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)?
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…
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.
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.
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
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. 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). What’s true here: I don’t know where this comes from. 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). 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.
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).
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.
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.
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 …
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:
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