Printouts on Brother HL-2130 laser printer have faulty scaling factors

Support Printers & Scanners
1

In the beginning of my journey to Linux / Manjaro, I had some problems to printout anything, but after the latest great KDE 6 update (plus a little trying things out in the printer settings), all worked really fine during the latest moths.

But today, the printout was scaled down to about a third in each axis; i.e. when printing the test page, for example, the page is scaled down and printed 9 times (in a 3x3 matrix on a DIN A4 page).
Printouts from other tools (e.g. LibreOffice Writer) were printed only one time, but also scaled down about the same factor.

When searching Manjaro’s available printers, 4 results are offered:

  • Brother HL-2130 Foomatic/hl1250
  • Brother HL-2130 Foomatic/lj4dith
  • Brother HL-2130 Foomatic/lj5gray
  • Brother HL-2130 Foomatic/ljet4

The only one working in anyway is the first one (…/hl1250); I think this one was also used the last month (and which was formerly working as expected).
All of the others even don’t print out the test page.

How to repair this behavior?
Are there some scaling factors that may be considered and changed (although I haven’t changed things like that intentionally)?

2

I can only point you to here:

CUPS/Printer-specific problems - ArchWiki

for the HL-2130 printer it states:

HL-2130 foomatic
(using the HL-2140 driver)
Or hplip

You did use/select this one?
(even though the name doesn’t match the name of your printer?)

the HL-2140 driver is, in turn, an AUR package

multiple options - in case of use of AUR driver, you might need to rebuild the driver

I cannot confirm or test any of this - I do not own this printer.

3

Hi @Nachlese ,

thx for your quick reply as well as for the links.
Anyway, there are some things that I don’t understand.

I’m using the printer settings dialogue of the graphical system settings ("Drucker - Systemeinstellungen) to choose and setup the printer.

As already written, there are four different choices for the HL-2130:

So I guess that the latest part is the driver’s name itself (“Foomatic/[…]”)?
When searching for “HL-2140”, the results are as follows:

  • Brother HL-2140 Foomatic/hl1250
  • Brother HL-2140 Foomatic/lj4dith
  • Brother HL-2140 Foomatic/lj5gray
  • Brother HL-2140 Foomatic/ljet4
  • Brother HL-2140 Foomatic/Postscript
  • Brother HL-2140 Foomatic/pxlmono

So, if my guess is correct, all drivers being offered by Manjaro for the HL-2130 (as well as for the HL-2140) are “Foomatic” drivers, and it looks to me like the specific drivers are the same for both the HL-2130 and the HL-2140, except that the HL-2140 supports two additional protocols (e.g. Postscript, that indeed definitely isn’t supported by the HL-2130).

Unfortunately, it isn’t said which one of the Foomatic-drivers should be used.

The hplip can also be found in Manjaro’s “extra” repo.
I installed that, but the tool wasn’t able to detect any printer.

BTW, I’m wondering that a HP tool should be capable to support Brother printers… :thinking:

4

I’m german as well - but in the forum you chose we have to use the english language.

I can’t help you - as much as I want to.

I can’t see what you see - and I do not own the printer in question as well.

Everything I can say is not based in personal observation but just in what I read.

I’m afraid that I can’t help beyond what was already said - that you’ll have to figure it out yourself.

… step by step - I’d rather use the Cups web interface than the manjaro printer settings app … is all I can contribute

not productive

According to the Wiki:
it does

you may question that, or wonder how that could be

and then what? :slight_smile:

it either works
or it doesn’t

5

Great

The explantion is right there - undo your changes in printer settings

The only update involving cups was on 2025-02-20T23:00:00Z was libcupsfilters 2.1.0-3 → 2.1.1-1 on Edge (unstable branch)

Print settings can be controlled in several locations

  • system settings printer configuration
  • cups web interface (localhost:631)
  • printer aware applications

It is impossible to know what exactly triggered your issue.

When it is not known why - then repair is next to impossible. Removing print support and re-installing is not likely to help as settings created may survive.

Troubleshooting

Without any guarantees, I suggest you look at

  • /var/cache/cups
  • /etc/cups
  • /etc/cupshelpers

If you have built drivers using custom scripts (AUR) you may need to remove the packages and rebuild.

If you don’t recall doing so, check if the folder /opt/brother/Printers exist - if it does you have built a custom package for your printer and the printername(s) will be inside the folder.

1 Like
6

Thanks for the answers.
Hadn’t had enough time during the weekend, but think I’m able to make some investigations next few days and for sure will report any results here afterwards.

