Brother printer has stopped working with 20.10

My wireless Brother printer has been working wonderfully for several years with my Ubuntu setup, now for some reason, perhaps an OS update, it no longer functions. When I command a print mostly what I get is "processing" which can go on for hours. I have tried downloading the files and linux installer from Brother's website, and I have tried every variation of URI that Brother offered. I have installed a generic printer (CUPS) but it also does not work for me. I have reviewed every question/answer on AU (except the correct one.) What am I missing? Is solving the problem more of a waste of time than replacing the printer with an Ubuntu-compatible machine, that is, is there a printer that is sort-of-guaranteed to work out of the box with Ubuntu? Is my current printer trying its best but is it just not up to the job? Of course, I would be happier to keep on working with my current machine that having to replace it.

Here's the setup:

  • Brother Laser HL-L2340DW
  • Ubuntu 20.10

lpstat

HLL2340D-49             qrp               1024   Thu 08 Apr 2021 06:39:29 PM MDT

lsb_release -a

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 20.10
Release:    20.10
Codename:   groovy

neofetch

qrp@qrp-N141CU 
-------------- 
OS: Ubuntu 20.10 x86_64
Kernel: Linux 5.8.0-48-generic
Shell: /bin/bash 5.0.17 
DE: GNOME 3.38.2 
CPU: Intel i7-10510U (8) @ 4.900GHz [44.0°C]
GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 
Memory: 2.47GiB / 15.33GiB (16%)
Terminal: gnome-terminal 
Resolution: 1920x1080 @ 59.93Hz
Host: N141CU
Uptime: 9m
Packages: 2522 (dpkg), 9 (snap)
WM: Mutter
WM Theme: Adwaita
Theme: Yaru-dark 
Icons: ubuntu-mono-dark

Holy smokes! After nearly a day of tweaking this and that, I decided to go back to scratch. I unplugged the printer, deleted it from my list of printers, plugged in again the printer and waited. Ubuntu's printer list soon populated with my printer, I cancelled its search for drivers, since it is driverless, printed a test page and voila! It works. I tried a couple of other docs (pdf, inter-active pdf) and it is working like it just came back from spring break.

Many thanks to those who took the time to think about my problem and offered solutions. If only I had tried this first...


Run the following command to install the drivers from the default Ubuntu multiverse repository. The repository should be enabled by default but just in case, go ahead and enable the repo and then install the packages using the following commands.

sudo add-apt-repository multiverse
sudo apt update
sudo apt install printer-driver-brlaser brother-cups-wrapper-common brother-cups-wrapper-extra brother-cups-wrapper-laser brother-cups-wrapper-laser1 brother-lpr-drivers-common brother-lpr-drivers-extra brother-lpr-drivers-laser brother-lpr-drivers-laser1

I got this list of packages by running the following command:

 apt-cache search brother | grep "common\|extra\|laser" | awk '{print $1}'

The first part of the command searches for packages containing "brother".

The second part greps for common, extra, and laser.

The third part says to print only the first column which is the column with the package names.

To make it a list with single spaces, we can echo the command:

echo $(apt-cache search brother | grep "common\|extra\|laser" | awk '{print $1}')

or you could just tell apt to install the list:

sudo apt install $(apt-cache search brother | grep "common\|extra\|laser" | awk '{print $1}')

Although, as always, it is important to always review the list of packages to install/uninstall before accepting the changes.