Installing a Brother MFC-7340 Printer in Ubuntu 10.04

I was installing Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) on a desktop computer.  I wanted to get my Brother MFC-7340 printer working from within Ubuntu.  I had not been able to make it work with Ubuntu 9.10, but now I had found a post where mdgrech described how it could be done.  The steps I took were as follows:

sudo -i

aa-complain cupsd

mkdir /usr/share/cups/model

mkdir /var/spool/lpd

apt-get install sane-utils

apt-get install psutils

It puzzled me that mdgrech’s link led to the LPR driver for the MFC-7420.  I suspected he knew exactly what he was doing; but just in case that was a mistaken link, I went to the Brother Linux driver download page and downloaded the Debian LPR driver for the MFC-7340 instead.  This gave me a file called brmfc7340lpr-2.0.2-1.i386.deb.  To install the LPR driver, Brother advised using CUPS if it was working on my system.  I wasn’t sure if it was.  I was advised to try this:  “sudo /etc./init.d/cups status.”  That said “cupsd is running.”  Now what?  I followed the links to the Cupswrapper Driver Install page.  There, I had to follow certain “pre-required procedures.”  These appeared to be more or less the steps that mdgrech had already had me take (above).  So apparently he had used the CUPS approach too.  Encouraged, I continued along this CUPS route.  There was some disagreement on the next step.  Brother said that I should turn on the printer and connect it to the computer now; mdgrech seemed to say I should install the driver first.  I wound up not connecting the printer until later.  Meanwhile, it seemed that I would need to be installing the cupswrapper driver as well as the LPR driver, so I went back to the download page and did that.  This gave me a download called cupswrapperMFC7340-2.0.2-1.i386.deb.  The next steps were to navigate to the folder where I had downloaded brmfc7340lpr-2.0.2-1.i386.deb and then type these commands:

dpkg -i --force-all brmfc7340lpr-2.0.2-1.i386.deb

dpkg -i --force-all cupswrapperMFC7340-2.0.2-1.i386.deb

dpkg -l | grep Brother

The next step was to go to http://localhost:631/printers.  It showed the printer.  So now I did turn on the printer and plug in the USB cable.  (Note that there are slightly different instructions if your connection is ethernet.)  Ubuntu saw the printer, but gave me a “Missing printer driver” note in the upper right corner of the screen, and then said “Searching for available drivers.”  Eventually it gave me a New Printer dialog.  

Note:  mdgrech had advised, instead, to go to http://localhost:631/admin, select Add printer, choose Brother MFC-7340, choose “Another Make/Manufacturer,” select the MFC-7340, and click Add Printer.  Since I had gone to http://localhost:631/printers as Brother advised, I was now at the New Printer dialog, so I proceeded from there.  I selected “Select printer from database” (with Brother highlighted) > Forward > MFC7340 for CUPS > Brother MFC7340 for CUPS [en] (recommended) > Forward.  I went with the defaults in the “Describe Printer” dialog > Apply.  I printed a test page.  It worked!

There was one other thing I needed to check.  On this Ubuntu machine, I was running Windows XP in a virtual machine in VMware, and had previously tried to install the MFC-7340 from there.  I still had it listed as a printer.  So I went into VMware at this point and tried printing from there.  The print job queued up, but it didn’t print.  I ran Brother’s Installation Diagnostics software, there in Windows XP, and it reported failure:  “Cannot communicate with the machine.”  I went into Start > Settings > Printers and Faxes (right-click) > right-click on the Brother MFC-7340 Printer > Properties > Ports tab.  I checked the box next to the USB003 port, which was the only port that specifically referred to the Brother MFC-7340.  I clicked OK and tried printing again.  Once again, it queued but did not print.  Then it occurred to me that, of course, I would have to go into VMware’s VM > Removable Devices.  There, sure enough, I saw “Brother Printer.”  I clicked Connect.  The queue dialog said, “Printing,” and then it did print.

The other thing I really wanted to be able to do with the Brother MFC-7340 was to scan.  This appeared to be an entirely different process, so I started another post for that.  Otherwise, with this step finished, I returned to the project of tweaking Ubuntu 10.04, as described in a separate post.