7

Your model should also be supported by brlaser.

2 Likes
8

True - and good to know.

But his problem is likely that some settings have been changed
by him himself
and are now the default until changed back again
but he doesn’t know how or where to look

Who knows?
There was no feedback yet.

9

Thx a lot for that hint, will check that during next few days.

I’m sorry to say, but you’re brief summery isn’t really correct that way.
I stated the following situation:

  • Printer didn’t work at all after Manjaro’s initial installation.
  • By fiddling around later, I got it working.
    :arrow_right: What’s true here: I don’t know exactly what made it work.
  • These days, I got problems with a wrong scaling factor (about a third).
    :arrow_right: What’s true here: I don’t know where this comes from.
    :arrow_right: What’s also true: I like to know whether there may be some settings to change/set some kind of a “printout scaling factor”, since this may have somehow changed (if such a setting was available).
    :arrow_right: What I haven’t mentioned up to now (as I hadn’t assessed it as significant, which may have been a misjudgement): The problem became apparent after another person tried to print from it’s (non-admin) profile.
    That profile was created after Manjaro’s installation, but was the first time activated last Saturday.
    The resolution was changed to obtain a better printout quality.
    After the scaling factor problem occurred, I switched to my admin account and realized that I now had the same issue when printing from this account - but not knowing, if the problem was caused by the other session’s printing tests.

Anyway, as already written, I will do some investigation and report afterwards.

10

That is not a good start - makes troubleshooting more like poking in the mist …

Good luck!

11

The AUR driver doesn’t work?

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/brother-hl2130

In terminal:

pamac build brother-hl2130

Make sure that you have AUR enabled in Pamac and also make certain that the base-devel package is installed.

It builds fine here, but I cannot test as I don’t own this printer.

