Brother scanner not working in Ubuntu 16.04 though driver installed

I was facing the same issue with my MFC-7840W, but I finally was successful.

Here are my notes:

  1. Install brscan3, or another variant of brscan according to your model:

    sudo dpkg -i brscan3-0.2.11-5.amd64.deb

  2. Install brscan-skey

    sudo dpkg -i brscan-skey-0.2.4-1.amd64.deb

  3. Run brscan-skey

    $ brscan-skey 
$ brscan-skey -l
MFC-7840W         : brother3:net1;dev0  : 192.168.1.10         Active

  4. Set up scanner

    sudo brsaneconfig3 -a name=MFC-7840W model=MFC-7840W ip=192.168.1.10

  5. Confirm it worked, look for this output:

    $ brsaneconfig3 -q
Devices on network
  0 MFC-7840W           "MFC-7840W"         I:192.168.1.10

  6. Make missing symbolic links if necessary

    sudo mkdir /usr/lib/sane
sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother3.so /usr/lib/sane/libsane-brother3.so
sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother3.so.1 /usr/lib/sane/libsane-brother3.so.1
sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother3.so.1.0.7 /usr/lib/sane/libsane-brother3.so.1.0.7
sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/libbrscandec3.so /usr/lib/libbrscandec3.so
sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/libbrscandec3.so.1 /usr/lib/libbrscandec3.so.1
sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/libbrscandec3.so.1.0.0 /usr/lib/libbrscandec3.so.1.0.0

  7. Confirm scanimage -L works

    $ scanimage -L
device `brother3:net1;dev0' is a Brother MFC-7840W MFC-7840W

  8. Install gscan2pdf

  9. Use gscan2pdf to test scanner

I had a similar problem with the dcp-135c and Ubuntu 16.04 (upgraded from 14.04).

The solution for me was the following:

  1. Install all drivers from brother website as normal

  2. Open this file: sudo nano /lib/udev/rules.d/40-libsane.rules Add the following line to the file, just before the line "# The following rule will disable USB autosuspend for the device" 

    # Brother scanners
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04f9", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"`

  3. Copy the brother driver files from /usr/lib64/sane/ to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane 

    sudo cp /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother* /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane

Others had to copy the files in step 3 to /usr/lib/sane instead, maybe it depends on whether you upgraded to ubuntu 16.04 or made a fresh install.

I found this solution in this thread on Ubuntu forums.


I only had to do this single step (mentioned earlier but that answer also included other steps). I have a Brother DCP-L2500D and I run Ubuntu 16.04.

Open this file

sudo gedit -H /lib/udev/rules.d/60-libsane.rules

Add the following line to the file, just before the line # The following rule will disable USB autosuspend for the device

# Brother scanners 
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04f9", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"`

Restart (well that's two steps :-))

Tags:

Drivers

Scanner

16.04

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