Manjaro with working Brother printer, never Gentoo [Solved]

vespaman · Last edited by vespaman on Wed Jun 26, 2024 10:52 am; edited 1 time in total

So I bought a laptop a month ago, and since I had very little time, I decided to install Manjaro on it.

Very quick install, and there' s much to like about Manjaro, hower, I realize this is not a long term solution - want to go Gentoo on this laptop as well.

The only thing that holds me back right now, is the fact that my Brother printer just worked without any installation in Manjaro, whereas in Gentoo, I never got it to work on my older laptop. I just searched for it under printer system settings, and it started working.
The hours I have spent on this in my Gentoo setup is countless, and I decided in the end that it mustn't be supported under linux.

So before I install Genoo on this machine, I'd like to get the older laptop to work with the same printer, now that I know that it "should work".

If I look in the system settings -> printer section on the Manjaro box, I see this;

lars_the_bear · Guru Joined: 05 Jun 2024 Posts: 517

Hi

FWIW I found it easier to get my Brother printer working with all kinds of Linux -- not just Gentoo -- if I give it a fixed IP number. Otherwise you'll need multicast to work on the network, plus a load of infrastructure involving Bonjour, avahi, ippfind, etc.

With a fixed IP, adding my printer is as simple as:

# lpadmin -p [name] -E -v ipp://[printer_ip]:631/ipp/print -m everywhere.

I've done this on three Gentoo machines now and, apart from once finding I needed to reboot (for unclear reasons), they've all worked fine. The printer has to support driverless operation, of course, to work this way.

I've lost count of the number of hours I've wasted, over the years, trying to keep network printer discovery working.

BR, Lars.

vespaman · Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2024 10:52 am Post subject:

Nooo... I am speechless. Totally in shock

That line actually worked without any hesitation.

How could it have been this simple? All those hours I wasted on this. And all the extra work I have had to do to print stuff on that printer using windows in virtual boxes...

Why could there not be one line of this info on Brothers home page, instead of loads of old non-working drivers etc??

Thank you so much!

[still in shock]
Micael

Zucca · Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2024 2:44 pm Post subject:

grknight · Retired Dev Joined: 20 Feb 2015 Posts: 1909

My older Brother HL-2800(?) cannot work with the everywhere model.

This is because everywhere requires SSL encryption on IPP that the printer simply does not comply with for one reason or another (even with the last available firmware).
The printer supports IPP, but not what cups wants (apparently).
Hopefully, there will always be a way to use it as only Gutenprint is the only working method at this time.