Brother Printer
 

Hi,I am trying to connect a Brother DCP-J152W printer to Slackware 14.1, but all I get from the internet is dead ends.Has anybody any ideas?

How is your printer attached? (USB or Wireless LAN)? For the driver packages go to the Brother website.

Let us know if you need further help with this.

Hi,I've spent a lot of time on the Brother website but the downloads seem to refer only to DOS-based equipment. I am only to willing to admit to a general ignorance of the process of converting these to Linux capability.
BTW,I'm using the USB connection.

I just looked at that web site. I only looked at two of the categories: Downloads and Supported OS; and I see Linux links in both of them. However, a potential problem I saw is the Linux category in Downloads only has .rpm and .deb listed. I have not been using Slackware long enough to know how to get around that issue. Although it is possible there are more formats buried under a few more links.

As Randicus Draco Albus mentioned, Brother provide RPM and DEB packages, and I'm sure that he'll be able to guide you through the process of driver installation if necessary. (I missed the fact that you're using slackware.)

As it happens, the LPR printer driver and CUPSwrapper binary driver packages (in either .deb or.rpm format) are relatively simple with only a few files in each, (I checked with ark), so installation should be possible without using the intended package tools.

This might be helpful with converting the .rpm files to a compressed archive suitable for slackware.
http://www.slackware.com/config/packages.php

This doc suggests rpm for brother in Slack
http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:har...r_installation
It changes it using rpm2txz

To EDDY1, I found that docs slackware page and am trying to follow it including rpm2xz.
To "ferrari",I've spent a lot of time looking for "ark",having gone through the agony of selecting files etc. How do I find,and use, ark?I've been chasing ark and arc all over Google. Many thanks in anticipation!

Why don't you just use 'rpm2txz' as suggested in the guide EDDY! linked to? (I used ark to unpack the DEB archive just to have a look at it since I'm using an RPM-based distro)

Eddy; big oops!I should have said rpm2txz;I left the 't' out which may have confused you. I'd already done as you suggested but it wasn't enough apparently.The howtos on the Slack Docs page specifically refer to opening the resultant files with 'ark',which I've been unable to find;hence my question;how do I acquire ark and probably,how do I use it?

Ark is a KDE archiving tool. Here you go

http://pkgs.org/slackware-14.1/slack..._64-2.txz.html

Download and install it.

While doing this make sure you look at the scripts some are for AMD-64.

If you installed "everything" during installation, you have ark. Unless you removed the KDE packages from the list of packages to install, there should be no need to install it.
will tell you if it is installed.
No. I am of no use. I am new to Slackware. I cheated and set up my printer with KDE's Manage Printer utility.

To ferrari and others:
this is what I get in MC when I look for "cupswrapper" with slocate:
sh-4.2$ slocate cupswrapper
/opt/brother/Printers/dcpj152w/cupswrapper
/opt/brother/Printers/dcpj152w/cupswrapper/brcupsconfpt1
/opt/brother/Printers/dcpj152w/cupswrapper/brother_dcpj152w_printer_en.ppd
/opt/brother/Printers/dcpj152w/cupswrapper/cupswrapperdcpj152w
/var/log/packages/dcpj152wcupswrapper-3.0.0-i386-1
/var/log/scripts/dcpj152wcupswrapper-3.0.0-i386-1
/home/james/Desktop/dcpj152w_cupswrapper_GPL_source_3.0.0-1.tar.gz
/home/james/Linux_Manipulation/Brother-Printer/dcpj152wcupswrapper-3.0.0-i386-1.txz
/home/james/Linux_Manipulation/Brother-Printer/dcpj152wcupswrapper-3.0.0-1.i386.rpm
/home/james/Linux_Manipulation/Brother-Printer/option_cupswrapper17.pdf
sh-4.2$
I'm not sure if this can help

Well, I can see that you have
and the guide mentions using 'installpkg' to install the .txz package
but before you do that you need the lpr package too. (It will be called dcpj152wlpr-3.0.0-1.i386.txz) That needs to be installed first.

Did you read and understand the guide completely?

Also, don't forget to make sure that you are using 32-bit or 64-bit packages applicable to your system.

ferrari
Thanks,
I'm using 32 bit.
I actually had all of those packages in the system in order and converted using rpm2txz and ran installpkg successfully,I believe.
I hadn't realized that,on the guide page the pink address indicated the actual 'link' to CUPS.
I now have the joy of learning to understand CUPS!
Again,many thanks for the help so far.