Just found that my scripts that would detect image types by means of the "file" command do not work anymore in RELEASE-11. :( Whats happening in R11.1 is this: $ scanimage > /tmp/SCAN $ file /tmp/SCAN /tmp/SCAN: data While on R10 in looked this way, which appears slightly more useful: $ scanimage > /tmp/SCAN $ file /tmp/SCAN /tmp/SCAN: Netpbm image data, size = 2480 x 3507, rawbits, greymap Further investigation shows, the problem may have appeared with this update: >r309847 | delphij | 2016-12-11 08:33:02 +0100 (Sun, 11 Dec 2016) | 2 lines > >MFC r308420: MFV r308392: file 5.29. And that is a contrib, it seems the original comes from fishy penguins. So no proper repo, and doubtful if anybody might be in charge, but instead some colorful pictures like this one: https://fossies.org/diffs/file/5.28_vs_5.29/magic/Magdir/images-diff.html --------------------------------------------------------------- Looking closer - this is my file header: pmc at disp:604:1/tmp$ hd SCAN |more 00000000 50 35 0a 23 20 53 41 4e 45 20 64 61 74 61 20 66 |P5.# SANE data f| 00000010 6f 6c 6c 6f 77 73 0a 32 34 38 30 20 33 35 30 37 |ollows.2480 3507| 00000020 0a 32 35 35 0a 5f 58 56 4b 53 49 4b 52 54 50 51 |.255._XVKSIKRTPQ| 00000030 4e 4c 52 5b 56 55 4c 47 4e 4f 4e 4d 53 54 53 4d |NLR[VULGNONMSTSM| 00000040 53 49 50 52 4c 51 4f 53 56 55 53 4d 55 4e 4e 4c |SIPRLQOSVUSMUNNL| 00000050 55 49 4d 50 52 4c 4e 50 4d 56 4e 51 52 4e 4e 50 |UIMPRLNPMVNQRNNP| And this is the ruleset in the magic file: # PBMPLUS images # The next byte following the magic is always whitespace. # strength is changed to try these patterns before "x86 boot sector" 0 name netpbm >3 regex/s =[0-9]{1,50}\ [0-9]{1,50} Netpbm image data >>&0 regex =[0-9]{1,50} \b, size = %s x >>>&0 regex =[0-9]{1,50} \b %s 0 string P5 >0 regex/4 P5\\s >>0 use netpbm >>>0 string x \b, rawbits, pixmap !:strength + 45 !:mime image/x-portable-pixmap The failing line is the one with "regex/4" command, and I dont see why there is a *double* \ - but a single one doesnt work either. Using \n instead, would work. And what also works is this one: >0 regex/4 P5[[:space:]] To figure the root cause would mean to look into that libmagic, and maybe there is a misunderstanding between the design of that lib and the linux guys maintaining the magic file?