Brother printers and AUR

Support Printers
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I am a noob to manjaro and have always found installing brother printers tedious in linux.

the problem with manjaro is not manjaro itself but the information out there is not always correct. after finally getting my DCP-J4120DW correctly installed it was so easy in the end.
what follows is what works. for my network printer

in add /remove software find manjaro-printer and install it.
whilst in add/remove click the 3 bars icon up top and then the AUR tab. then turn AUR on.

then turn on CUPS. type in the konsole the following …but before read about using sudo

systemctl enable org.cups.cupsd.service but read below

now i used …sudo systemctl enable org.cups.cupsd.service

Why? because it has more authority and using the command without …caused problems. it is riskier security wise but AUR is well vetted so not much risker

then it was so easy. type this into konsole

pamac install lib32-gcc-libs

pamac build brother-dcpj4120dw

but found later that if you enter brother-dcpj4120dw into add/remove software search its there. as is lib32-gcc-libs. but do lib32 first.

now typing in dcp-j4120dw the actual model wont work. need to NOT put that hyphen between dcp and j4120dw and all lower case.
it installs printer and some scanner files but the scanner wont work yet.
…
then type into konsole… pamac build brscan4
but found it later by typing into add/remove software brscan4 its there.

still scanner wont work as network details need to be entered into konsole

brsaneconfig4 -a name=Brother model=DCP-J4120DW ip= xxx.xxx.x.xx
now even this last step can be glitchy I entered at the end ip=192.168.1.xx but got an error message so then entered ip= 192.168.1.xx see a gap between the = and 192. that worked.
you can get the ip address off the front of the printer lcd screen…press the spanners then the wifi icon then the tcp/ip icon it will be under dns. your ip wont be the same as mine. could also be your system might be the otherway for entering the ip.

sounds easy right. but after 3 re-installs of manjaro i can tell you a story.
the biggest problem is that some sites tell you to enter too many commands in to enable CUPS in a non-helpful way for installation …one too many commands somehow. this should work for other models as well. using sudo wasnt necessary except for activating cups in a way that didnt seem to interfere with the installation.

and then to find it could all be done from add/remove software in the end. just had to know what to enter.

2 Likes
2

That doesnt make any sense.
systemctl needs privileges either way… but should call them for you. using sudo is just redundant.

Yes … because thats what the package name is …

$ yay 4120dw
1 aur/brother-dcpj4120dw 3.0.1-3 (+3 0.00) 
    Driver for the Brother DCP-J4120DW wifi multifuncional printer

I dont know what guides you are referring to … but looking at yours it seems like the steps were just about normal.

  • Install manjaro-printer which brings in a lot of printer support or setup utilities.
    More information on this tool and enabling printing is here: Printing - Manjaro

  • [Install lib32-gcc-libs - not sure if this one is truly needed. It is the 32-bit version of gcc-libs which would otherwise have been installed in group base-devel which is a prerequisite of AUR]

  • Enable CUPS if not already, ex systemctl enable org.cups.cupsd.service --now, as outlined on the Manjaro Printing Wiki page above.
    Though it may be preferable to enable the socket instead: systemctl enable org.cups.cupsd.socket --now as outlined here: CUPS - ArchWiki

  • Install your printer model driver (brother-dcpj4120dw from AUR)

  • Install brscan4 and configure scanner support as outlined here:
    SANE/Scanner-specific problems - ArchWiki

2 Likes
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yes i am a noob. but still managed to get it working. it is the exactness of the search engine in the add/remove software. quite logically i kept entering brother-dcp-j4120dw having installed it in mint before and got nothing. duh of course it was brother-dcpj4120dw duh how stupid of me .Perhaps a bit of leeway in the search parameters would help noobs like me.

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A cmmon tactic when searching is to modify/simplify your search terms if you cant find what you are looking for. In your example - instead of assuming that the package was named exactly as your previous long string … attempting to search for ‘4120’ would have given more practical results.

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anyway the more i use this system the more i like. mint19.3 is what i normally use but m20 is much more relaxing to use. well done

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