Brother HL-3140CW redux

TraceyC

Thanks. It looks like the problem is that the system is using the wrong driver for your printer. There's an issue on our bug tracker for adding Brother printer drivers that hasn't seen traction in a long time. I'll ask our packagers if we can do anything here.

brent

When I go looking under printer properties, I see "usb://Brother/HL-3140CW%20series?serial=U63476L7J518823" under device url, but make and model is listed as "HP Designjet T920 PostScript". Is that correct?

no.
that is the computer picking the driver for you. Or it's the ghost of an old one. clear it out.
there is a command to find the real IP address "usb://blah" it's not coming to me now. but that would be the one you cut and paste into the field.
I've installed my brother monochrome many times in Budgie. In print settings/choose driver I have had sucess with:
generic black and white driver
a number above mine
a number below mine
--also a bro driver package in repo, install to make sure

there is no doubt in my mind you can get this to work.
edit?added babble

brent

ok this is the command and your brother printer's real address:

cut and paste that into the printer details box

now play with drivers til you can fake it or until solus gets you the package proper

DrunkenAlcoholic

I have a Brother MFC printer, and yes the reference to the bug report was mine a couple of years ago and yes nothing has been added for that printer. So what I did that worked is the following

Goto to the brother web site and download the .deb driver package for your printer, then extract the .dev and then extract the data.tar.gz, then place the driver folders in the corresponding Solus(/usr and /opt)
now add your printer again using the recommend method from the brother web site and any flags
Now the correct driver is installed, but for me it wouldn't print anything. to fix this issue I had to make a symlink.

if your printer does nothing, then remove this file: /usr/lib/cups/filter/brother_lpdwrapper_mfcj1300dw
this will be a different file name for your printer, so change "mfcj1300dw" to your printer, it should be in the same path

and replace it with a symlink to: /opt/brother/Printers/mfcj1300dw/cupswrapper/brother_lpdwrapper_mfcj1300dw
once again change "mfcj1300dw" to your printer found in the same path

Like this:

cd /usr/lib/cups/filter
sudo rm brother_lpdwrapper_mfcj1300dw
sudo ln -s /opt/brother/Printers/mfcj1300dw/cupswrapper/brother_lpdwrapper_mfcj1300dw`

EDIT//
Decided to quickly check your model of brother printer, you probably need to download both the .deb drivers and place them in the relevant paths for Solus

https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hl3140cw_us_eu&os=128

Choose to download .deb version and the following 2 drivers package

Extract the .deb packages and then extarct data.tar.gz, then place the extracted folder of /opt in Solus, do the same for for /usr, the LRP driver contain both /opt and /usr in the package, while cupswrapper .deb contains just /opt to extract, both can be found after extracting .deb in the data.tar.gz

Axios

DrunkenAlcoholic Thanks for putting together your fix and posting
for others to benefit from if needed.

brent

Axios

DrunkenAlcoholic Extract the .deb packages and then extarct data.tar.gz, then place the extracted folder of /opt in Solus, do the same for for /usr, the LRP driver contain both /opt and /usr in the package, while cupswrapper .deb contains just /opt to extract, both can be found after extracting .deb in the data.tar.gz

i wonder just how versatile that is?

Axios

brent I dunno seems pretty straight forward.

qsl

Axios Last time I asked about this, I was heavily advised to avoid this, but...

As long as I can rollback any changes, it's worth a shot.

Axios

qsl Shrugs. I think its a 50/50 proposition and skill level.
But when you need a printer what ya do
(Just thinking)

DrunkenAlcoholic

qsl

if it doesn't work for you, just remove the files that have been extracted to /opt and /usr, no harm done. its either going to work or its not going to work, as long as your not deleting and over writing random files in the root directory

riffer

I remember years ago I had a Brother printer/scanner and used to install it on Solus using the Brother rpm file. I posted it somewhere I am sure but can't find it.

An extra element was that the Brother printers at the time required 32 bit driver support to provide the best quality printouts. I don't know if this is still the case. I rather doubt it.

Regardless, the process involved installing the rpm a2ps glibc-32bit psutils and libusb-compat packages then gunzipping and bashing the Brother drivers. I last did this in 2021, so I would assume the process needs updating.

