Scanning with Brother MFC-J4540DW [SOLVED]

[warriorofthelight]

So the printing part of this Brother was instantly working after plugging it in. Never seen such a smooth install. Even duplex printing working just fine out of the box.

However, scanning is a mess. I tried the instructions on https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Scanner/Brother/ and the ones on the Brother homepage. After hours I got the scanner to work over LAN in a messy manner. Document Scanner presents 2 devices: "Brother", which isn't working at all. And "ESCL Brother MFC-J4540DW", which can be used to make a scan over flatbed only. ADF never works. And after the scan is finished it says "scanning failed: could not start scan".

Is there a way to make this work in a "working" manner, especially using the ADF? I bought this device because it has ADF. If that doesn't work it doesn't make much sense, I could get something simpler instead.

Just FYI: I also tried the "brscan-skey" tool to scan from the device to the pc via the scan-button. That actually works, but also: no ADF - you can use it but only the last of the pages will be sent to the PC. And also it only creates TIF. No PDF, no JPG. So also: nice try, but not really practical.

Using Mint 20.3.
If there's a big chance this will work any better on 21, I'll make the move. But it's usually a lot of work since the upgrade path doesn't work for everything.

[brian_p]

Using Mint 20.3.
If there's a big chance this will work any better on 21, I'll make the move. But it's usually a lot of work since the upgrade path doesn't work for everything.

Printing and scanning should work ODTB on Mint 21. For Mint 20.3 install sane-airscan and give

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scanimage -L

A network connection is assumed.

[warriorofthelight]

Hi Brian,

thanks for the answer, but unfortunately no luck. I installed sane-airscan, and got the same response from scanimage as before (the Ubuntu wiki included that command):

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w@w-mint:~$ scanimage -L
device `brother5:net1;dev0' is a Brother  
device `escl:http://192.168.0.241:80' is a ESCL Brother MFC-J4540DW flatbed scanner
device `airscan:e0:Brother MFC-J4540DW' is a eSCL Brother MFC-J4540DW ip=192.168.0.241

The behaviour of the document scanner program remains the same. If I select "all pages from feeder" (mine is German so I'm not sure about the exact English wording), the flatbed will scan 1 page, the ADF will be ignored, and at the end the error "scan could not be started" remains the same... anything else I could try? Does Mint 21 have something fundamentally different or just the sane-airscan package?

[warriorofthelight]

OMG

I take back everything I just said and will proclaim the opposite from now on

I simply chose the wrong scanner entry from the list, it should be the "eSCL Brother", not the "ESCL Brother"!

Thanks a lot, I'm so glad that this works. Not that I really depend on it, but it does give me a nice warm fuzzy feeling about Mint and life in general

That said, is sane-airscan something Mint-specific? I wonder why this was not mentioned on the Ubuntu-wiki, nor on the instructions from the Brother-homepage.

And another thing: is it possible to get rid of the not working scanner entries altogether, the "ESCL Brother" is useless, and there is another (the first in the dropdown in document scanner) called "Brother", which also does nothing.

And yet another question: does that mean that from now on, the drivers from the manufacturers are no longer used? Is that like ipp? So same for newer Epson and Canon printers? Or is there still stuff to consider?

[brian_p]

OMG

I take back everything I just said and will proclaim the opposite from now on

Thank you for taking a closer look at this.

I simply chose the wrong scanner entry from the list, it should be the "eSCL Brother", not the "ESCL Brother"!

Not unknown and an easy mistake to make .

Thanks a lot, I'm so glad that this works. Not that I really depend on it, but it does give me a nice warm fuzzy feeling about Mint and life in general

That said, is sane-airscan something Mint-specific? I wonder why this was not mentioned on the Ubuntu-wiki, nor on the instructions from the Brother-homepage.

sane-airscan is integral to any recent Linux distro. Better to look at https://wiki.debian.org/SaneOverNetwork. Brother puffs its own drivers.

And another thing: is it possible to get rid of the not working scanner entries altogether, the "ESCL Brother" is useless, and there is another (the first in the dropdown in document scanner) called "Brother", which also does nothing.

Remove any Brother drivers. Edit /etc/sane.d/dll.conf and comment out escl.

I hope you will consider marking this issue as [SOLVED].

And yet another question: does that mean that from now on, the drivers from the manufacturers are no longer used? Is that like ipp? So same for newer Epson and Canon printers? Or is there still stuff to consider?

You've got it . New developments are on the way but will only affect legacy/classical devices.

I hope you will consider marking this issue as [SOLVED].

[warriorofthelight]

You've got it . New developments are on the way but will only affect legacy/classical devices.

I hope you will consider marking this issue as [SOLVED].

I sure will and thanks for all the effort. That is really great news, scanning and printing were such a PITA for so long under Linux...

[warriorofthelight]

So I just read a bit about this sane-thing... this means that every printer / mfd that supports Apple Print and / or has "Mopria" on the box will probably work like a charm? I mean I won't ask why it took the industry like 5 decades to come up with a standard protocol for printing and scanning, but why did it take them 5 decades to do that? Anyway, I don't even know why I'm so excited about that but I think it just restores my faith in humanity a little bit!