Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Just amazing, CUPS finds my Brother HL 2240 laser printer but no driver. First time Puppy has let me down, finds ancient HP's.

Not a programer so if no pet available please post me step by step about what to download, where to put it. Wife is working from home and using the old HP would kill us with the cost of ink.

Thanks

I run my Brother HL2170W using its' PCL4 emulation, drivers for that are either in HP or generic and pre-loaded in most pups. don't remember which. Your printer should support PCL6 emulation and you might want to try that. Just let CUPS find the printer and set it up, then choose the PCL driver and try it. PCL6 should be downward compatible with 4 or 5 but I have no experience in that. A generic postscript driver should also be emulated but I have had better luck with the PCL. Some of my installs use the brother drivers, some the PCL emulation. Both print just fine. In all, I have entered a line in the /etc/hosts file. My line is

192.168.10.31 BRN008077ECF5D2

where the url is my printers fixed address and the BRN* is the CUPS ID for the printer.

It's name is 'brother_hl2240d-2.1', I think I got when I was running Xenial 7.5.
make sure you have 32bit_compatibilty running.

Tom

There is a great driver for mono brother laser printers called brlaser.

I packaged it up for fatdog, it might work in Fossapup, not sure. But, you should be able to download it from github and install it into Fossa

I have experimented that the how-to from the debiandog thread by rcrsn51 may work in puppy:

viewtopic.php?p=7755#p7755

viewtopic.php?f=140&t=533&p=2874#p2874

Try the SFS attached

I believe we're taking holistic/meta trade-offs.

We not only incorporate ethics and economics, but practical functionality in spite of everything.

I have a Brother MFC and tried to install the Linux drivers.

After about 45 minutes I decided printing is a Windows task. Fortunately data sharing is facile. I would keep at it if I knew it was the only way.

Cheers to the technical who make more options.

@JASpup - I've used Brother MFC for years - currently HLL2395DW. Setting up is a bit tricky, but tell me your model details, connection type & which pup it's for & I'll see what I can do.

@ozsouth please consider your efforts for the community.

MFC-J485DW

I'm on basic wlan0 and Xenial is most important, though I also use Tahr and Slacko6 in JWM and alt-desktops (XFCE, LXDE, MATE).

If you need more info please advise.

I'll assume it's 64bit Xenial 7.5, Brother driver is 32bit only, but will run under 64bit with right libs.
Download, then install the linked .pet & .deb by clicking on them in ROX-Filer.
Then in a browser, go to 127.0.0.1:631 & via Administration tab, Add Printer. If printer driver shows twice, choose first one.
If your page size isn't US Letter, set page size.

32bit libs:
printer drv:

LINKS EXPIRED

@ozsouth I'll try it.

I'm on 32 Xenial right now, but my 45 minute attempt was my 64 machine. If it works I'll use both, but one is progress.

@JASpup - 32 bit Xenial should only need .deb; 64 bit needs both. I tested 64 bit Xenial - driver loads.

ozsouth wrote: ↑Wed Nov 18, 2020 1:19 pm

@JASpup - 32 bit Xenial should only need .deb; 64 bit needs both. I tested 64 bit Xenial - driver loads.

Ok. This moment I'm trying to run Chromium 65 in Tahr, but my Puppy print attempt is in the queue. Will report results.

ozsouth wrote: ↑Wed Nov 18, 2020 8:53 am

@JASpup - I've used Brother MFC for years - currently HLL2395DW. Setting up is a bit tricky, but tell me your model details, connection type & which pup it's for & I'll see what I can do.

Fossapup64
32 bit compatibility running
Brothers HL-2240
usb connection

Thanks

@Fishy - I can't test this, but I did load the following 2 .deb files and my libs .pet
& could see the driver, so worth trying. Boot up & ensure printer connected to usb & on.
After downloading, click on them each in ROX-Filer to install. Use at own risk.

I don't know what's in 32 bit compat pkg, so you could try it with the 2 .debs or if you don't load it,
try the 2 .debs with my libs .pet.

EDIT: LINKS EXPIRED 8/12/20

Once installed, open (in web browser) 127.0.0.1:631
Click Printers Tab (near top) - printer HL-2240 should show. If doesn't show, won't work.

