Brother scanner in Slackware

Mig21 · 10-18-2007, 08:21 PM

Hi

I bought an all-in-one printer/fax/scanner but all i want to get working is the scanner (I already have a printer).

The device is a Brother MFC-240C and according to http://solutions.brother.com/linux/s...e_drivers.html it's supported.

The problem is that the software Brother made seems to be written exclusively for the distros listed on the website. I hope I am mistaken.

Does anyone have any brother scanner working on slackware using brscan2?

Thanks in advance

BCarey · 10-18-2007, 09:28 PM

The Brother drivers work fine for me for a few different printers/mfcs. You must download the rpms for the lpr driver, the cups driver and brscan2. You must then convert them to tgzs using a program called alien (maybe at http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/alien/), using the -c and -t flags. Installpkg the resulting packages, add your user to the scanner group, restart cups, logout and login, and you should be good to go. I find cups even autodetects the printers these days. The last time I did one I opened up localhost:631 and the printer was already there.

Brian

Mig21 · 10-18-2007, 10:07 PM

Thanks for the tips BCarey, but I still can't get it working. I did everything you said.

When I run xsane (as root, just in case) it says there are no devices available. I see this in /var/log/messages when turning on the device:

Code:

Oct 18 22:58:12 legrand-sw kernel: usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 6
Oct 18 22:58:12 legrand-sw kernel: usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Oct 18 22:58:12 legrand-sw kernel: drivers/usb/class/usblp.c: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 6 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x04F9 pid 0x01AB
Oct 18 22:58:12 legrand-sw kernel: scsi3 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Oct 18 22:58:17 legrand-sw kernel: scsi 3:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Brother  MFC-240C         1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
Oct 18 22:58:17 legrand-sw kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sdb
Oct 18 22:58:17 legrand-sw kernel: sd 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0

Looks like the printer is detected, and some kind of usb storage device, and the first 2 lines are the scanner I think.

I plugged in my old standalone scanner and that works fine with xsane. Help?

Also out of curiosity I went to the cups control panel (in the browser) and it detects the printer but if I click to install it the list of manufacturers doesn't have Brother in it

BCarey · 10-18-2007, 10:21 PM

What version of Slackware are you using?

Brian

Mig21 · 10-18-2007, 10:25 PM

Slackware 12

BCarey · 10-18-2007, 10:48 PM

Did you convert with alien and use the ct flags?

Brian

Mig21 · 10-18-2007, 11:50 PM

I'm an idiot, I forgot the -c flag. Thanks a lot Brian!

I have a habit of recording the solutions to nasty Linux problems I run into

http://littlesvr.ca/linux-stuff/arti...annerslack.php

allend · 10-19-2007, 12:43 AM

Another tip. If you want to rerun the install scripts, do so from a cshell (csh), not the the default bash shell.

H_TeXMeX_H · 10-19-2007, 08:15 AM

Try this:

1) Download and extract the rpm. Make sure you get the brscan2 driver NOT the brscan driver. I would use either

Code:

rpm2cpio brscan2-0.2.4-0.i386.rpm | cpio -id --quiet
# or this:
rpm2tgz brscan2-0.2.4-0.i386.rpm
# then extract the resulting tgz

2) 'cd' into the resulting 'brscan2-0.2.4-0.i386' directory and make a new directory called 'usr' and move all the other directories there into 'usr'. So now inside 'usr' you should have 'bin' 'lib' and 'local'.

3) 'cd' into the 'brscan2-0.2.4-0.i386' directory, the top level, where you can see only the 'usr' directory when you run 'ls'. Now 'su' into root and run 'makepkg'. Follow the instructions, and that should get you a Slackware package ready to be installed with 'installpkg'.

Good luck.

BCarey · 10-19-2007, 10:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mig21

I'm an idiot, I forgot the -c flag. Thanks a lot Brian!

The first time I tried it I used rpm2tgz and it failed also. Anyway, glad it's working.

Brian

BCarey · 10-19-2007, 10:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by allend

Another tip. If you want to rerun the install scripts, do so from a cshell (csh), not the the default bash shell.

Why?

Brian

allend · 10-20-2007, 10:42 AM

BCarey,

I made the suggestion to run the scripts from a cshell because the Brother scripts are written for cshell and not for bash. The Brother web page made a big point of this when I installed my Brother DCP110C.

I find that the install scripts for my Brother DCP110C build the requisite files OK, but the default directories for stopping and restarting the cups server are not correct for Slackware. Hence the need for a reboot before a printer/scanner is recognised, (plus it initialises the USB that my system uses).

My Brother scripts contain lines like '/etc/init.d/cups restart'.
Slackware has /etc/init.d symlinked to /etc/rc.d/init.d. When running the Brother scripts, it may help to create a symlink in /etc/rc.d/init.d which points to the Slackware cups start/stop/restart script.
i.e ln -s /etc/rc.d/rc.cups /etc/rc.d/init.d/cups

BCarey · 10-20-2007, 01:24 PM

allend,

Interesting. Since I restarted cups on my own, I never noticed.

Brian