How to get a Brother DCP-350C scanner working?

Short Answer

The drivers you found are old versions:

$ dpkg  -l  |  grep  Brother
ii  brother-cups-wrapper-common                1.0.0-10-0ubuntu6                                        amd64        Common files for Brother cups wrapper packages
ii  brother-udev-rule-type1                    1.0.0-1                                                  all          Brother udev rule type 1
ii  brscan-skey                                0.2.4-1                                                  amd64        Brother Linux scanner S-KEY tool
ii  brscan2                                    0.2.5-1                                                  amd64        Brother Scanner Driver
ii  printer-driver-brlaser                     3-5~ubuntu1                                              amd64        printer driver for (some) Brother laser printers
ii  printer-driver-ptouch                      1.4-1                                                    amd64        printer driver Brother P-touch label printers

The newest versions are:

$ dpkg -l | grep -i brother
ii  brother-udev-rule-type1                    1.0.2                                        all          Brother udev rule type 1
ii  brscan-skey                                0.2.4-1                                      amd64        Brother Linux scanner S-KEY tool
ii  brscan4                                    0.4.4-3                                      amd64        Brother Scanner Driver
ii  cupswrapperdcp7065dn:i386                  2.0.4-2                                      i386         Brother DCP7065DN CUPS wrapper driver
ii  dcp7065dnlpr:i386                          2.1.0-1                                      i386         Brother DCP-7065DN LPR driver
ii  printer-driver-brlaser                     3-5~ubuntu1                                  amd64        printer driver for (some) Brother laser printers
ii  printer-driver-ptouch                      1.4-1                                        amd64        printer driver Brother P-touch label printers

• udev rule upgraded from 1.0.0-1 to 1.0.2
• brscan2 version 0.2.5-1 upgraded to brscan4 version 0.4.4-3

Also you have a generic cups-wrapper where as mine is model specific.

TL:DR; Very, very LONG ANSWER

Much of the long answer is trial and error. You need only follow Step 1, Step 2, the first part of Step 3 (stop at selecting scanner only). Then skip down to Step 6 and Step 7.

Background

I have a Brother DCP-7065DN which is a nice monochrome double sided laser printer. I've had it for three years but have never used the scanner feature primarily because "whose got paper to scan in an electronic world?". Due to your question I thought it was time to get the scanner function working.

Comparing DCP-7065DN to DCP-350C

According to this post in Ubuntu Forums the same Brother Driver tool works for both your DCP-350C and my DCP-7065DN printer.

Current installation tools

Your question contains no less than 15 links and I noticed the site of your first link is out-dated:

The Ubuntu Forums Q&A I linked above contains a more current installation tool link:

Notice the Release Date is Christmas 2017, only a few months old.

Rather than repeating your steps I'll start a fresh install (of the scanner only) using the Ubuntu Forums link above.

Installation Step 1 - Select Printer

Start by selecting the right product. In the printer icon for MFC-J410W, click the link Not your product? and a selection page appears:

Your printer can be found in the first icon which has a sub-menu for "DCP 3 Series" which leads to your specific model:

My printer is the fourth icon in the panel, which being 3 icons wide is immediately below yours. I'll select that and it has a sub-menu for "DCP 7 Series" which after clicking presents:

I'll click on DCP-7065DN. You would have already selected DCP-350C on the previous screen shot.

Installation Step 2 - Select Operating System (OS)

After selecting the printer model you are asked for your OS. It defaults to Linux and ".rpm". The default is ".rpm" which stands for Red Hat or Arch Linux or something like that. Change the distro to ".deb" which stands Debian which is really Ubuntu.

Click the Search button.

Installation Step 3 - Download Software

Now that the preliminaries are finished and the Command Line aficionados and GUI haters in Ubuntu-Verse have put my name on their dart boards we get to select the software to download:

The model icon in the top-left corner should be DCP-350C for you but it is DCP-7065DN for me.

The first section is for printer drivers but we don't need that as both our printers print fine. The last section is for source code but we don't need that. If we did we probably wouldn't be on this website. The middle section contains the scanner drivers:

Here we need to select the architecture: 32-bit or 64-bit.

I've read a 32-bit driver won't work on my 64-bit arch so I'm only going to download #3 & #4 for now. I may come back and grab #1 if I need the driver?

Installation Step 3-A)

Download Scan-key-tool 64bit (deb package)

After selecting #3 scanner option we see your model number on line #2 and my model number on the last line (of the screen shot)...:

...So assuming all works well for me it should all work well for you!

