What kind of desktop are you using?
I think this might be a HAL issue. Just doing a quick Google search reveals several other people with the same problem with xsane.
You stated dbus errors before. If dbus is not running then HAL must not be running. First thing is to get them running:
Add the following lines to
/etc/rc.conf to enable HAL and dbus:
Code:
dbus_enable="YES"
hald_enable="YES"
You will have to start them manually or reboot. To do this manually:
Code:
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/dbus start
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/hald start
That's a start. It should at least get rid of the dbus errors.
Can you run
$ sane-find-scanner
or
$ scan-image -L
as a normal user from an xterm?
AFAIK sane itself doesn't need HAL or even use it, but it can support HAL device info. This might be required for xsane since it is tied into GNOME. Sorry if all this is confusing, but I would like to narrow this down a bit.