DrunkenAlcoholic

riffer

based on the driver package names(i386.deb) he might just have to do the process you talked about, but im not sure, lets see how he goes with just extracting the drivers into the correct locations, hopefully it will work, otherwise it would be really handy if you could find that post for him.

qsl

DrunkenAlcoholic Specifically, what string do I run in terminal to remove them?

Grtz.

DrunkenAlcoholic

qsl

Just run "sudo rm -rf /" .... just joking, don't do that

//EDIT
So I came back to edit this post to make the commands a little easier for you, you can do the following, download your drivers Lpr and Cups e.g to downloads and then open a terminal there.
https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hl3140cw_us_eu&os=128

Cups and Lpr Driver Install / Unistall for Hl3140cw

# Create a directory for each of our drivers
mkdir Brother-Lpr
mkdir Brother-Cups

# Extract the drivers from their .deb packages to the newly created folders
ar -vx hl3140cwlpr-1.1.2-1.i386.deb --output=./Brother-Lpr
ar -vx hl3140cwcupswrapper-1.1.4-0.i386.deb --output=./Brother-Cups

# Move to the created Brother-Lpr directory
cd Brother-Lpr
# Extract the data.tar.gz
tar -xvzf data.tar.gz
# Copy over recursively the extracted /opt and usr/ to the root  
sudo cp -r opt/ /
sudo cp -r usr/ /

# Move back to downloads
cd ..

# Move to the created Brother-Cups directory
cd Brother-Cups
# Extract the data.tar.gz
tar -xvzf data.tar.gz
# Copy over recursively the extracted /opt to the root  
sudo cp -r opt/ /

to "Uninstall" aka remove these, you could do the following

# Remove just the hl31440cw directory, leaving any other Brother driver installed alone
sudo rm -r /opt/brother/hl3140cw

# Remove the printconfig for hl3140cw
sudo rm /usr/bin/brprinttconf_hl3140cw

//EDIT 2
Looking at the AUR https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/brother-hl3140cw for your printer driver it seems you will need the following packages:
cups
psutils
glibc-32bit

sudo eopkg install cups psutils glibc-32bit

//EDIT 3
To make even easier you could save the bash script below to "install-hl3140cw-drivers.sh" and run it

chmod +x install-hl3140cw-drivers.sh
sudo ./install-hl3140cw-drivers.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Install Brother-hl3140cw on Solus

set -euo pipefail

# Version + release of the .deb packages, change when updated
LPR_VERSION="1.1.2-1"
CUPS_VERSION="1.1.4-0"

# URLs for the .deb packages
LPR_URL="https://support.brother.com/g/b/files/dlf/dlf007068/hl3140cwlpr-${LPR_VERSION}.i386.deb"
CUPS_URL="https://download.brother.com/welcome/dlf007070/hl3140cwcupswrapper-${CUPS_VERSION}.i386.deb"


# Temporary working directory
WORKDIR="$(mktemp -d)"
cd "$WORKDIR"

# Install dependencies
echo "==> Installing dependencies…"
DEPS=(cups psutils a2ps ghostscript glibc)
if [[ "$(uname -m)" == "x86_64" ]]; then
  DEPS+=(glibc-32bit)
fi
eopkg install --yes "${DEPS[@]}"

# Download Lpr and Cups drivers
echo "==> Downloading Brother packages…"
wget -qO hl3140cwlpr.deb "$LPR_URL"
wget -qO hl3140cwcupswrapper.deb "$CUPS_URL"

# Extract the drivers and data.tar.gz to root /
extract_deb() {
  local debfile="$1"
  ar x "$debfile" data.tar.gz
  tar --numeric-owner -C / -xzf data.tar.gz
  rm -f data.tar.gz control.tar.gz debian-binary
}

# Extraction process for Lpr driver
echo "==> Extracting LPR driver…"
extract_deb hl3140cwlpr.deb

# Extraction process for Cups wrapper
echo "==> Extracting CUPS wrapper…"
extract_deb hl3140cwcupswrapper.deb

# Reload cups
echo "==> Reloading CUPS to pick up new filters…"
systemctl restart cups

# Remove tmp directory
echo "==> Cleaning up…"
cd /
rm -rf "$WORKDIR"

echo "Drivers installed successfully!"

qsl

DrunkenAlcoholic Cool! Thanks!