Printer (or possibly USB) issue -- not recognized

[gurtz]

Hi all,

I recently installed Mint 13 (Cinnamon) 64b w/backports on a new system with an ASRock H77M motherboard.
I have a Brother MFC8840D which I have connected to the system via USB.
Problem is, I can only get the printer to be partially recognized, and I don't know why. I'm beginning to wonder if I might have a USB problem.

When I run lsusb I get the following (bold added by me):
=====
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:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 04f9:0160 Brother Industries, Ltd MFC-8840D
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 046d:c408 Logitech, Inc. Marble Mouse (4-button)
=====

Generally, USB seems to work fine. The mouse, flash drives, external drives, no issue. But -- though the Brother printer shows with lsusb -- nothing shows in the gnome-control-center Printer dialog (see below). It just says "No local printers found". Is this normal?

When I use the System Information app and click on "USB Devices", nothing is displayed (even though the printer and USB mouse are attached to the machine) (see below) Shouldn't this dialog contain at least something?

Also, I have tried to install the Brother Windows printer driver using Virtualbox with an XP guest, but I can't even attach to the printer from the guest. In the Virtualbox menu I click on Devices | USB Devices | Unknown device 04F9:0160 [0100] ... which I know is the printer, because that's how it was labeled on my old Ubuntu 10.04 machine from within Virtualbox. But after about a 10 second wait I get the following error: "Failed to attach the USB device Unknown device 04F9:0160 [0100] to the virtual machine Windows XP. Failed to create a proxy device for the USB device. (Error: VERR_READ_ERROR). NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)" On my old machine I used to be able to print from an XP guest (as well as from the Ubuntu host). [I can attach to other USB devices, like flash drives, from within the new XP guest, so I know that is at least partially working.]

I'm stumped. I don't know if this is a USB issue, or a printer issue, or an issue with Virtualbox, or just a lack of understanding on my part as to how this is supposed to work. If I could get it working in either Linux or Virtualbox Windows, then I'd feel more confident there is no USB issue ... but at this point I'm not sure.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

Greg

[mattn]

I am having the same problem with a brother MFC-8220 on Mint 13. Any suggestions? I am a relative newbie, so there may be something I am missing.

[gurtz]

Can anyone tell me what I should expect to see in those two dialog boxes -- particularly the USB Devices? If I knew what to expect there, it would help in trying to track down the problem.

Thanks!

[gurtz]

Hi all,

Just wanted to let anyone know, who may have interest, that my problems have been resolved. I was able to get my Brother MFC-8840D to print from Linux Mint 13 (Cinnamon). Here's a quick overview:

I was NOT able to get the drivers available on the Brother site to work. Neither was I able to get the install script available on the Brother site to work (http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bs ... tml#f00104).

The only way I could get printing to work was to use the Foomatic Postscript-based drivers. Specifically, "Brother MFC-8840D BR-Script3".

One of the main issues, I believe, is with the GUI control panel available within Mint 13 Cinnamon (from Preferences | Printers). No matter how much I tried, I could not get it to detect the printer. However, I eventually found that if I ran the "system-config-printer" client from the terminal, *THAT* was able to detect and install the printer (BR-Script3 driver) with no problems. As far as I can tell, this client is NOT available from any of the menu options in Mint Cinnamon, so it took just about forever for me to stumble upon it.

To anyone else dealing with this problem, I would recommend:
Uninstall any Brother drivers you may have installed.
Make sure the following are installed (and possibly fully uninstall/re-install just to be sure everything is correct):
> cups
> cups-client
> cups-common
> cups-filters
> foomatic-db (or compressed version)
> foomatic-db-engine
> foomatic-filters
> openprinting-ppds
> printconf
> system-config-printer-common
> system-config-printer-gnome
> system-config-printer-udev

The above is probably not a complete list, and all may not be necessary, but it's probably a decent starting point.

Best of luck to anyone who may also have this issue. It has been a real pain, and I'm really happy to have it sorted out.

Regards,
Greg