BimmaBlog

I really like my Brother MFP, and its even better that it works across a network and on Linux too! here’s how to get it installed on Arch.

I use sudo on my system, if you don’t then run all sudo prefixed commands as root

Prerequisites

# cups
# ghostscript
# gsfonts
# foomatic-filters

PRINTER

Brother needs csh instead of bash so:

sudo pacman -Sy tcsh

and create a link

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/tcsh /bin/csh

If you are not already a member of the printer group, do so

usermod -aG lp [username]

Download the latest printer drivers, in rpm format, from this page:

http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/download_prn.html#DCP-540CN

Download the latest scanner drivers, in rpm format, from this page:

http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/download_scn.html#brscan2

Create a temporary directory, I used ~/DCP540, and copy the driver files into it

now we need to extract the files, you need a little package to do this:

sudo pacman -Sy rpmextract

then extract all the files

rpmextract.sh dcp540cnlpr-1.0.1-1.i386.rpm
rpmextract.sh dcp540cncupswrapper-1.0.1-1.i386.rpm
rpmextract.sh brscan2-0.2.4-0.i386.rpm

replacing file names if different.

You need to edit the cupswrapper driver to change all instances on /etc/init.d/ to /etc/rc.d/. I sued find and Replace in Mousepad.

Once finished copy all the files across to usr in the file system

sudo cp -r ~/DCP540/usr/* /usr

My printer runs over ethernet/network so now run the script to install

sudo /usr/local/Brother/Printer/dcp540cn/cupswrapper/cupswrapperdcp540cn

Now open up your browser and go to the CUPS setup page

localhost:631

# Click on manage Printers and Delete the Brother printer found!
# Click on Administration and then Find New Printers
# You should see your printer listed, add it, and click on through.
# Print a test page

Add cups to your daemons in /etc/rc.conf

Addendum:

I have found that rather than simply select the Brother printer from the list, if I enter the lpd settings instead, i get more printer options.

lpd://xx.xx.xx.xx/binary_pl

SCANNER

You will need xsane installed to use the scanner

sudo pacman -Sy xsane

You have already downloaded and copied over the scanner driver above, now you need to configure

/usr/local/Brother/sane/setupSaneScan2 -i

then

sudo brsaneconfig2 -a name=[FRIENDLY-NAME] model=[EXACT-MODEL] ip=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

for example

sudo brsaneconfig2 -a name=DCP540CN model=DCP-540CN ip=10.10.10.80

to check this has taken

brsaneconfig2 -q

Add yourself to the scanner group

sudo gpasswd -a <username> scanner

(log out and back in again to make it take)

Test by running xsane, it should find your device and you can try a scan

All thanks go to the Arch Wiki page on this:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Brother_MFC-420CN

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 18th, 2009 at 12:39 pm and is filed under Arch-Linux, Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.