I wonder if 'vuescan' supports brother better, i just today bought it for my old hp 5370c which is detected by sane but it has never been able to handle it correctly. Vuescan demo is also on slackbuilds.

I tried these commands by replacing them with brother4:bus2;dev3 since im using USB, and both give me 37 bytes files each and output the following in terminal:

I don't know what that means. Also, not sure this matters, but i'm logged in as root in Slackware, as opposed to just a regular user in Ubuntu. So, i do not get the root warning prompt from XSane to "Continue at your own risk" in Ubuntu.

Vuescan does list MFC-J870DW as supported on their website. Ubuntu has Simple Scan too, but i think that is based off XSane.

Hello,

I just purchased a Brother MFCJ-870DW All-In-One but I am about to return it. I have the same problem described in this chain:

Slackware 14.1 (linux 3.10.17)
sane 1.0.24-x86_64-1
brscan4-0.4.2-3.x86_64

I choose the Brother printer because Brother has had good linux support in the past. I use the USB connection. The printer and FAX printer drivers installed OK and work fine.

The scanner driver installs OK, but doesn't appear to work. From either an ordinary user, or root:

cher:/home/mradtke scanimage -L
device `brother4:bus1;dev1' is a Brother MFC-J870DW USB scanner
cher:/home/mradtke

cher:/home/mradtke scanimage >piggy
scanimage: rounded value of br-x from 215.9 to 215.88
scanimage: rounded value of br-y from 355.6 to 355.567
cher:/home/mradtke

In the second case, scanimage just quits. No error message. The
output file contains:

cher:/home/mradtke cat piggy
P6
# SANE data follows
1680 2322
255
cher:/home/mradtke

I tried the wired ethernet connection with the same results.

I tried a different computer with slackware 14.0, 32 bit, with the 32 bit drivers and got same results.

I too only have the 24-bit color[Fast] option. After reading this chain, I tried scanning with the True Grey option and it works fine.

Do you have any advice on how to proceed, or should I just return the printer?

Thanks,
Mike

I returned the printer.

Dejavu... Maybe this will help others...

I just bought a Brother MFC-L2740DW and have similar problems as everyone else is reporting. Printing is easy.... it just works. Scanning is not easy. Under Mageia 3 I loaded brscan4-0.4.3-0 and ran "brsaneconfig4 -a name=brother model=MFC-L2740DW ip=192.168.1.50" and xsane can see it and scan from it fine... as long as I don't choose color. There is only one color option- "24bit Color[Fast]" and if that is selected, Xsane 0.998 will simply die after the printer starts sending data. No error message, no core dump, just "poof". Same result if I switch to a USB connection (had to add the USB ID). All the non-color modes work fine (and as a bonus, one-pass-double-sided works in gscan2pdf !!)

Using my Fedora 20 laptop, if I connect with USB and load brscan4-0.4.3-0, it works fine in Xsane in color (I don't recall what the color profile name is, however). And I didn't get network scanning working on that laptop for some reason (and didn't put much effort into it).

I updated the firmware on the printer to the latest (D1410031627 1.01 B1407141000) (you can do this on the web interface automatically!!!) and it made no difference.

Called Brother to complain about the fact that the Brother "Linux" page doesn't list *any* MFC-L model as supported or which drivers to use and that you can't even get to recent versions of brscan from that page either (the one they keep pointing people to; I had to search around for 30 minutes to find it offered for a DIFFERENT MODEL PRINTER on one of their pages). Of course, 20 minutes later and three transfers and I just get the "we don't support Linux over the phone or chat" crap. Thanks, Brother. This is my first Brother device and I bought it because of recommendations about good Linux support. I now question that... but that is a different topic.

Anyway, I will be upgrading to Mageia 5 when it comes out in a month or so (I skipped upgrading to 4 since I don't like upgrading often) and hopefully that will give better results (like Fedora 20 did). For now, I set up the network scan-to-ftp feature and that does work great and will hold me over (the printer can even generate PDF's!). Other than the above scan issue, I am impressed with the device so far. I do wish it had gigabit instead of 100-base, and that it had a usb port for scan-to-usb-device and print-from-usb-device.

Hello,

If you read this chain, you'll see that in October of 2014 I bought a MFC-J870DW All-In-One. The printer
worked fine, but I could not get the scanner to work. I had the exact problems noted, in this chain.

Now, 18 months later, the Epson has reached end of life. I really wanted a Brother, so yesterday I purchased a MFC-J885DW figuring, this issue would have been solved by now. It wasn't.

I am using 64 bit Slackware 14.1. The scanner driver is brscan4-0.4.3-3.x86_64.

When listing the options using "scanimage -A" for modes I still only get:

--mode Black & White|Gray[Error Diffusion]|True Gray|24bit Color[Fast]

24bit Color[Fast] is listed as the default.

I have verified the behavior with both usb and network connections.

Has anybody found a solution to do color scanning, or do I need to return this printer too?

Thanks,
Mike

If you want a recommendation, I'm happily using a Brother DCP 7060D over USB. It scans fine.

I even have SlackBuilds for the drivers:

https://github.com/duganchen/my_slac...ther_dcp_7060d

Thanks for the prompt reply dugan.

However, the Brother DCP 7060D is monochrome and I can do monochrome scans with my MFC-J870DW. It only crashes on color.

Mike

1 members found this post helpful.

The 7060D is a monochrome printer and a color scanner. It scans in color perfectly.

dugan,

I thought about this last night. Duh! Sorry for the confusion. I'll take a look at your driver package and post the results back here.

Thanks,
Mike

dugan,

I looked at your slackbuild script. It is for the same version of brscan4 that I'm using.

I also see your comment "24-bit Color Fast doesn't work. This is a well-known bug."

I am aware of that issue, but with my printer, only the 24bit Color[Fast] mode is available, which of course doesn't work. Does the driver compute the modes from a conversation with the printer, or are the modes for a particular printer configured somewhere?

Thanks,
Mike

I don't know.

What I do know is that with the 7060D, you have both the 24-bit Color Fast mode, which does not work, and you also have the 24-Bit Color mode, which works perfectly.

Hello,

On the last day that I could return the MFC-J885DW, Brother came through with a new version of libsane-brother4.so.1.0.7 (64 bit only). It fixed the scanner problem.

I've had several discussions with Brother support since then but I was not able to get a commitment as to whether the fix would be rolled into future versions of brscan4 or not. However, I do have Brother's permission to share the library with anyone who needs it. Since I cannot post a binary to this forum, I am open to suggestions on how to make the fix available to others.

Brother said that they will only support linux on a case by case basis.

Thanks,
Mike

2 members found this post helpful.

Do you know if this version of libsane-brother4.so.1.0.7 works with the MFC-J870DW also? Fill free to post the link to a file sharing site like mediafire.

Thanks in advance

seskanda,

As far as I know, the fix works for all scanners that use brscan4 on 64 bit slackware 14.1. Brother seems to think that it will work for 14.2 as well, but they didn't share why they think so.

You can find a copy at http://5by9.net/brscan4/libsane-brother4.so.1.0.7

Please first make a backup copy of your current /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother4.so.1.0.7, and then copy the updated version into place. You now should be able to scan using the "24bit Color[Fast]" mode. "24bit Color" still segment faults for me, but that's OK since I can use the "24bit Color[Fast]" mode.

Please let us know whether it worked for you.

Thanks,
Mike