I should say first,
I could swear there was once a time (way back when) before Apple was laying claim to "cups", that it was actually a useful printing system. Now (imo) it seems kind of deliberately less able.

Anyways, after seeing a few threads from those having troubles getting cups to work on their Brother printers, I decided to give it a try on my HL-L8360cdw. Which (these days) has been connected to my laptop by usb.

It was a challenge.

The Cups web-based setup could detect my usb printer, then gave a few Model selections for other Brother printers, and the option to provide my own ppd file. But while there may be a ppd file for the 8360cdw somewhere, I could not find it. And even if I found it, in "man cups" it says that ppd files are now deprecated and will not exist in the next version.

And with my printer being usb connected, it was not showing me any option for a "model" of "ipp". But I know for a fact that my 8360cdw does in fact support IPP.

Unless I was completely mistaken, or the Cups admin screens were incorrect, for it to provide the "ipp" option your printer must be networked with an actual ip address. Apparently No one at Apple thought that someone might need to IPP over usb thus lacking an ip address.

So I needed to add a 3rd network adapter to my overworked laptop pc, for the single purpose of connecting to my printer using ipv4. Then suddenly Cups showed me an "IPP" option under "model".

And of course I had to reconfig networking so the printer does not be seen on the internet.

If they had not deliberately made Cups less able, all the extra effort could have been avoided.

Actually they did, but it has flaws, due to the nature of USB.

The printer you have can connect to WiFi, so why not use that?

(1) My laptop is already using it's wifi to give me my wan/outside internet connection. Actually, it is using usb wifi (rtl8812au) but that is the only wifi adapter I have with long-enough range. I call it a network interface.

* Running two wifi adapters at the same time creates rf interference with each other.

(2) One usb ethernet (Asix 88178) for connecting to my Raspberry 4b, needed for caching dns server. Because the Rpi needs too much power to be used as an OTG "gadget mode" peripheral on this laptop's (weak) usb ports. The Rpi connects to it's outside internet through the laptop's wifi (nat'd) because it's built-in wifi does not have enough range.

* I tried running bind9 directly on the laptop, it did not work, bind9 seemed to be incompatible with networkmanager on Slackware.

* Even with a powered usb hub, the Rpi still needed too much power for OTG mode.

* The Ax88178 does need it's own powered usb hub to remain stable.

(3) And now, a "Linksys etherfast pcm100" pcmcia ethernet card, to connect to the printer in linux. Just for now, until I can get some newer cardbus ethernet with windows support for when my dual boot laptop is in windows mode.

* Right now, when it is in windows mode, I do not need Cups, windows can connect to the printer with usb.

https://download.brother.com/welcome...ler-2.2.3-1.gz

The 2.2.3.1 driverTools install-as-root works for three brother printers on multiple Slackware64 15.0 here and there provided rc.cups is executable.
It embeds the ppd files for most recent brother's printers.

post 16 and others.

...

I just tested this with one of my printers connected via USB.

CUPs detected it and it showed up under "Local Printers", using the device: usb://Brother/MFC-L2750DW%20series?serial=Exxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It worked for me with both the Generic PCL 5 driver, and the "wrong model, but pretty close" Brother driver. I didn't install anything extra to get it working in either case.

Is your user's account included in the "lp" group? If it isn't, you won't have appropriate permissions to print.

I have a router that does NAT properly, and all of my internal WIFI devices connect to that router. My brother printer with a static IP on the internal WIFI network and all of my phones and laptops worked well together. (I could print from CUPS on Manjaro properly, also CUPS on Debian, Sparky Linux, MintDE. Elementary Linux, and all of my Android devices (although I am not sure if Android uses CUPS or some google thingy). I did need the Brother app on my Android, and the PPD file I downloaded from the Brother support pages for CUPS.

My printer COULD use the USB interface, but I never bothered with that.

Blog entry:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...64-15-0-38601/

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