[sf-lug] Brother MFC Printer drivers installed

[Rick Moen]

Important:  My earlier suggestions were grounded in a bountful amount of
caution against making too many assumptions about your situation.  At
the time, you hadn't yet clarified your situation very much, so
accordingly I started with the absolute basics.  Now, you've clarified
your situation quite a bit more, told what works (e.g., that you've
already sent print jobs to the printer portion of the device), and
made clearer what problem you're trying to solve.  _So_, it's largely a
new ball game.

Quoting Jon Lam (jonplam at gmail.com):

> As of the utility scanimage, I was confusing it with simplescan.

I'm sorry to say, I don't understand what this sentence means.


> On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 3:13 AM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

>> o  What make/model of multifunction printer/scanner you have.
>>    One infers from the 'scanimage -L' output that you have a
>>    Brother model MFC-L2700DW.  Is this correct?

> Yes


> I am not sure if I can assign a static IP address to the MFC Brother
> device.  but, I was able to print a test page to it.

I note in passing that you didn't _fully_ answer my question (but no
worries, as the Aussies say).  Obviously you're trying to scan from a
network-connected Brother MFC-L2700DW, but you didn't specify wired or
wireless.  The difference may not matter.

You also didn't say _how_ you printed to the printer portion of the
multifunction device.  CUPS protocol to the device's DHCP-assigned 
IP address?



> The driver installation program from Brother took care of the installation
> and configuration using that driver.

In general, it's a bit risky to install third-party software into the
core of a Linux system, and should be avoided unless you've determined
your distro's own software just cannot do the job.  Overlaying a distro
with third-party sofware can create difficult to diagnose problems.  In
this case, you can at least _hope_ Brother's software is fully
Fedora-compatible.  At least I notice that they're offering it in rpm
package format, so there's that.


>>   Network Scanning
>>
>>   In case of network scanning, e.g. by WiFi, Sane may still be unable to
>>   find the scanner. If so, you need to specify the IP address of the
>>   scanner in the /etc/sane.d/net.conf file.
>>
>>   Now use scanimage --check-devices to check whether sane is able to find
>>   your scanner. If not, further check that Sane expects this device
>>   through the network

> [root at milo sane.d]# scanimage --check-devices
> scanimage: unrecognized option '--check-devices'

Yeah, dunno if maybe Arch Linux's version of that utility might have
some local enhancements, or possibly this might just be an outright edit
error on the wiki.  I notice that the man page for scanimage (as of
sane-backends version 1.0.17) at
http://linuxcommand.org/man_pages/scanimage1.html shows it as having a
'--list-devices' option aka the '-L' option -- but not any
'--check-devices' one.  Maybe the author meant to type '--list-devices'
and goofed it up.

You might want to try again with 'scanimage --list-devices'.  And 
you might very well need to do that IP address thing in
/etc/sane.d/net.conf . 



> brother4 exists at the end of  dll.conf

My understanding is that SANE parses this to find the _separate_ 
configuration file for the specified scanner backend (brother4, 
in this case).  So, that probably leads SANE to a
/etc/sane.d/brother4.conf file for further details, i.e., what
binary to use within /usr/lib/sane/.

In particular, /etc/sane.d/dll.conf defaults to having a _complete list_
of all supported SANE drivers present, and so every single line in it
except for the last one with 'brother4' is irrelevant to you.
Personally, I'd do this:

# cd /etc/sane.d/
# cp dll.conf dll.conf-ORIGINAL

...and then comment out (or remove) all the irrelevant lines in
/etc/sane.d/dll.conf .

The file /etc/sane.d/dll.conf-ORIGINAL existing means you won't be
burning your bridges.

Point is, when you run something like scanimage, SANE parses up and down
/etc/sane.d/dll.conf and all of the referenced sub-configuration files
for all of the possible, software-supplied backends, until it finds a
response from a reachable scanner device.  Eliminating the irrelevant 
cruft simplifies your diagnostic situation and might even make SANE
waste less time.

  scanimage -T
or
  scanimage --test

will test the first found image device.


> Just as an aside, I may proceed with testing all these components with
> the installation of scanimage.  I am trusting it is the "best" utility to
> use on Fedora.  Besides using the "Software" GUI in Fedora to install this
> program, I am more of a CLI junkie.  How would I do that?  yum or DNF, or
> what not?

I'm a bit out of date on Fedora.  Old-school, it would definitely be
yum.  I've vaguely heard of dnf, and know it's some new thing that
replaced yum starting with Fedora 22, but I've not yet used it. 
(The name reportedly is short for Dandified Yum.)


> By the way, I am a little confused as fedora software gui says I do not
> have the scanimage program installed.  And then I can run this command at
> the cli.  could someone shine a light on what is occuring?

I don't know what 'Fedora software GUI' means in this context.  I assume
you're talking about some GNOME graphical package-management tool,
probably PackageKit or GNOME Package Manager.

I'm not a Fedora person and most definitely not a GNOME person, so
someone else would have to comment on the graphical package tools and
their ontological problems.  ;->

https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/72869/scanning-software/
suggests that the relevant package is named 'simple-scan'.

There's also a graphical tool named 'xsane'.
http://unixetc.co.uk/2014/03/16/network-scanners-and-fedora-20/

Others:
https://opensource.com/life/14/8/3-tools-scanners-linux-desktop
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/image-software-linux-gimp,2801-10.html


This guy solving a Brother scanner problem on an earlier Fedora may also
be of interest:
http://web3us.com/drupal6/how-setup-fedora-desktop/setup-scanner-fedora