Help getting Brother scanner to work in openSUSE 11.4

English Hardware
1

Hi @all,

I have an old Brother DCP-115C printer/scanner over here, which was sitting in the basement for 2 years of my absence abroad… anyway I want to get it run again, with my openSUSE 11.4 but the scanner does not work. All the scanner-programs fail with “invalid Argument”. The printer works fine. Thats strange, because this device always worked perfectly in Linux
I installed the drivers from the respective Brother site: Brother Solutions Center : Brother Driver for Linux Distributions and all the drivers are installed succesfully without errors. In YaST, the scanner can be seen, but when I test it in YaST, it also tells me that the test failed because of an invalid argument.

steffen@linux-05vn:~> lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 046d:0802 Logitech, Inc. Webcam C200
Bus 002 Device 006: ID 058f:6362 Alcor Micro Corp. Flash Card Reader/Writer
Bus 006 Device 002: ID 046d:c52b Logitech, Inc. Unifying Receiver
Bus 006 Device 003: ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)
Bus 007 Device 002: ID 045e:0730 Microsoft Corp. 
Bus 009 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 009 Device 002: ID 04f9:018c Brother Industries, Ltd DCP-115C

I know that there is/was a problem with the permissions for this device to get it working under normal user permissions. These problems usually are solved by editing some config files. On the brother solutions site, there is a description on what to do:

openSUSE11.2
1. Open "/etc/udev/rules.d/55-libsane.rules"
2. Add the following 2 lines at the last of the device entry. (just before "# The following rule...")
# Brother
ATTR{idVendor}=="04f9", MODE="0664", GROUP="lp", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"
3. Restart the OS.

taken from Brother Solutions Center : Brother Driver for Linux Distributions

but this is just for openSUSE 11.2. Of course I did what the description says, but it doesn´t have any influence: the scanner does not work. Moreover, even scanning with root permissions does not work. The scanner program fails with the same error: “invalid argument”.

In the wiki on ubuntuusers.de I also found other howtos, which describe changing other config files. But either these config files do not exist in openSUSE or changing them does not have any effect. Even creating some of these missing config files does not have any effect: the scanner does not work.

This is why I am asking for help, hoping that someone knows what is wrong and can help me out of this.

I also realise that the amount of config files which should be changed (mainly in Ubuntu, but also in other Linuxes) for this device is rising up. This is a sign for me, that this device is getting old (out of date). Maybe I should get a new one…

But: any help on how to get the old Brother working again would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance

Steffen

2

Did you install the the brother scan-key tool?
I have not install the driver on my 12.1 for the machine with it is attached to the tv in the entertainment corner and I,feel it doesn’t need the scanner and printer.
When I have time I will try to load the brother driver to see if it doesn’t work on 12.1. My connection to my brother/scanner is via network connection.

3

no, I did not install the scan tool. But I never had in the older Linuxes I used and it always was working ok with Xsane or Skanlite. To me it seems like a permissions issue or something in the driver does not cooperate with the rest of the system. But I don´t have any clue where to look and what to change. My connection to the printer/scanner is via USB

4

Is this the same machine you installed opensuse 12.1 use to have an older opensuse version that works with your scanner?
Or is this a newer machine with 64bit, because I recall with my daughters 64bit lappy the file to set the permission is different and you have to link to the file you mentioned in your first post.
I think the procedure was in the brother FAQ if my memory is right. I will try to recall what I did in that lappy because I might be misleading you in the wrong way.:\

5

Hi Steffen13,

I have a DCP-7055 at home, which uses the brother4 driver (installed from Brother site along with printer drivers etc). Now, I think the DCP-115 uses the brother2 driver. The installation should have added ‘brother2’ (or similar) to /etc/sane.d/dll.conf like this

.
.
#umax
#umax_pp
#umax1220u
#v4l
#xerox_mfp
# The hpaio backend is provided by the hplip package:
#hpaio
brother2

You may need to edit this file manually (with root privileges of course). AFAIU, this assists sane with using a specific backend explicitly, when otherwise it can get confused.

For the record, my udev rule is similar to yours , (but is more specific with regards to model)

# Brother DCP-7055
ATTR{idVendor}=="04f9", ATTR{idProduct}=="0248", MODE="0664", GROUP="lp", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"

Hope this helps.

6

Hi,

deano_ferrari´s tip was the million dollar hint. It works!

there was something wrong in my /etc/sane.d/dll.conf:

.
.
.
.

# The hpaio backend is provided by the hplip package:
#hpaio
#
#brother2
brother2

I changed it to

.
.
.
.

# The hpaio backend is provided by the hplip package:
#hpaio
brother2

and now it runs like a charm. I also tried it on my Lappy with 12.1 and there it worked right away. The /etc/sane.d/dll.conf on the Lappy looked the same way as the corrected one on the 11.4 machine. So this was the fault. Hell knows what went wrong with the driver config on the 11.4 machine in the first place.

Anyway, Thank you, Deano!

ah and for the record @conram: no the machine I want to run the scanner on, is a 11.4 64 bit, but it worked in an older version (11.3) and also on other Linuxes, like Ubuntu 9.04 and older. And it runs without problem in 12.1 by the way.

Thank you to both of you!

cheers
Steffen

7

Thanks for posting what works. I will also bookmark this, this will be helpful if I may get in trouble with my brother printer/scanner if I install 12.1 on my work machine.
@ Deano thanks for posting a very relevant answer and solution.

8

Glad to have been of help. Happy scanning!

9

Hallo deano_ferrari,
because I had the same problem with my Brother scanner of type

“MFC425cn”,

an older multifunctional device for printing, scanning, fax and copying, I found your advice in this forum helpful and I tried to modify the configuration of my system as described above:
It is a fresh installation of openSuse-12.1 with kernel 3.1.9-1.4 using a KDE-4.7.4 (4.7.4) desktop environment. With the former system “openSuse-11.3” running on the same machine, this scanner worked very well absolutely with no problems for example by applying “xsane-0.998”. But after the new installation, openSuse-12.1 did not recognise the scanner although the correct scanner drivers

brscan2-0.2.5-1.i386.rpm
and
brscan-skey-0.2.1-3.i386.rpm

were installed, available from Brother Solutions Center : Brother Driver for Linux Distributions.
Indeed, I reproduced your recommendation successful and the scanner problem seems to be solved.

I did this:
(1) adding the two lines into the file “/etc/udev/rules.d/55-libsane.rules” at the last of the device entry. (just before “# The following rule…”)
as recommended by Brother solution Center
# Brother
ATTR{idVendor}==“04f9”, MODE=“0664”, GROUP=“lp”, ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"
a further code like: “ATTR{idProduct}==”???" was NOT supplemented there.

(2) modification of the file “/etc/sane.d/dll.conf” as you described:
…
#umax
#umax_pp
#umax1220u
#v4l
#xerox_mfp
then introduced
" #brother 2
brother2"

I was very glad that after these two amendments the MFC425cn was recognised correct and it works fine as before.
Many thanks too, and may be other users could employ it.

Bye
nobse

10

I was very glad that after these two amendments the MFC425cn was recognised correct and it works fine as before.
Many thanks too, and may be other users could employ it.

Bye
nobse

Thanks for your post. I’m glad the advice was of help to you. :slight_smile: