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Brother printer/scanner installation

Brother makes a variety of printers and multifunction devices. There is a strong commitment to Linux support, but the driver packages are offered only in .rpm or .deb format. So what does a Slackware user do?

This example describes the installation of a Brother MFC-J825DW in 64-bit Slackware for printing and scanning.

Prerequisites

Visit the Brother Linux Driver Homepage https://support.brother.com and download the appropriate drivers in .rpm format. For this device the LPR driver, the cupswrapper driver and the brscan 64bit scanner driver are required. While there, read the install instructions for both the printer driver and the scanner driver. There is a lot there that is irrelevant to Slackware, but also some important information.

Brother printer drivers are 32-bit only (implied by Pre-required Procedure (5) on the Before the Installation page) so for 64-bit Slackware you will need to install at least the multilib glibc-solibs package. Newer models may also require the multilib gcc-g++ package. These packages are available from https://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/multilib/ and https://slackware.uk/people/alien/multilib/

You will need to be logged in as root in a terminal window for the following

Package preparation

Convert the original Brother .rpm files to Slackware .txz packages using rpm2txz with the following options.

-c ensures correct file permissions

-S extracts the install scripts in the rpm (as rpm2txz says “USE WITH CAUTION!”)

-n gives a name to the package in standard Slackware format

-d makes a slack-desc from the metadata in the rpm

rpm2txz -c -S -n -d mfcj825dwlpr-3.0.0-1.i386.rpm
rpm2txz -c -S -n -d mfcj825dwcupswrapper-3.0.0-1.i386.rpm
rpm2txz -c -S -n -d brscan4-0.4.1-3.x86_64.rpm
If errors about db4 occur when executing the above commands, remove the contents of /var/lib/rpm. This is unlikely to be a problem on a freshly installed system.

Reviewing and updating the converted packages

Heeding the warning from rpm2txz about using the -S option, review the install/doinst.sh scripts in the converted packages. This is easy to do by opening the package with ark from a filemanager.

In this case only the doinst.sh script for the brscan4 package was altered the to avoid creating symlinks in /usr/lib in 64-bit Slackware.

mkdir temp
cd temp
explodepkg ../brscan4-0.4.1-x86_64-3.txz
nano install/doinst.sh
makepkg -l y -c y ../brscan4-0.4.1-x86_64-3.txz

Create a symlink

ln -s /etc/rc.d/rc.cups /etc/init.d/cups

This allows the Brother install scripts to stop and start the CUPS daemon

Install the converted packages

installpkg mfcj825dwlpr-3.0.0-i386-1.txz
installpkg mfcj825dwcupswrapper-3.0.0-i386-1.txz
installpkg brscan4-0.4.1-x86_64-3.txz

Complete the installation

Follow the instructions from Brother to complete the installation.

Open a web browser and go to http://localhost:631 to configure the printer in CUPS.

Run a command like

brsaneconfig4 -a name=SCANNER model=MFC-J825DW ip=10.1.1.5

to configure the scanner.

It has been reported that some Brother devices with scanning capability have the default scanning mode set to “24bit Color[Fast]” and that this mode is not compatible with Linux. Set your scanning software (e.g. xsane) to use “24bit Color” as the default scanning mode.

Sources

 howtos:hardware:brother_printer_installation ()