Brother printer problem

English Hardware
#1

I have a Brother HL 2140 laser printer.
It works on Mandriva and Ubuntu, but because it does not come with a PPD file, only an lpr and cupswrapper file - both of which are loaded onto the computer but Yast cannot seem to find, it will not work properly.
What have I missed here, and how do I get it to work?
DCM

#2

Hi dcm1943

I have installed drivers for a couple of brother printers over the years with earlier versions of suse.

I assume you’ve installed the rpm packages ok, and now all that remains is to configure the printer. Try doing that with cups http interface via your favorite browser:

http://localhost:631/

See how that goes…

#3

I have an HL-2040 printer. I could use and configure this printer in all previous versions of Suse except for 11.1 (not to mention the fact that there’s no driver for my model and there has never been one, I’ve always used 2060 without a problem).

So I simply went to the Brother web site and downloaded their both printer driver rpm files, installed them, went to YAST - Hardware - Printer, it found the new driver right away and configured it automatically - piece of cake. Brother is one of few vendors which supports Linux very well.

PS. Before you install the Brother drivers, delete your printer from YAST first just to make sure.

#4

you seem to have got some very sound advice dcm1943; (meaning I agree with all they say);

one of our forum gurus, swerdna posted this howto on his website:

HowTo Install a Brother Laser Printer HL-2040 in Suse 10.x, 11.x + User Notes

he talks of the lpr being installed before the wrapper;

how is it all coming along out there for you?

#5

Bought a Brother HL-2140 last week. This is what I did to set it up properly under openSUSE 11.1 x86_64 GNOME.

Followed the instructions on swerdna’s website, both rpm(s) installed without an issue and I was able to see the printer in CUPS web interface.

However, I was unable to print the test page. It was resolved by following the instruction here about CUPS >= 1.2:

Brother Solutions Center : Brother Driver for Linux Distributions

Next is printing in GNOME. I cannot see my printer under any GTK based application (evince, firefox, etc). Found out that the default settings in GNOME “Printing” only allows accessing the printer by root. Just add yourself to the list and you’re all set!!