Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Brother MFC 240c on Ubuntu 9.04

My Dell Vostro 1000 now runs Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). When the time came for me to print & scan a few things using my multi-function device Brother MFC 240c - I realized that I had missed to set it up. Now Google came to my rescue and here's how I did it. It required the follwing three steps:
  1. Setup the Printer,
  2. Setup the Scanner and
  3. Setup the MFC Front Panel buttons Tool - this is optional



Printer Setup
Open Synaptic Package Manager and search for & install the packages along with any dependencies that it may show:
  1. brother-cups-wrapper-bh7
  2. brother-lpr-drivers-bh7.

This should setup your printer!


Scanner Setup
Go to Brother site and follow the instructions based on the way you connect your printer to your computer. Mostly it should be through a USB connection to your laptop/desktop and for that, use this link.

Here is a list of steps to Install the Scanner:
  1. Download the appropriate scanner driver from this link. Note that you need to download the appropriate (32 or 64 bit) brcan2 deb package
  2. Connect MFC to computer and switch it on
  3. Open a terminal and cd to the folder where the drivers have been downloaded
  4. Install the driver using the command:
    sudo dpkg -i --force-all brscan2-0.2.4-4.i386.deb
  5. Grant permissions to the scanner using the command:
    sudo vi /lib/udev/rules.d/50-udev-default.rules
  6. Search for the line containing libusb device nodes
  7. Change MODE="0664" to MODE="0666"
  8. Restart your computer and the scanner should work now.
  9. Use XSane or any of your favorite scanning app to scan something & verify that everything is good


MFC front Panel buttons Tool Setup
If you want to use the buttons on the Scanner panel to scan, then you need to install the scan-key-tool as follows:
  1. Download the scanner driver from this link. Note that you need to download the appropriate (32 or 64 bit) scan-key-tool deb package
  2. Connect MFC to computer and switch it on
  3. Open a terminal and cd to the folder where the drivers have been downloaded
  4. Install the driver using the command:
    sudo dpkg -i --force-all brscan-skey-0.2.1-3.i386.deb
  5. Run the brscan-skey tool using the command:
    brscan-skey
  6. Confirm that it is running, using the command: brscan-skey -l
  7. Press the scan button, select user, select destination, press START on the MFC
  8. You should see the output on the console similar to the following:

    # scan from SCANNER(brother2:net1;dev0) to /root/brscan/brscan.sP7525
    scanimage: rounded value of br-x from 215.9 to 215.88
    scanimage: rounded value of br-y from 355.6 to 355.567



Note:
  1. Ensure that you enter the correct file names in the dpkg commands. I have given the ones that I used and currently see on the Brother website
  2. I have not installed the brscan-skey as I don't (yet) intend to use the MFC panel to scan!



Check out the specs & reviews of Brother MFC-240C on Amazon:


5 comments:

manu said...

Hi, I get the same mfc 240c on ubuntu 9.04 and followed the same setups. All is working fine. But what about the USB keys (or SD cards) when plugged into the multi-function Brother ?
Do you see them on you Vostro ?
TIA,
manu

Darshan Shah said...

Manu - that's a good point - I was wondering about the exact same thing. My guess is that it should work if you have installed the scan-key-tool using the brscan-skey package. Since I have not installed it, when I insert the card in the MFC slot, the "Photo Capture' button on it lights up but nothing happens after that.
My personal preference is to insert the card in the Vostro where it is recognized immediately.
Let me know if you find any solution.

Anonymous said...

thanks for this page.Really helped me out :)

Darshan Shah said...

Glad to be able to help.
Keep checking the blog for more such posts!

Anonymous said...

hi there
followed your steps and printing works, however i can't get the scanner to work, the printer is set to one mode on start up so I switch it to scanning using the hardware buttons and then from the hp intel 64-bit laptop I try to open Applications>>Graphics>>Simple Scan and hit Scan, then it tries to read something and the cycling circles appear, however it never ends. I also get errors when it is in a different mode. I guess I must install the other drivers for the keys of the panel of the mfc-240c?

Please help me, thanks

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