I have a Brother MFC 240c Scanner, printer, copier, fax machine running with Ubuntu 7.10 using the Brother supplied drivers and installation instructions. The PC is a Dell Dimension 4600 P4 2.8 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB & 320 GB hard drives. The print function works great. The copy function is independent of the PC and I have not used the fax. The issue is with the scanning function.

SOMETIMES the scanning works great. I can invoke xsane and scan using the flat bed or sheet feeder. However, after doing an initial scan (or sometimes several successful scans) I get errors to the effect "Failed to start scanner: Error during device I/O" or "Failed to start scanner: Invalid argument"

Often exiting and restarting xsane will clear the problem for a couple more scans. Sometimes powering the scanner off and back on will clear it. Or, just waiting a while will clear the issue and I can again scan.

I have tried changing the USB cable to another port without success. I still have the intermittent problem. I have noticed that even when the scanning error is present I can print to the device.

sane-find-scanner gives me:
found USB scanner (vendor=0x04f9, product=0x01ab) at libusb:003:003

ken@taylor11ub:~$ scanimage -L gives me:
device `brother2:bus3;dev1' is a Brother MFC-240C USB scanner

I am not sure where to look or what to look for. Any help or suggestions appreciated.

TIA,

Ken

since no one else has replied I will have a go.

1) are you inserting any other usb device during the troubles? if so you could look at creating persistent usb udev rules for the device.

2) I have a diff Multi function to you....I can run it as a gui or by the terminal....I suggest you run it by the terminal and see if any errors are showing up in the terminal

3) do you power this device on at boot up ....prior to boot up or after everything has loaded....try changing what you are doing....to see if you change its behaviour pls

4) I run my MFD as a normal user...so I have (dot) .sane which unpacks to xsane
do you have same? do any rc file within look funny?

5) my xsane reports to /var/log/syslog...and if I leave it off I can see an error (of course)

try posting those errors if not too large pls...or post them to a online storage site and link them ...I use www.ripway.com which is free if logs too big for those errors

Thanks for the reply aus9. I am not plugging in any other USB devices while using the scanner. In fact, the only other USB device I have attached is a UPS. I guess I could try with that unplugged. I have tried powering the MFC before and after booting. No apparent difference.

Recently I have been trying this device on a Ubuntu 8.04 upgrade. Could not even install the print capabilities on 8.0.4 so I reinstalled 7.10 and then the MFC and re-upgraded. The scanner went from scanning once to not scanning at all. I/O and invalid argument errors. A couple of times xsane seemed to "reboot" the MFC - sort of a power cycle process.

I will have a look at the logs etc. as you suggest. First let me see what else 8.04 has broken - and wait for some upgraded drivers from Brother. If all else fails I can run the MFC from within an XP virtual machine which I built for the purpose of running my old Visioneer scanner which would not run at all under Linux. I may also try a couple of other distros just for the heck of it.

Ken

I am running the MFC on Ubuntu 7.10 - working reasonably well and this is what I am seeing in the log

I scanned several pages until xsane threw a device I/O error. I did not see anything different in the log. I tried scanning several times more, got the same error and finally the MFC rebooted. I got the same block of log entries as when I manually power it off and on. The log for that evolution is as follows:

Perhaps someone can spot something wrong in this.

Ken

relooking at the fact that use brother driver gave me an idea or two

http://solutions.brother.com/linux/s...nux_faq-2.html

see how the later version of ubuntu has a prob....yours may be the same

2) but it also mentions selinux....and other such prelinking security tools may be the issue

so disable your selinux before installing

3) and this page mentions issues with lpr has to be installed first
http://solutions.brother.com/linux/s...s_drivers.html

so its gets messier but since you have had no luck its

turn off brother
download the lpr and cups wrapper drivers from brother
disable selinux ....in fact turn off the net to be safe
use your package manager to remove the current cups and lpr
install lpr with the ack of the brother link advice
install brother
reboot
turn on brother and see what happens

Thanks aus9. At first glance these items seem to relate only to printing. My MFC is printing OK at least as far as I have tested it. I looked at their scanner FAQ and found an item related to "Error during device I/O". I have already made the specified changes to /etc/udev/rules.d/45-libsane.rules. Otherwise I don't think I would have been able to scan at all.

According to their FAQ I need to restart the OS to read the rules. If the OS somehow forgot the rule and thus stopped scanning I would not expect it to relearn the rule until it was rebooted. However, if I restart xsane I can (usually) again scan.

I guess I can disable selinux and try installing all the scanner stuff and see what happens.

Thanks again,

Ken

Well, I disabled selinux and installed the Brother scanning drivers for the MFC 240c. I did not bother with the printing drivers for the moment. I then re-enabled selinux and fired up xsane. Works a whole lot better. Not 100% but a couple of random I/O errors were overcome by retrying the scan. I was so pleased I forgot most of what I had figured out about xsane and how to set the configuration to my liking.

Thanks again aus9. I guess I owe you a Fosters for this one!

Regards,

Ken