You need to agree to the EULA (End User License Agreement) and then download the .deb file.

The file downloaded is:

• brscan-skey-0.2.4-1.amd64.deb, size 50.9 KB, date 03/12/2014

The follow-up instructions on the web page says:

brscanX should be installed first

Installation Step 3-B)

Download Scanner driver 32bit (deb package)

So we have to go back a screen and download #1 (** Scanner driver 32bit (deb package)**). The file downloaded is:

• brscan4-0.4.4-4.i386.deb, size 63.9 KB, date 09/22/2017

Notice the date is only a 6 months old!

Installation Step 3-C)

Download Scanner Setting file (deb package)

At the same time #1 is downloaded, we'll download #4 (Scanner Setting file (deb package)). The file downloaded is:

• brother-udev-rule-type1-1.0.2-0.all.deb, size 1.6 KB, date 11/25/2016

Notice this the version number is different than yours!

Installation Step 4 - sudo dpkg -i ...

To summarize the packages downloaded:

• 1. brscan4-4.4-4.i386.deb
• 3. brscan-skey-0.2.4-1.amd64.deb
• 4. brother-udev-rule-type1-1.0.2.0.all.deb

We will first install #1, then #4, reboot and finally install #3:

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
rick@alien:~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg -i brscan4-0.4.4-4.i386.deb
Selecting previously unselected package brscan4:i386.
(Reading database ... 1147453 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack brscan4-0.4.4-4.i386.deb ...
Unpacking brscan4:i386 (0.4.4-4) ...
Setting up brscan4:i386 (0.4.4-4) ...
This software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
rick@alien:~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg -i brother-udev-rule-type1-1.0.2-0.all.deb
Selecting previously unselected package brother-udev-rule-type1.
(Reading database ... 1147495 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack brother-udev-rule-type1-1.0.2-0.all.deb ...
Unpacking brother-udev-rule-type1 (1.0.2) ...
Setting up brother-udev-rule-type1 (1.0.2) ...
ls: cannot access '/etc/udev/rules.d/*.rules': No such file or directory
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
rick@alien:~/Downloads$ 

Ohh No! Error on the last line.

No idea why ls was generating an error because the directory is there and three rules exist. We can see one of them has just been set up:

$ ll /etc/udev/rules.d/*brother*.rules
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1004 Mar 10 16:59 /etc/udev/rules.d/60-brother-libsane-type1.rules

Oh well... let's proceed anyway. Looking at the new Brother udev rule all it does after a whole bunch of code is set:

ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"

Now it's time to post this answer as is and reboot.

After rebooting let's install the last file:

$ sudo dpkg -i brscan-skey-0.2.4-1.amd64.deb
Selecting previously unselected package brscan-skey.
(Reading database ... 1147499 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack brscan-skey-0.2.4-1.amd64.deb ...
Unpacking brscan-skey (0.2.4-1) ...
Setting up brscan-skey (0.2.4-1) ...

Interesting that there is more than a million files on my system. Those 25 kernels add up over time.

Installation Step 5 - Testing

I cheated a bit and found this: Brother DCP-7065DN, Ubuntu 14.04 64bit: Can print to network printer but cannot use the scan function which recommended these steps:

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
rick@alien:~/Downloads$ brscan-skey
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
rick@alien:~/Downloads$ brscan-skey -l

 DCP-7065DN        : brother4:bus4;dev7  : USB                  Active

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
rick@alien:~/Downloads$

So far, so good. The answer (no long sure if it's sure valid) says you need to put brscan-skey into your Startup Applications and you need gimp installed. Comment below if you need help doing this.

Apparently xsane is needed for scanning:

$ sudo apt install xsane
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
   (...BLAH, BLAH, BLAH...)
Setting up xsane-common (0.999-3ubuntu1) ...
Setting up xsane (0.999-3ubuntu1) ...

xsane = extremely insane

After installing type xsane in the terminal and get:

After closing the error message, xsane tries to scan for devices and eventually replies there are none. Oh Joy, Oh Bliss. The Brother website says scanning is designed to be done as root so we'll type sudo xsane and now we see:

Sounds scary but regular user couldn't find a scanner so let's see if sudo does. Select Continue at your own risk button. After window greys out for a few momments the same response as regular user appears: No devices available.

Software method doesn't work, try hardware method

Using the scan key on the Brother MFC generates this message:

Well at least there is communication between scanner and computer because gimp started up automatically.

