Issues with Brother All-In-One

leapfog

We have a Brother MFC-L6900 DW All-In-One device and want to use it as printer as well as document scanner. Without installing any packages, it is detected as a printer and we can print using a generic driver. But simple-scan complains about missing drivers.
After installing brscan4 (and rebooting), simple-scan is happy, but the printer (as of printing) isn't working anymore. It is also no longer autodetected as a printer in MATE's printer settings.
In Matrix I was asked to install brlaser but that didn't make the printer work or even show up again. When uninstalling brscan4, printing is possible again but scanning is no longer working.

Sebastian

leapfog So, I am not really a pro here. But my suggestion is the following:
I have seen that there are linux printer drivers for your device on the Brother website.
LPR printer driver and CUPSwrapper printer driver offered as deb and rpm package. You can't install those packages on Solus.

But you could extract the drivers out of those package archives and place them to the right spot in the solus system and then run the Mate Printer Config Tool an see whether you there then can select your printer.
Though I don't know where you would have to place the driver files in Solus. Here we need some help of others.

tresjam

leapfog

did you try to re-install the printer after installing brscan4 ?

brent

Sebastian But you could extract the drivers out of those package archives and place them to the right spot in the solus system

good use of 'could'--a crapshoot I've only won once. I got lucky with the folders. years ago,

leapfog New datapoint: booting without brscan4 (being able to print), then installing brscan4 (without reboot) and running udevadm control --reload-rules && udevadm trigger makes both work. I guess rebooting breaks printing but have no time to investigate further atm. Will continue as soon as I have the time.

mmmm.........interesting.brscan4, install, no reboot=scanner plugin works and printer works
brscan4 installed then reboot=scanner still works but no printer.

part of me thinks this is a symlink thing but in reality you don't have a print driver only a scanner driver/plugin (imo)....and another part of me thinks you should tear into print settings and select a driver just above or below your model (assuming you brother is not on the list). This has worked for me several times. I call it the old fake-out. The only variable is my Brother is just an b&W printer not an all-in-one. edit/sp

leapfog

New datapoint: booting without brscan4 (being able to print), then installing brscan4 (without reboot) and running udevadm control --reload-rules && udevadm trigger makes both work. I guess rebooting breaks printing but have no time to investigate further atm. Will continue as soon as I have the time.

Axios

For some reason I dont have my brother mfc setup in mate.
Maybe I ran into issues dont remb.
Dont Have the brain power or will to mess with it but at some point will try setting it up.
Out of ink now so its useless.
Use the hp laser mostly and a cannoscan both which never give me issues.

riffer

https://discuss.getsol.us/d/9833-printers-and-you/20

It's been a couple of years since I had a Brother all in one and the above worked perfectly.

Also, when I had the Brother I got far superior printing quality using the Brother website drivers as opposed to the detected ones. I don't know if this is still the case.

brent

@leapfog what's your update on this? just curious. (I had a couple more ideas)

leapfog

I kind of gave up on this and enabled an (automated) workaround: I wrote a systemd unit file that on start installs brscan4 and runs the udevadm commands, and on stop removes the package again. All I need to do now is, to make sure the printer is connected (via USB) on boot-time, then I can scan and print. I don't consider this as a fix, but it works.

If there's anything I can do to help really fixing this, like trying ideas @brent mentioned, I'm all ears.