I got a Brother HL-2170W wireless laser printer, and I know it works because I have it working quite well now under Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit on my laptop. I have numerous different computers in the house running various operating systems and have no intention of having any kind of "print sharing" network unless I have to in order to make it work. I really just want each individual computer to be able to access the printer wirelessly on it's own. Windows Vista 64 Laptop is finished; now I am tackling the desktop running openSuSE 10.3 64-bit, and I am trying to install the printer through CUPS, but the printer driver for the HL-2170W is not listed under the available drivers in the list. There is an available CUPS driver for my exact printer but the only place I can download it is from the Brother website and only in .dmg format intended for Mac OS X. I tried the usual techniques like downloading the driver in .dmg format on a Windows computer and using dmg2iso to access it as a .iso image and get the driver out so I can put it on my linux desktop, but dmg2iso does not recognize the .dmg driver file as a valid disc image, and neither does magiciso, which is also supposed to work on .dmg files, so I don't know if it's some special type of .dmg file or what, but nothing wants to open it so that I can extract the CUPS driver and use it on my Linux desktop. I also tried mounting the .dmg image on my linux desktop as an HFS+ filesystem, but the mount utility thought there was something not right about the .dmg image too and refused to mount it. The Mac OS X CUPS driver is downloadable from Brother at the following URL:
http://welcome.solutions.brother.com...&dispforlist=1
Also, when I try to figure out CUPS, it asks me my printing protocol, so I select IPP since the printers instructions say it supports IPP, and then it asks me for the device URI, but I don't know how I find out what the device URI is. Examples cups gives of valid IPP URIs are ipp://hostname/ipp/ and ipp://hostname/ipp/port1 I don't know what that even means. Then CUPS goes on to ask me to either select the printer from the list in which the printer is not listed or else provide a PPD file which is of course stuck in an unopenable .dmg file, so I'm not really sure what to do. I really don't care about security or whether or not the neighbour tries to hack into it while I'm napping, or any of that paranoid stuff; I just want to know how to make it print wirelessly from my linux desktop.
What I do know from Windows test page:
Node Type: Brother NC-7400w, IEEE 802.11b/g (Active)
Node Firmware Ver.: Firmware Ver.1.06 (07.11.21)
Ethernet Address: 00-1e-4c-61-48-30
Node name: BRW001E4C614830
Active services: BRN008077CB867F, BINARY_P1, TEXT_P1, POSTSCRIPT_P1, PCL_P1, BRN008077CB867F_AT
TCP/IP: Enabled
NetBIOS/IP: Enabled
LegacyAuth: Enabled
TELNET: Enabled
LPD: Enabled
IPP: Enabled
POP3/SMTP: Enabled
TFTP: Enabled
LLMNR: Enabled
IPv6: Disabled
APIPA: Enabled
WebBasedManagement: Enabled
SNMP: Enabled
Raw Port: Enabled
WebServices: Enabled
FTP: Enabled
mDNS: Enabled
LLTD: Disabled
IP Address: 169.254.206.119 (via APIPA)
Subnet Mask: 255.255. 0.0
IP Gateway: 0.0.0.0
IP Config: AUTO
Boot Tries: 3
IP Filter: Disabled
GW Timeout (sec): 5
DNS Address Config: AUTO
Primary DNS Server: 0.0.0.0
Secondary DNS Server: 0.0.0.0
NetBIOS Name: BRW001E4C614830
WINS Address Config: AUTO
Primary WINS Server: 0.0.0.0
Secondary WINS Server: 0.0.0.0
Printer Mail Address:
brn008077cb867f@example.com
SMTP Server: 0.0.0.0
SMTP Port: 25
POP3 Server: 0.0.0.0
POP3 Port: 110
mDNS Service Name: Brother HL-2170W series
WebServices Name: Brother HL-2170W series [001e4c614830]
Comm. Mode: Infrastructure
Name (SSID): LUB997
Authentication Mode: Open System
Encryption Mode: NONE
Wireless Link Status: Link OK, 11g(54Mbps), Receiving Signal = 3, Operating Ch = 6
Tx Power Code: Full, 1, 0
I don't know what a lot of that means, but hopefully somone might.