Click on printer name (HL-2240) & if unhappy with settings (paper size wrong?),
then Click printer's Administration Tab (1/3 way down page) & click Modify.

When happy with settings, Click printer's Maintenance Tab & then Print Test Page. Hopefully works!
If works, Click printer's Administration Tab & Make Server Default.

Thanks for the assist but nothing worked. Moved the 20 year old HP Photosmart to work with my Linux box. Will keep the Brothers Laser on my wife's Window tablet and for the old Windows box that I keep if desperate.

Now to go through and delete all the non performing drivers.

This will teach me to check hardware compatibility next time.

Thank you all for the feed back that unfortunately did't work.

John

I cannot find a New Topic button (using Pale Moon 28.16.1 - nothing newer will work in my 32-bit Precise 571 light). The latest Pale Moon for Ubuntu 18 (Bionic) is only 64 bit. I would rather not install anything 64bit on my 2004-2006 laptops since it will run slowly. Standard PM download is also 64bit.

My two USB printers Brother MFC7820N and MFC7440N worked well until a few days ago and now when I try to print I am told they are printing but they do not. I think the files queue.

Sometimes lpstat lists them for each printer and sometimes just for CUPS-PDF.

I used epdfview and qpfview and lp to try to print pdf and text files. lp filename.txt

I tried Precise Light, Xenial 706 32-bit and Bionic 32. I even tried to install Windows 7 drivers, but the installation process stalled when I plugged in and turned on the printer as instructed.

I then used debbi to reload the brmc and the cupswrapper files for both, and when that did not help I ran the new Brother tool (which expects dpkg to work differently and did not print test pages). I deleted all the old files first then reloaded. I hunted all over the web for ideas.

If I boot to RAM (no save file) and then run debbi again, it prints. Short of starting over and adding scripts and browsers until something breaks again, how might I fix the problem other than booting without save file each time I want to print? Without changing to a third printer.

I also tried puppy linux on two other laptops. Various OS versions. No printing.

I obviously do not know what I am doing so please be very clear. I think I read that these printers will also work as Postscript. I only want to print one page at a time on one side with default settings (tax forms).

Im running Bionic64 with a LXDE ydrv and recently acquired a HL-L23650DW hand-me-down which I fairly quickly gave up on trying to use.

However, I recently read about the following driver: printer-driver-brlaser_<version> which it turns out is in the Puppy Package Manager.

Once the driver was installed and the printer was added (I think I selected the 2400-close enough), it printed fine, although I cannot print from any stand alone PDF viewers I have tried.

Geek mate,

Either Master PDF Editor or PeasyPDF may allow you to accomplish your objective - print PDF via viewer. MuPDF is available within PPM.

Thanks for that tip. I tried Peasy PDF with MuPDF and the same result was evident. The files go to print, but while it seems to receive the data there is no printer output, and no listing in the Jobs tag in CUPS printing.

After some more trials, it seems to be an issue with only some PDF files. Thankfully, I can print these odd ones on my inkjet printer.

Have not yet successfully tried Master PDF Editor.

Careful what you install as Puppy has its own unique CUPS printing routine. Packages not specifically packaged for Puppy tend to break permissions.

That you already have some level of functioning I'd maybe suggest removing the 4.2 build of PeasyPDF and going with this one. Remove the fake ".gz" extension before install and set your default helper apps before testing the new "PDF2Pic" printing option.

rcrsn51 has been nothing short of a *HERO* contributer for years.

He's the printer guru.

Geek3579 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 21, 2021 6:55 am

After some more trials, it seems to be an issue with only some PDF files.

There is a newer version of the brlaser driver here. It supports the HL-L2360D series and may be compatible with Bionic64.

Thanks, Ill try it in the next couple of days, in Bionic64 and Fossapup64.

BIONICPUP64; I loaded the newer driver .deb as suggested by rcrsn51 without removing the existing printer-driver-brlaser, and it worked perfectly, printing all the previously troublesome PDF pages

FOSSAPU64: my OS had no brother drivers installed so I just loaded the newer driver .deb, installed/added the brother printer as usual, and it also printed perfectly.

A great result !! Many thanks !

TEAMWORK!

Thanks for your feedback, Geek mate.