Brother HL-L2340DW printer

I've (perhaps unwisely, it seems) just bought a Brother HL-L2340DW printer and I'm struggling to get it working with Ubuntu.

I need to get it working wirelessly, but I can connect it by USB in order to get it working if necessary.

So far I've managed to get the printer's IP address set and I can browse to it from a web browser, but I haven't managed to get it working as a CUPS printer.

There is no built-in printer driver for this printer in Ubuntu. I tried a Linux CUPS driver from Brother website - the instructions mismatch severely but I sort of guessed my way through the mismatching bits. At the end of it all there are no errors as such, and I can search for network printers, find it and install it, but when I print, the job disappears from the queue without printing or telling me anything went wrong.

To be clear, it's not so much that I'm having problems which I need help to resolve - the issue is that I just don't know how to do this. My first hope is that someone may be able to advise how to do this - and I could then reply with any problems. If that's not possible, it'll come down to debugging it but I just don't know where to start.

Any help much appreciated!

Thanks, Mark

Solution 1:

Found a better (native, not Google) solution - eventually. This is a pain, but perhaps it will help some poor soul in the future. Unfortunately I can't easily go back and do it again on a virgin system to verify it, so there could be mistakes below - sorry. Better than nothing, though, I hope.

• Start at http://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadtop.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hll2340dw_us_eu_as (The instructions on this page are terrible, confusing, incomplete, wrong. You need to get the files from there, but here's what I really had to do:)
• Select OS Family = Linux, OS Version = deb. Click Search.
• Download both Generic LPR printer driver (deb package) and Generic CUPSwrapper printer driver (deb package)
• sudo mkdir /var/spool/lpd
• sudo mkdir /usr/share/cups/model
• Open the LPR package with Ubuntu Software Centre. Install it. Overlook the badly-made-package warning.
• Open the CUPSwrapper package with Ubuntu Software Centre. Install it. Overlook the badly-made-package warning.
• Add a CUPS printer as normal. These are the settings I ended up with, which work for me:
  • Device URI: lpd://Brother/BINARY_P1 ("brother" is set up on my DNS, you could use printer's IP addr, 192.168.x.x)
  • Make and Model Brother BrGenML1 for CUPS (selected from Makes -> Brother, Models -> BrGenML1 for CUPS)

Solution 2:

Found another howto. If anyone wants to test this for applicability to the 2340DW that would be great.

https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/15