Brother Printer-Scanner Setup infoexample model: HL-L2395DW
( including photo & document scanning info using
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 Brother HL-L2395DW PSC (Printer-Scanner-Copier) |
! Note !
Notes and images may be added or changed
--- if/when I re-visit this page.
SECTIONS BELOW:
Introduction
PrinterSetup
ScannerSetupProblem
ScannerSetupSolution
Scanning With SimpleScan
Scanning With 'scanimage'
Scanning With XSane
Brother PDFs (user guides, etc)
More Info (web searches)
BottomOfPage
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INTRODUCTION: In the 1990 to 2012 timeframe, I used HP printers at home --- HP PSC (Printer-Scanner-Copier) *inkjet* printers after about 2006 --- one attached to a Windows desktop computer and one to a Linux desktop computer. However, I did not like the fact that the color cartridges for HP inkjet printers had all 3 colors (cyan, magenta, yellow) in one cartridge. Often, I would run out of one color but have plenty left of the other two. (I try to use black for almost all printouts but the color parts of the cartridges seemed to gradually get depleted anyway.) I liked the idea that Epson used 3 separate cartridges for the 3 colors. So around 2013, when we were having trouble with a couple of HP inkjet printers (they were leaking ink and printing poorly or jamming), I decided to replace them with Epson inkjet printers. I got an Epson Stylus NX430 printer-scanner-copier (for a Linux desktop computer) and an Epson Workforce 545 printer-scanner-copier-fax (for a Windows desktop computer. (We do not use the fax feature.) I also have an Epson V100 'Perfection' Scanner that I plan to use someday --- attached to a Linux computer. I later found out that when any of the 4 cartridges on the Epson Workforce printer runs out of ink (say a color cartridge), the Epson printer software (at least on Microsoft Windows) will not print your next document page --- even if there is plenty of black ink, and you just want to print a black-and-white (or grayscale) document. The software insists that you replace the (near-)empty color cartridge. Bummer. If you don't have the right color cartridge on hand, you may be printer-less for many hours because you have to get that color cartridge before you can print anything on that Epson printer. I was able to use the scanner on the Epson NX430 printer-scanner-copier as I have documented at a Linux Scanner How-To for Epson Scanners web page --- where I describe installing and using Epson 'iscan' software on Linux. For more help on using various scanners on Linux, see the Ubuntu Community Help on Scanners. Clogging Problem with Inkjets: In 2023, I tried using the Epson NX430 inkjet printer-scanner-copier to print some business cards --- using the 'gLabels' software (help.gnome.org link) on my Linux (Ubuntu-MATE) desktop computer. My Ubuntu-MATE desktop computer in 2023 was not a powerful desktop. It is/was a little Acer desktop computer which was plenty powerful enough for web browsing, email processing, script programming, image display-and-editing, audio playing-and-editing and video playing-and-editing. Some of its features (like Intel Celeron J1900 processor and 4 Gigabytes of memory) can be seen in the following image. |
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I had not used the Epson NX430 for several months and found that I was getting blank pages (not even a drop of black ink) when trying to print the business cards. Nor would the copy function yield anything but blank pages. I did web searches on keywords such as 'epson inkjet printing blank pages' and I watched YouTube videos on things people had done to unclog their Epson inkjet printers. I tried many of those techniques, including buying a kit to use a plastic bottle with plastic tube attached to try to clean the print heads. (On Epson inkjets, the heads are in the printer, unlike HP inkjets for which the heads are in the cartridges.) After wasting many hours trying (unsuccessfully) to unclog the Epson print heads, I decided to look for a laser printer. In fact, in my many web searches for unclogging fixes, I saw a 2023 YouTube video by Louis Rossman in which he advised using a Brother laser printer rather than HP inkjets (partly because HP began to require monthly 'subscription' payments to get their print cartridges.) Since I never really need to print color pages, I wanted a laser printer-scanner-copier (PSC) that could
I did a lot of web searches on different Brother laser printers and decided the Brother model HL-L2395DW PSC (web search link) looked like it would be suitable for my uses. I also looked for HP and Epson laser printers, but found that Epson does not seem to be invested in developing laser printers --- and I did not like the HP 'subscription model'. When I went to a local OfficeDepot/Max store, I found that they had the Brother HL-L2395DW PSC on sale for $180, instead of the the typical list price of $220. It was my lucky day. Wired (not wireless) connection: Although the Brother HL-L2395DW PSC is advertised as a 'wireless' printer, I wanted to connect to my Ubuntu-MATE Linux desktop computer using a USB cable (to assure a stable, reliable, fast connection). The intent of this page is to provide a place to collect information on using a Brother laser PSC --- for printing and for scanning --- especially a Brother PSC connected by a USB cable. In particular, I document how to configure a USB-connected Brother laser PSC on Linux (specifically Ubuntu-MATE) for
