How do I backup my scanner?

Years ago I bought an Avision AW210 scanner because it was the only affordable scanner with a document feeder that was advertised as Linux compatible.

I couldn't get it working, and the company's tech support was useless because their lone Linux programmer had recently quit. It took a ton of research with trial & error to get the thing working.

But that was years ago and I don't remember exactly what I did. I've been upgrading my OS since 14.04, currently running 20.04. I'm having problems (unrelated to the scanner, which works fine) and my hope is a fresh install will resolve them.

The only thing I worry about is the scanner (I use it regularly). Everything else is already backed up in the cloud, and I can easily get a list of installed packages and aliases, etc. But I don't know how to get a backup of the current scanner configuration.

Remembering how much of a PITA it was to get this thing operational in the first place, I need to make sure I can easily get it up and running if it doesn't work after a fresh install of the latest OS release.

So, where would I find all the relevant related scanner settings and config files to backup?

I believe I could find the needed details for you to get this working. Maybe it was back then but the scanner should be automatically added when installing Ubuntu if you keep the scanner connected to the system during install. If not installing sane should have it added automatically.

If you only have 1 system and really want to be sure before nuking your old system use dual boot setup: create empty space, install new Ubuntu in empty space, set it up and confirm all works, then nuke the old system and add the space to your new system. You could also have a permanent dual boot so you can use the old system to install the next new Ubuntu and switch between the two installs.

Driver can be found here. And the name has "Avision_SANE_20170628" so there is a big hint: it is supported by SANE.

Sane has websites for all its libraries/backends and there is a sane-avision. From the link some excerpts:

Since the backend now includes native USB access, it is no longer needed - even considered obsolete - to access USB scanner via the SCSI emulation (named hpusbscsi on Linux) for Avision USB devices such as the HP 53xx, HP 74xx or Minolta film-scanners.

This bit has me believe you probably had to do the SCSI emulation. That was pretty difficult back then. If so this might be a lot easier to get working this time around.

I suggest you hold one hand on the power-button of the scanner while you try the first scans - especially with film-scanners!

Configuration

The configuration file for this backend resides in /etc/sane.d/avision.conf.

Its contents is a list of device names that correspond to Avision and Avision compatible scanners and backend-options. Empty lines and lines starting with a hash mark (#) are ignored. A sample configuration file is shown below

Important bit here is /etc/sane.d/avision.conf. Save that file but on the new system use the new file and add the options from the old file. That should be all you need to do to get it working.

The program sane-find-scanner helps to find out the correct scsi or usb device name. A list with supported devices is built into the avision backend so normally specifying an ID should not be necessary.

And another important bit: use sane-find-scanner or your new system to and a lot should be automated.