Networked scanner only speaks FTP or SMB

ℹ️ Support
1

I know it has been asked before and the common answer is: nextcloud does not support FTP.

Unfortunately our new (!!!) ricoh IM C2000 can only store scanned documents via FTP or SMB.
I - personally - don’t like SMB.

What’s the easiest way to scan from the Ricoh to a nextcloud based nework storage.

With our old xerox I used webdav to a “scan” account which in turn had shared folders for everyone who needed scanned documents on his workplace.

I would like to keep this setup but the ricoh does not support webdav.

2

I don’t know your ricoh IM C2000, but I have set up a scanner who can store via ftp. On your server site you have to install a ftp server like vsftpd. Then create in your Nextcloud network storage a scan-directory (your scan account) and send your scanned files via ftp to this directory. How you have to set up ftp of your scanner i naturally don’t know.

3

Hi, I’m in the same boat but with a Ricoh IM 350F. The device only supports SMB or FTP.
I also didn’t want to use SMB, but am currently reconsidering since ricoh ftp is plaintext only.
Anyway this is how we solved it.

  • Ricoh Device is configured to use Scan to FTP
  • The Ricoh uses Active FTP, which is Firewall friendly, but bad if you are using NAT.
  • The Ricoh can not use FTPS/Encrypted FTP. Your Login and Data transfer will always be in Plaintext. So you’d need to lock down the used account. A virtual FTP user is preferable.

On the FTP Server we configured a systemd.Path Unit which triggers a systemd.service if the ftp directory is not empty. A systemd.Path gets triggered by the Inode Filesystem Information - which makes the execution instant.
The systemd.service starts a script which uploads every .pdf file inside the directory via curl -u Username:Passwort -t /path/to/localfile.pdf https://nextcloud/remote.php/dav/files/username/localfile.pdf to nextcloud. After a successful upload the local file gets deleted.

We’ve created a Service Account for this purpose and use an App Secret as Password inside the script.

From my point of view this has some advantages over the External Storage FTP Features.

  • vsftpd (Fedora) and Nextcloud didn’t play along for me
  • We didn’t want to include the FTP Server Folder inside the Backup. Now the data is part of the nextcloud Backup.
  • You can add Taggs to the files if you upload them via http.
  • You do not have to worry about SELinux Tags

Since the ricoh can use newer SMB Versions which feature encryption its worth considering this.