Extracting sources...
  -> Extracting hl2130lpr-2.1.0-1.i386.rpm with bsdtar
  -> Extracting cupswrapperHL2130-2.0.4-2.i386.rpm with bsdtar
==> Starting prepare()...
==> Entering fakeroot environment...
==> Starting package()...
==> Tidying install...
  -> Removing libtool files...
  -> Purging unwanted files...
  -> Removing static library files...
  -> Stripping unneeded symbols from binaries and libraries...
  -> Compressing man and info pages...
==> Checking for packaging issues...
==> Creating package "brother-hl2130"...
  -> Generating .PKGINFO file...
  -> Generating .BUILDINFO file...
  -> Adding install file...
  -> Generating .MTREE file...
  -> Compressing package...
==> Leaving fakeroot environment.
==> Finished making: brother-hl2130 2.0.4_2-1 (Mon 24 Feb 2025 06:36:07 PM EST)
==> Cleaning up...
```
1 Like
12

That’s why I asked if somebody knows about a scaling parameter.

Anyway, such comments like yours being quoted above aren’t helpful in any way as well.

At the same topic (meaning which comments are helpful):
I am very grateful for any useful advice, such as the links in your first answer.

  • Due to your nickname, your native language wasn’t hard to guess.
    But how is this in any way related to the problem?
  • It’s OK with me if you can’t contribute any further solutions to the problem.
    However, I find it counterproductive if you misrepresent the problem I have described without making a constructive contribution.

I don’t agree with you.
Sometimes it’s helpful to know about the technical backgrounds.
If nobody knows, that’s OK. If someone knows, this sometimes helps.
Maybe I should have been written it in another way, e.g.:
What’s the technical background of a HP driver set being referenced for a Brother laser pinter - does anybody know?
I try to be more precise next time.

Thanks.

Haven’t tested that, up to know I used only build-in drivers or packages from the Manjaro repos (like hplip).

One more point on the list to check, thanks.

13

That wasn’t in reference to that.
It was in reference to:
printer didn’t work - by fiddling around you got it to work

So neither you nor we know what made it work, which driver or ppd or whatever you used with which it used to work,
which might have been changed by the update - no one knows where to start looking.

In that scenario, I’d simply start over - and I’d do it with a driver which the Arch Wiki suggests - either foomatic for the hl2140 (not 2150, which you mentioned) or the hplip

Back up your configuration in case you want to go back to it or compare later:
sudo cp -r /etc/cups /etc/cupsbackupconfig

Using the cups web interface (localhost:631) - delete the printer and create a new entry.

As far as I know, the configuration and changes to it, when made default (like the scaling factor) are stored in /etc/cups/printers.conf - with the previous settings being renamed as /etc/cups/printers.conf.0
Every time you change something in config, this happens.

ppd used is stored in /etc/cups/ppd

That is all I can contribute.

… a simple not fully understanding or a misunderstanding doesn’t do it?
It has got to be misrepresentation?
…

I cannot answer that one.

ps:

If you go to print something, you get a dialog window with multiple tabs.
The first lets you select the printer you want to send it to, the next is page configuration (Seite einrichten), where the scaling and other things can be adapted.
This setting, once changed, will stay for all subsequent print jobs - until you adapt it again.
Perhaps it is that setting that you would want to have a look at.

1 Like
14

One more time:
It worked after that for a long time. It was no fiddling around when it broke.

Might be that I haven’t had set up CUPS correctly.
If I would have known the issue, I hadn’t had to ask for support here.
One more time: If someone would have been said “just look at the scaling factor that you can find in file xyz”, my post here was successful.
I don’t expect anybody here to be a wizard.

Sorry, you’re the only one here mentioning that model.

That what I’ll do next time, so I’m glad about the hints from the other users.

As already written, didn’t worked for me.

Thx for the hint where to find all settings.

Also a thing I had in mind.
Thx nevertheless.

Looks like a valuable hint, thx.

Thx, it’s on my checklist.

15

But you fiddled around and, like magic, it suddenly worked.
And you don’t know how or why to this day.
It just did … until it, apparently equally suddenly, did not anymore.

au contraire - I’ll cite it for you:

I’m done here with trying to help you.

Be well!

da wird doch keine Liste gebraucht - guck doch einfach nach …

16

2150 ≠ 1250.

This is just polemic.
Please stay objective and polite.

As also already written multiple times, I’m currently not able to do that the next few days, so I’m collecting the hints up to then.

Thx, same to you.

17

my bad - it’s still not the one Arch Wiki says it works

dito

… but I’m still done - in case you still need help, there are plenty more helpful people

Cheers!

18

As far as I understand it, the only thing stated in the arch wiki is to use foomatic driver. It also seems that, in Arch Linux, the HL-2130 isn’t (or wasn’t at that time the wiki was written/edited) supported with an own entry, so that’s why the similar HL-2140 was referenced instead. In Manjaro, the HL-2130 has separate entries in the driver selection.
I already wrote about all that here:

For sure.

I agree.

19

You are in the position to test this - I’m not.
I can just read what’s in the Wiki and look at the contents of the foomatic-db package

Arch Linux - foomatic-db 3:20240209-1 (any)

a bit down - Package Contents → view the file list for …)
there seems to be a matching driver indeed
* usr/share/foomatic/db/source/printer/Brother-HL-2130.xml

Bye now!

20

After a long time, I like to bring that thread to an end.

Since I also had some other trouble when trying to copy a larger amount of data, I recognized by chance (and with some help of a ‘Linux-expierienced’ friend of mine) that the copy procedure ran into some memory violation, which led me to the suspect of system memory failure.
Due to this, I started some extended memory checks with memtest86+; and indeed, the system ran into trouble again and again after the second, third, fourth (…) pass of the complete check, every time when accessing the higher memory addresses (b.t.w., most times, it managed the first run without any hazzle).

So I tried a lot of things, cleaned the contacts, swapped the memory modules between the slots, and tried some other RAM modules and combinations of different modules in both slots; in the end, I found a combination that seemed to work stable even after fife or six complete runs in memtest86+ (at the expense of capacity + 10MB instead of 16MB and dual-channel operation).

After this measure, I re-installed the (original) printer driver, and since then, the printing seems to work stable and reliable.
So I think that the problem was indeed caused by the memory failures: I guess that when being logged in as the only user in parallel, the lower memory was sufficient, but when switching to another user in parallel (without being logged out before), the processor also started to access some memory at higher addresses, which caused memory failures and crashed the printing server somehow.

In between, I bought a new laptop (Tuxedo InfinityBook Gen9, AMD flavor) and also installed Manjaro on it (I’m currently using it to write this answer :wink: ), and yesterday I added the Brother Printer to it, which was immediately recognized correctly, and the correct printer driver was automatically used. :partying_face:

Although the Manjaro system that’s running on the old Dell (which now is mainly used by my mother in law) seems to work well these days, I’m thinking about to re-install a fresh Manjaro and checking if it now works as flawless as it does on my new Tuxedo.
After this, I will write the outcome here to complete the information and close this thread.

Anyway, a big thanks to everyone supporting me here, especially @linux-aarhus, @jrichard326 and @Deano.

2 Likes