Organization of this page: The following sections of this page describe or provide:
Those sections are below. |
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PRINTER SETUP: I was pleasantly surprised that it was easy to configure the Brother printer for printing. Usually you hear about *needing* to download and install drivers. On my Ubuntu-MATE Linux system, the download-and-install was handled almost automatically for me --- as follows. After I connected the Brother HL-L2395DW printer to my Linux desktop computer via a USB printer-cable and powered it on, I went to the Ubuntu-MATE Printer utility via the 'System > Administration > Printers' menu path --- as seen in the following desktop image. |
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I clicked on 'Printers' and this caused display of the main window of the 'system-config-printer' (version 1.5.11) 'CUPS configuration tool'. |
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I had disconnected my old Epson NX430 inkjet printer-scanner-copier and the icon representing that printer was still in the 'printer config' window. I decided to leave the Epson icon there in case I ever wanted to reconnect that printer to use it --- if I could ever unclog its inkjet print heads. With the Brother printer powered on, I clicked on the "+ Add" option to add the Brother printer and the following window was displayed. |
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I clicked on the Brother line on the left, and I was surprised to get a message that a Brother driver was being fetched and installed. In a few seconds the Brother CUPS printer software was installed and the Brother icon showed up in the main 'printer-config' window. (I was connected to the internet when I clicked on the Brother line. That allowed for the quick download and install of the driver.) |
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Using the 'SetAs Default' option in the popup menu that you get after clicking on the printer icon, I set the Brother printer as the default printer. See the popup menu in the following image (where the Brother printer has already been set as the default printer). |
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Printing a test page from an application like a web browser (SeaMonkey) or 'gLabels' showed that the printer was working. The next task was to get the Brother scanner working (described below). |
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SCANNER SETUP PROBLEM: To use the Brother scanner, I hoped that Brother provided Linux software for scanning --- like Epson provides a Linux version of their 'iscan' software. So I did a web seach on keywords such as 'brother hl-l2395dw scan software linux ubuntu' and I got some hits on pertinent pages at support.brother.com. To use the Brother scanner on my Ubuntu-MATE Linux system, I downloaded Brother scanner software (version 0.4.11-1 released 2021dec21) from a Brother Linux 64-bit deb package download page at support.brother.com . In particular, in 2023, I downloaded the 'brscan4' software that was in a 'brscan4-0.4.11-1.amd64.deb' file. When I downloaded that file, I was presented with a 'How to Install' page at support.brother.com . That page provided the following information: 1. Download the driver. 2. Login as a superuser (or use "sudo" option if required) . 3. Install the driver [as follows].
In my case, the 'scanner-driver-filename' was 'brscan4-0.4.11-1.amd64.deb' and the 'sudo dpkg' command completed successfully. Unfortunately, that Brother 'how to install' page does not explain how to use that software. It turns out this software is a 'backend' to the SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) (Wikipedia link) software system available on most Linux distributions. And many Linux systems have the 'SimpleScan' or 'XSane' GUI software (pre-installed or installable) that can be used with the Brother 'backend'. I was expecting Brother to provide *GUI* software for scanning with their scanners --- like Epson provides the 'iscan' GUI software for their scanners. But it appears that Brother provides a 'backend' and a GUI 'frontend' like 'SimpleScan' (or a Linux command like 'scanimage') needs to be used for scanning with a Brother scanner. If you do a lot of web searching with keywords like 'brother scanner gui', you might find that there is a Brother help page called How to scan using SimpleScan at help.brother-usa.com . (I think I stumbled on that page after lots of web-searching or browsing through pages on Brother web sites. THAT INFORMATION SHOULD BE ON THE BROTHER LINUX DOWNLOAD PAGE.) That page suggests using 'Applications > Graphics > SimpleScan' to start up 'SimpleScan' and that is exactly what I did on my Ubuntu-MATE Linux installation. The following image shows that there were about 29 Graphics applications in my 'Applications > Graphics' menu --- and SimpleScan was the 23rd app down the Graphics menu. |
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However, when I started up 'SimpleScan' it could not find my USB-connected Brother printer-scanner. This triggered *MANY HOURS* of web searches to find a simple solution to this problem. This web-searching resulted in finding that the commands 'lsusb' and 'scanimage -L' and 'sane-find-scanner' are various ways to try to list the scanners on your computer.
