Ubuntu – Getting the brother MFC-J825DW working as a network scanner

brotherprintingscanner

I've been attempting to set up my new brother multi-function device to work as a printer and scanner using the following steps. It is connected to the network as a LAN device, not directly connected to my ubuntu machine.

  1. Search Brother support for the MFC-J825DW and download the deb packages for the lpr driver and cupswrapper drivers.
  2. Follow install instructions for each driver, making sure you have all required packages installed (ia32-libs or lib32stdc++ if using 64bit ubuntu for example).

After this point I was able to successfully perform a test print, so the printer part is working. So far I haven't had much luck getting the scanner working. This is what I've tried:

  1. Download the brscan4 and scan-key-tool deb packages from brother support as above.
  2. Followed the instructions for installing these ensure you have all requried packages installed (such as sane-utils).

However when I tried to scan it detects no scanner.

I then tried the solution offered in this answer to a question based on a similar brother printer, but no luck. I must have made a mistake somewhere along the line. Does anyone have any ideas what I can try to find out what? Or should I uninstall everything and start again from the beginning?

Best Answer

Updated answer for January 2019

There is a new single deb installer package on the Brother website that installs both printer and scanner drivers. This makes installation much easier.

  1. Download the 'Driver install tool`.
  2. Open bash terminal and navigate to download folder.

  3. Unzip the file...

    gunzip linux-brprinter-installer-2.2.1-1.gz

(version number will probably change, so watch for that).

  1. Change to superuser or use sudo for the following commands:

    bash linux-brprinter-installer-*.*.*-* MFC-J825DW

  2. Agree to prompts and select to use ip address (11 or I when I did it) , then enter the printers ip address when prompted. You can find the address on the printers touch screen display from the 'network' menu if you don't know it.

Old answer, which concerned what to do if you entered the wrong IP address, however it is probably outdated and I suggest trying to rerun the Driver install tool and re-entering the ip address again when prompted.

I think this is a case of only being stuck until you ask for help. Soon after posting this I decided to check the ip addesses of the printer and scanner. Sure enough I'd entered a different ip for each one somehow. Since the printer worked and the scanner didn't, I made the assumption that the scanner had the wrong one.

To correct this I had to enter the following line at the command prompt:

brsaneconfig4 -r SCANNER

This command removed the scanner with the incorrect ip address. Then I simply added it back again, making sure the ip address was right this time.

brsaneconfig4 -a name=SCANNER model=MFC-J825DW ip=192.168.3.3

Note: You should probably set the scanner up to a fixed ip in the router, otherwise you may have problems later on when it gets assigned a different ip when the router is reset.

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