Brother HL2270DW broken CUPS support under LMDE

[amphibole]

It's nice to have a forum to post in.

The Subject: Brother HL2270DW broken CUPS support under LMDE means that I'd like to have this printer working properly and without the recurrent breakages that i've had. I did not have enough room to specify exactly what I know in the Subject:. That is, that a couple of similar Brother laser printers have support packages supplied outside the LMDE apt realm (repo). This foreign thing that supports the HL2270DW also supports some other one.

"Recurrent breakages" meant that the printer gets lost and jobs sent to it do not get printed.

Another kind of breakage takes place when the wrong protocol / driver gets used. I've tried to use the CUPS web interface many times, and it has gotten old to try again and again without getting the printer working.

The nature of the problem is apparently that the driver is only set up to work for a USB connected printer. In order to make it work as an ethernet-connected printer a script was developed to issue various commands ...and it was complicated to follow the first time; it asks for an ethernet address for the printer without trying to autodetect, and so on. This script is named linux-brprinter-installer ( or an alternate Japanese-localized one is named linux-brjprinter-installer)

The url for getting the Brother download was provided in another Forum posting (thank you! ): http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bs ... #HL-2270DW

As an item of interest, it looks like an individual worked out the first version of this script a few years ago and later it got adopted by Brother and put in their downloads. Somebody scratched an itch! Very Mint-y. Something great about LinuxMint: is the real effort to support lots of hardware.

As another note, I've looked at CUPS commandline tools since the Web interface seems to lack real ability to provide confirmation that this printer is working (online and accepting jobs). I tried this in the cli:

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lpinfo -v  |sed s/'^.* '//g | grep socket |xargs -I {} lpinfo --include-schemes "{}" -l -v

The output results looks like

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Device: uri = socket
        class = network
        info = AppSocket/HP JetDirect
        make-and-model = Unknown
        device-id = 
        location = 

Things i've tried looking at:

CUPS manual at http://www.cups.org/doc-1.1/sam.html.
aliases for this printer (variations on the name that people might try): HL-2270DW HL-2270-DW
Forum posting: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?&t=143395

amphibole

[amphibole]

Replying to my own posting. Seems like a way to document what i've been trying over the days (note: i could have edited the original post, but it was posted here as a query for help, not as a tutorial or how-to or whatever)

The immediate source of the problem is clearly that: the printer changes IP address on the LAN from time to time. If it never changed, I would have had it working and not posted this here. So it might occur to some readers to ask: "why does it change" ...leading to a rather separate discussion.

In the CUPS web interface i could choose AppSocket/HP-JetDirect as a protocol (?) for printing to this printer. I chose it. That does not seem to be right. I had read in step 5b of the instructions (http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bs ... prn1a.html) that this was the right way to do it, and it worked for a while but is not anymore. Even when working it is very slow; the printer may not start any mechanical action until many minutes have gone by.

So i did some more research and changed to using the LPD uri protocol.

The dialog that shows the driver / PPD being used looks like this:

screenshot-CUPS-admin-modify-dialogue.png

I found the lpinfo utility command a bit lacking in useful options and completely lacking in examples of usage in its documentation (manpage), but nonetheless able to dump an entire listing of devices when invoked as $ lpinfo -l -v:

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...lots of entries...
Device: uri = lpd://BRN001BA98558B3/BINARY_P1
        class = network
        info = Brother HL-2270DW series
        make-and-model = Brother HL-2270DW series
        device-id = MFG:Brother;CMD:PJL,PCL,PCLXL;MDL:HL-2270DW series;CLS:PRINTER;
        location = 

Experimentation shows that lpinfo can be called this way to indicate which if any PPD files are being used: $ lpinfo --product 'Brother' --include-schemes file -m

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HL2170W.ppd Brother HL2170W for CUPS
lsb/usr/HL2170W.ppd Brother HL2170W for CUPS
HL2270DW.ppd Brother HL2270DW for CUPS
lsb/usr/HL2270DW.ppd Brother HL2270DW for CUPS

The LPD/LPR protocol for access of the printer is thus the one that seems to provide the live printer entry to the CUPS daemon

The lpstat command is more useful. After trying to use the CUPS interface for reconfiguring the printer to use LPD/LPR, I can see this
entry information when I enter lpstat -c -p HL2270DW -v |grep HL2270DW |sed 1d ...

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printer HL2270DW is idle.  enabled since Fri 28 Feb 2014 05:00:50 PM EST
device for HL2270DW: lpd://BRN001BA98558B3/BINARY_P1

The printer is working now. It is still sometimes extremely slow.

I've tried to set up the router to assign a static dhcp lease on that printer's ethernet interface. However, I change LAN router equipment and settings fairly often and just enough time seems to go by in between the changes that i have a near-complete brain blur about how i managed to set up the printer the last time.

[TomRoche]

the instructions (http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bs ... prn1a.html)

Does anyone have the correct/new instructions URL? When I browse the link above, I just get forwarded to http://support.brother.com/g/b/index.aspx. From there I browse their UI trying to find something that looks like linux install instruction, but am not finding.

[jamaica]

It don't know if it helps, but I use the IPP-Protocol for network printing with my MFC-7460DN. I read somewhere, that the lpd support isn't that good anymore on that printers. Maybe you can change the printer protocol to ipp in the CUPS admin interface. The address should be something like this:

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ipp://192.168.0.10:631/BINARY_P1

For me the following setting did the job right:

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ipp://192.168.0.195:631/POSTSCRIPT_P1

where the IP-Address should be changed to the IP of your printer and last part of that URI is the name of the ressource. You can use the BINARY_P1 ressource or use POSTSCRIPT_P1.

If you have problems with the offset of the printed content, you could change the renderer for your printer with:

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sudo lpadmin -p MFC7460DN -o pdftops-renderer-default=pdftops

where MFC7460DN should be replaced by the printers name displayed in the CUPS admin interface.

If you still have problems with the driver, try to reinstall the drivers with the brother installer tool, that can be downloaded from http://support.brother.com/g/b/download ... all&os=128