Spoiler alert: I found many forum pages that tried all kinds of solutions involving directories such as '/etc/udev/rules.d' and '/dev/bus/usb' and others. One person, in frustration and indicating the amount of time they had wasted, stated that they had tried everything but re-compiling the Linux kernel. A 2009 forum page at bbs.archlinux.org indicated the problem: "It seems that the lack of conf file is your problem. The [Brother] drivers should've supplied one." In 2023 (14 years later), the missing '.conf' file is still the problem. DISGUSTING. Many people have wasted many hours on this problem, like the people on the archlinux forum page saying things like "Ok, still trying to get this damned thing to work" after trying unsuccessful, time-wasting things like re-installing various versions of CUPS. To help others (and remind myself of a simple solution), I think it would be helpful to describe my path to a simple solution --- as follows. |
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SCANNER SETUP SOLUTION:
Getting SANE (& the Brother 'backend') After the Brother printer-scanner was powered on, the 'lsusb' command showed that my Brother printer-scanner was attached. The pertinent output line was: Bus 001 Device 013: ID 04f9:0429 Brother Industries, Ltd So the Brother printer-scanner was definitely connected and detected by my Ubuntu-MATE Linux system. The 'scanimage -L' command (without or with 'sudo') showed: device `brother4:bus2;dev1' is a Brother HL-L2395DW USB scanner This was puzzling to me. It seemed that it should show 'bus1;dev13'. (This may be because I connected the scanner to a USB hub that was connected to the computer, not directly to a USB port on the computer.) When I tried the command 'sudo sane-find-scanner', it could not find the scanner. A lot of web searching showed that there are '.conf' files in the '/etc/sane.d' directory. In fact, a forum page at unix.stackexchange.com pointed out that there is a file 'dll.conf' in the '/etc/sane.d' directory and that file should contain a line that simply says 'brother4'. I looked at the 'dll.conf' file on my computer and the bottom line was the 'brother4' line. The install of the 'brscan4-0.4.11-1.amd64.deb' file apparently added that to the bottom of the 'dll.conf' file. My 'dll.conf' file had about 86 lines of other names of other scanner brands like 'epson' and 'canon', as seen in the image below. |
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It appeared that most of these names were the names of other '.conf' files in the '/etc/sane.d' directory. The 'ls -1' command on my computer showed the following '.conf' files. |
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Note that there WAS no 'brother4.conf' file. Since I had an Epson scanner working on this computer in the past, I figured that there was probably an Epson '.conf' file being used by SANE and the Epson 'iscan' program. I managed to find that 'iscan' software was using the 'epkowa.conf' file, contents below (very instructional). It turns out that an 'iscan' file in the '/etc/sane.d/dll.d' directory gave me the clue. It contained the single line 'epkowa'. |
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This 'epkowa.conf' file is very instructional. Not only does it indicate how get a USB-connected scanner working; it also indicates how to get Network-connected and SCSI-connected scanners working. In my case, I probably could have got my Brother scanner working by simply putting the line 'usb' in a new 'brother4.conf' file. However, I put the following line in the 'brother4.conf' file. usb 0x04f9 0x0429 where the '0x04f9 0x0429' came from 'lsusb' output, which we mentioned above and repeat here. Bus 001 Device 013: ID 04f9:0429 Brother Industries, Ltd The comments in the 'epkowa.conf' file warn against using this long-form of the 'usb' statement, and my Epson scanner apparently worked with the simple 'usb' line. However, I think the software has to do extra processing to figure out what those parameters are, so I decided to specify the 'lsusb' parameters. In fact, in a 2021 forum page at askubuntu.com, I found that 'g5thomas' documented adding a 'brother4.conf' file using the lsusb-parameters like I did. I should mention that some people having USB-connected Brother scanner detection problems may find that a missing 'brother4.conf' file is not a solution to their problem. There may be other issues such as missing symbolic-links as documented in this 2021 forum page at unix.stackexchange.com . Or, there could be other solutions, such as copying files rather than using symbolic-links, as documented in this 2019 forum page at forums.linuxmint.com . In one forum, a person pointed out that it would be nice if there were some SANE documentation that indicated how the SANE software and scanner-manufacturer 'backend' files are processed. I looks to me like, at some point, SANE reads the 'dll.conf' file to find the middle-name of an appropriate '.conf' file and then uses that '.conf' file to determine the method of connection (USB, SCSI, Network). In any case, I was concerned that the SANE system would read the 'dll.conf' file and do some sort of extra processing on all those names other than the 'brother4' name. So I commented out all the lines except the 'brother4' line in 'dll.conf'. Note that it may be informative to look through many of the '.conf' files for other scanners (like HP, Canon, HP, Kodak, Lexmark, IBM, Dell Ricoh, Mustek, NEC, Xerox) to see if their comment lines provide additional useful information on scanner configuration. |
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SCANNING with SimpleScan: The following 3 images summarize a simple photo-scan session when taking defaults (for image size, resolution, etc.). The following image shows that when simple SimpleScan starts up, it has detected the Brother scanner. You can put a photo on the scanner surface and click the 'Scan' button to start a scan. |
