setting up a brother printer mfc7820n to Fedora 7
 

To those responding to this post I'm extremely new to linux and fedora so please be as specific as possible. Thanks in advance. It's community support like this that helped me make the move away from Windows.

Iam running Fedora 7 on an HP Slimline PC that was built for Win Vista. We have all our PC's printing off of a Brother MFC 7820n all-in-one machine. The printer is accessed through a router.

My problem is that I can't print. I am using Open Office for my various docs.

Thanks

Have you installed the printer in your computer (Technically, installed the "queue", including driver.)?
It will be seen as a network printer.

If already installed:
....did the test page work OK?
....does the printer show up as an option in OOo?
....can you print from any application?

I can't print from any application, the test page queue's up but nothing happens (I also don't get an error message of any kind), and I'm not sure by what you mean when you ask if the printer shows up as an option in OOo. There is an icon for printing but when I try to print the print job just sits in limbo.

When you install a printer, you would give it a name---that would then show as an option when you go to print from an application.

If you attempted to install the printer and the test page did not print, then nothing else is going to work. One thing to check is whether you are using the right IP address for the printer. Also, try dmesg or lshw to see if the printer is being detected. (I'm not 100% sure how this works with networked printers--I have only done it once----Now that i think of it, I'm pretty sure the printer installer searched the network a found the printer I was trying to install.)

I have gone through the wizard if you will (system>administration>printing) and setup the printer many times over. The driver appears to be listed (script 3, don't know what that means) but after I've named it and told the pc to apply it the test print jobs show the status of "processing." They never change.

I figure I must be setting up some little thing incorrectly.
Thanks for the speedy responses.

Does it search the network and find the printer, or do you have to enter the IP address manually?

Can you ping the IP address of the printer?--just to be sure that the basic communication is there.

I don't know how to do that. The computer hasn't asked for an IP address and it doesn't search for it. It allows me to name it two different ways and and then name a location.

How do I ping the printer? My other computers are running Windows. Does that matter? The printer is a Brother MFC 7820n.

Hmmm---if it is a networked printer, you somehow have to tell it how to connect. Are you selecting the "network printer" option during setup?
If it does not search the network and find the printer, then the only way it can work is if you somehow supply the IP.

You might try looking at the Windows printer setup to see how the printer is seen from there.

To ping the printer:
Open a terminal and enter "ping" + the IP for the printer---eg:
ping 192.168.1.103 (typical IP address for a small LAN with a router)