed).

5.2.5 SANE_NET_GET_OPTION_DESCRIPTORS

This RPC is used to obtain all the option descriptors for a remote SANE device.

request

reply

SANE_Word handle

Option_Descriptor_Array odesc

The handle argument identifies the remote device whose option descriptors should be obtained.

In the reply, the odesc argument is used to return the array of option descriptors. The option descriptor array has the following structure:

struct Option_Descriptor_Array
  {
    SANE_Word num_options;
    SANE_Option_Descriptor **desc;
  };

5.2.6 SANE_NET_CONTROL_OPTION

This RPC is used to control (inquire, set, or set to automatic) a specific option of a remote SANE device.

request

reply

SANE_Word handle

SANE_Status status

SANE_Word option

SANE_Word info

SANE_Word action

SANE_Word value_type

SANE_Word value_type

SANE_Word value_size

SANE_Word value_size

void *value

void *value

SANE_String *resource

The handle argument identifies the remote device whose option should be controlled. Argument option is the number (index) of the option that should be controlled. Argument action specifies what action should be taken (get, set, or set automatic). Argument value_type specifies the type of the option value (must be one of SANE_TYPE_BOOL, SANE_TYPE_INT, SANE_TYPE_FIXED, SANE_TYPE_STRING, SANE_TYPE_BUTTON). Argument value_size specifies the size of the option value in number of bytes (see Section sec:valuesize for the precise meaning of this value). Finally, argument value is a pointer to the option value. It must be a writeable area that is at least value_size bytes large. (Note that this area must be writable even if the action is to set the option value. This is because the backend may not be able to set the exact option value, in which case the option value is used to return the next best value that the backend has chosen.)

In the reply, argument resource is set to the name of the resource that must be authorized before this call can be retried. If this value is non-NULL, all other arguments have undefined values (see Section 5.2.10 for details on how to authorize a resource). Argument status indicates the completion status. If the value is anything other than SANE_STATUS_SUCCESS, the remainder of the reply has undefined values. The info argument returns the information on how well the backend was able to satisfy the request. For details, see the description of the corresponding argument in Section 4.3.7. Arguments value_type and value_size have the same values as the arguments by the same name in corresponding request. The values are repeated here to ensure that both the request and the reply are self-contained (i.e., they can be encoded and decoded independently). Argument value is holds the value of the option that has become effective as a result of this RPC.

5.2.7 SANE_NET_GET_PARAMETERS

This RPC is used to obtain the scan parameters of a remote SANE device.

request

reply

SANE_Word handle

SANE_Status status

SANE_Parameters params

The handle argument identifies the connection to the remote device whose scan parameters should be returned.

In the reply, status indicates the completion status. If the value is anything other than SANE_STATUS_SUCCESS, the remainder of the reply has undefined values. The argument params is used to return the scan parameters.

5.2.8 SANE_NET_START

This RPC is used to start image acquisition (scanning).

request

reply

SANE_Word handle

SANE_Status status

SANE_Word port

SANE_Word byte_order

SANE_String resource

The handle argument identifies the connection to the remote device from which the image should be acquired.

In the reply, argument resource is set to the name of the resource that must be authorized before this call can be retried. If this value is non-NULL, all other arguments have undefined values (see Section 5.2.10 for details on how to authorize a resource). Argument, status indicates the completion status. If the value is anything other than SANE_STATUS_SUCCESS, the remainder of the reply has undefined values. The argument port returns the port number from which the image data will be available. To read the image data, a network client must connect to the remote host at the indicated port number. Through this port, the image data is transmitted as a sequence of data records. Each record starts with the data length in bytes. The data length is transmitted as a sequence of four bytes. These bytes should be interpreted as an unsigned integer in big-endian format. The four length bytes are followed by the number of data bytes indicated by the length. Except for byte-order, the data is in the same format as defined for sane_read(). Since some records may contain no data at all, a length value of zero is perfectly valid. The special length value of 0xffffffff is used to indicate the end of the data stream. That is, after receiving a record length of 0xffffffff, the network client should close the data connection and stop reading data.

Argument byte_order specifies the byte-order of the image data. A value of 0x1234 indicates little-endian format, a value of 0x4321 indicates big-endian format. All other values are presently undefined and reserved for future enhancements of this protocol. The intent is that a network server sends data in its own byte-order and the client is responsible for adjusting the byte-order, if necessary. This approach causes no unnecessary overheads in the case where the server and client byte-order match and puts the extra burden on the client side when there is a byte-order mismatch. Putting the burden on the client-side improves the scalability properties of this protocol.

5.2.9 SANE_NET_CANCEL

This RPC is used to cancel the current operation of a remote SANE device.

request

reply

SANE_Word handle

SANE_Word dummy

The handle argument identifies the connection whose operation should be cancelled.

In the reply, the dummy argument is unused. Its purpose is to ensure proper synchronization (without it, a net client would not be able to determine when the RPC has completed).

5.2.10 SANE_NET_AUTHORIZE

This RPC is used to pass authorization data from the net client to the net server.

request

reply

SANE_String resource

SANE_Word dummy

SANE_String username

SANE_String password

The resource argument specifies the name of the resource to be authorized. This argument should be set to the string returned in the resource argument of the RPC reply that required this authorization call. The username and password are the name of the user that is accessing the resource and the password for the specified resource/user pair. 1

In the reply, dummy is completely unused. Note that there is no direct failure indication. This is unnecessary since a net client will retry the RPC that resulted in the authorization request until that call succeeds (or until the request is cancelled).

5.2.11 SANE_NET_EXIT

This RPC is used to disconnect a net client from a net server. There are no request or reply arguments in this call. As a result of this call, the connection between the client and the server that was established by the SANE_NET_INIT call will be closed.

1

The sane network daemon should be careful not to leak information in the undefined portion of the reply.

2

The username and password should be encrypted before network transmission but currently they are always in plain text.