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The following image indicates that SimpleScan shows it is working by showing a circle-of-circles with one-after-another of the circles showing as gray until the scan is complete. |
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The following image shows that the photo has been scanned after it was placed in a corner of the scanner glass. By default, an entire page-sized area was scanned, which is what you might want when scanning a document. |
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After you have approved of a scan, you can use the 'Save' button to save the image as a PDF or JPEG or PNG or WebP file --- in a directory of your choosing. Changing the defaults: You can use various options in SimpleScan to restrict the area that is being scanned --- and provide other scanning parameters such as the resolution to be used for the scan. The following image shows how to get to 'Preferences' in the 'Document' menu. |
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The following image shows the 'Quality' Preferences panel. |
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The following image shows the 'Scanning' Preferences panel. |
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The following image shows the 'Scan' option menu and it is defaulted to 'Photo' (default resolution 300dpi) rather than 'Text' (default resolution 150dpi). |
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The following image shows the 'Page > Crop' menu path can be used to set a size for cropping the scan. You can use the scissors icon to put a crop-area indicator on the scan image. And you can drag that crop-area around the image. |
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Alternatively, you can scan a large area, save the file as a JPEG or PNG, and then use an image editor, such as 'mtpaint', to crop the image. |
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SCANNING with the 'scanimage' command: To be documented --- someday? Various web pages on the internet indicate that a command like the following may be able to scan a photo or document into a PNG file:
scanimage --device 'brother4:bus2;dev1' \ where 'brother4:bus2;dev1' is output from the 'scanimage -L' command. You may want to set limits to the scan area using options like '-x' and '-y'. If I find it necessary to try the 'scanimage' command, I intend to show actual (tested) formulations of that command. For info on 'scanimage' command: You can find more info on the 'scanimage' command by doing web searches on keywords such as 'scanimage linux ubuntu' There is a lot of info on 'scanimage', including command examples, on a scanimage web page at www.linux-commands-examples.com . Another page with a lot of info on the 'scanimage' command is a how-to-scan-documents-in-linux-with-sanes-most-useful-commands at www.makeuseof.com . In particular, that makeuseof.com page says the 'scanimage -A' command can be used to show the device options ("backend" options for the scanner itself). For the Brother HL-L2395DW printer-scanner (whose install was described in a section above), the 'scanimage -A' command showed the following scanner options. |
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The 'scanimage -h' command showed the following options of the scanimage command at version 1.0.27. |
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Note that the '--format' parameter allows for 'png' and 'jpeg' output, whereas older versions of 'scanimage' only allowed 'pnm' and 'tiff'. |
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SCANNING with the XSane GUI 'frontend': If I find that using 'SimpleScan' or 'scanimage' is not sufficient for my scanning needs, I may try 'XSane' --- and document some details of its usage here. |
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A web page on scanning with 'iscan' & 'XSane' (ghacks.net link) points out that 'iscan' (which is for Epson scanners and is similar to 'SimpleScan') is easier to use than 'XSane'. The 'XSane' image above indicates that 'XSane' has multiple windows with many options --- but the main steps involve using the 'Acquire preview' button and then the 'Scan' button. That ghacks.net page has a good overview of using 'XSane' (and 'iscan'). In case that page disappears, here are the steps from that page describing how to do a scan with 'XSane' almost as simply as with 'iscan' and 'SimpleScan'.
You can find more info on the 'XSane' frontend by doing web searches on keywords such as 'xsane linux ubuntu' |
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Brother PDFs: The following Brother Printer-Scanner documentation is in PDF files. If your web browser is not configured to read PDF files when you click on the links to these PDF files located on this web site, you could right-click on these links and use a menu-option like 'Save Link Target As...' to save the PDF file to your local computing device and then use a PDF reader on that device. In some web browsers, you may have to configure an application to use as a 'helper application' or 'plug-in' to read PDF files in web page links --- without downloading the PDF file. For example, for the Seamonkey web browser, you can use the menu-path 'Edit > Preferences > Browser > Helper Applications' and find the line labelled 'PDF document'. Then choose the 'Action' called 'Use atril' --- or use the 'Action' called 'Use other...' to specify a PDF-reader application to use (one that is available on your computing device).
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More Info: For more information on printing or scanning with a Brother printer-scanner --- especially on Linux and with USB-connection --- you can try web searches on keywords such as the following.
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