I never rebooted after installing brscan-skey so do it now out of hope / desperation.

Step 6 - Go back and download CUPS Wrapper

Rebooting didn't work so I'll go back and install the CUPS Wrapper tool dated 12/25/2017 which has not been installed on my system. You have an older version of on your system:

There are five download packages. When downloading the first one (CUPSwrapper) this dialog box appears:

• Change option from Open to Save!
• Click OK

Open terminal, change to ~/Downloads and verify file exists:

rick@alien:~/Downloads$ ll *.gz*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 rick rick    24666 Mar 11 08:24 linux-brprinter-installer-2.2.0-1.gz

After downloading these instructions appear on the website. Abbreviated format follows:

rick@alien:~/Downloads$ gunzip linux-brprinter-installer-2.2.0-1.gz
rick@alien:~/Downloads$ sudo su
root@alien:/home/rick/Downloads# 

root@alien:/home/rick/Downloads# bash linux-brprinter-installer-2.2.0-1 DCP-7065DN # Change DCP-7065DN to DCP-350C
You are going to install following packages.
   dcp7065dnlpr-2.1.0-1.i386.deb
   cupswrapperDCP7065DN-2.0.4-2.i386.deb
   brscan4-0.4.4-3.amd64.deb
   brscan-skey-0.2.4-1.amd64.deb
OK? [y/N] ->

Uh-Oh... It's selecting brscan4-0.4.4-3.amd64.deb but earlier I had installed brscan4-0.4.4-4.i386.deb which was a newer version but the wrong architecture. This could explain the errors I had!

Select y to proceed. Big license agreement pops up. Select y to proceed. Another license agreement pops up. Select y to proceed. The script runs apt install on it's own.

A prompt appears:

Will you specify the Device URI? [Y/n] ->

For yours and mine USB Printer we select n.

Next it prompts for a test print. To kill another tree select y. Yeah the test print works and I now have a printed page I can scan later!

A third big license agreement now appears so, select y to proceed.

It's all finished so reboot.

Step 7 - Test simple-scan

After reboot check the installation in terminal and perform simple scan:

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
rick@alien:~$ brscan-skey
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
rick@alien:~$ brscan-skey -l

 DCP-7065DN        : brother4:bus4;dev7  : USB                  Active

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
rick@alien:~$ dpkg -l | grep -i brother
ii  brother-udev-rule-type1                    1.0.2                                        all          Brother udev rule type 1
ii  brscan-skey                                0.2.4-1                                      amd64        Brother Linux scanner S-KEY tool
ii  brscan4                                    0.4.4-3                                      amd64        Brother Scanner Driver
ii  cupswrapperdcp7065dn:i386                  2.0.4-2                                      i386         Brother DCP7065DN CUPS wrapper driver
ii  dcp7065dnlpr:i386                          2.1.0-1                                      i386         Brother DCP-7065DN LPR driver
ii  printer-driver-brlaser                     3-5~ubuntu1                                  amd64        printer driver for (some) Brother laser printers
ii  printer-driver-ptouch                      1.4-1                                        amd64        printer driver Brother P-touch label printers
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
rick@alien:~$ simple-scan

After all the hard work we are rewarded with a scan:

I had a similar problem with brother printer/scanner MFC-J625DW.
Apparently, some older versions of the driver (upto brscan4) put some files into the wrong folder. This issue seems to be fixed now (moment of writing May, 2020).
(I have also been editing the 'rules' file , but in the end reverted everything as it did not solve anything.)

When it happens the fix is :
Check if the following directory exist.

For 64bit Users: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane

For 32bit Users: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/sane

Type the following command if the above directory exists.

For 64bit Users: Command : sudo cp /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother* /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane

For 32bit Users: Command : sudo cp /usr/lib/sane/libsane-brother* /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/sane

To clarify I will list all actions I did to get my MFC-J625DW to work (reboot between some steps may be useful):

• download, unzip and run script for your device from support.brother.com (this installed all necessary packages for my device) Follow all instructions on that site.
• add myusername to the group lp, owning the scan device sudo adduser <myusername> lp
• if you need to find out the name of this group, switch on the device, do lsusb, note the busnr and devicenr of the brother, and execute ls -l /dev/bus/usb/busnr/devicenr (3 digits per nr)
• did the filecopying fix described above
• to enable all features of brscan-skey, I need gimp, sane and xsane
  sudo apt install gimp
sudo apt install sane sane-utils libsane-extras xsane