My experience with Ubuntu upgrades has not been great. In 2015 & 2016, I downloaded and wrote latest distro on CD and tried upgrade from CD. These attempts crashed and required fresh install from same CD, but this then required re-install or re-config of items like user accounts and worst of all Brother printer / scanner.
For Ubuntu 17.04 I upgraded via Terminal and this worked well – even Brother printer / scanner survived the upgrade.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
In Oct 2017 I followed same route but Brother scanner failed to work after the upgrade.
I followed old instructions on how to re-install drivers / setup for Brother printer / scanner, in my case model DCP-J315W. My notes covered the following steps:
- Download Brother Printer Drivers using the tool.(
linux-brprinter-installer-*.*.*-*.gz)
The tool will be downloaded into the default "Downloads" directory.
(The directory location varies depending on your Linux distribution.)
e.g. /home/(LoginName)/Downloads
Open a terminal window and go to the directory you downloaded the file to in the last step.
- Ctl Alt T (opens Terminal Window)
- cd /Downloads (Care: Ubuntu is case sensitive so use cmd dir to check directory names)
Enter command to extract the downloaded file:
Command: gunzip linux-brprinter-installer-*.*.*-*.gz
Get superuser authorization with the "su" command or "sudo su" command:
sudo gunzip linux-brprinter-installer-*.*.*-*.gz
Run the tool:
Command: bash linux-brprinter-installer-..- Brother machine name
sudo bash linux-brprinter-installer-2.1.1-1 DCP-J315W
The driver installation will start. Follow the installation screen directions.
When you see the message "Will you specify the DeviceURI ?",
For USB Users: Choose N(No)
For Network Users: Choose Y(Yes) and DeviceURI number.
The install process may take some time. Please wait until it is complete.
SCANNER SOLUTION:
Unfortunately, there appears to be additional issues surrounding Brother Scanners and issues may vary upon scanner models and the version of BRSCAN required to be run. Brother.com have 4 versions of this file. Each files covers different Brother scanner models.
I tried the following steps which had worked with past versions of Ubuntu:
- Open file:
sudo nano /lib/udev/rules.d/40-libsane.rules and add the following lines just before the line "# The following rule will disable USB autosuspend for the device"
# Brother scanners
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04f9", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"
NOTE: Gedit no longer works in Ubuntu 17.10, but nano works okay.
- Ctl O writes edits to file.
Copy all files from /usr/lib64 to /usr/lib
sudo cp /usr/lib64/* /usr/lib
At this stage I was in despair after wasting hours on websearching this issue. The above steps had worked in the past and should not have been necessary under the upgrade process. Then I came across a new step which worked for Ubuntu 17.10 which makes me think there is a new bug in Ubuntu:
4. Copy all files from /usr/lib64/sane to /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane
sudo cp /usr/lib64/sane/* /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane
This new command included notation that “others had to copy the files in step 4 to /usr/lib/sane instead, maybe it depends on whether you upgraded to ubuntu 16.04 or made a fresh install.” I did not need to do this for Ubuntu 17.10.
NOTES:
Other notes, websites or commands relating to this issue include:
Brother support:
You can follow Brother install process on their website if you wish.
In Ubuntu 16.04 the file named 40-libsane.rules may have changed to 60-libsane.rules but in 17.10 reverted to 40-libsane.rules. In 16.04, I ensured both names existed and included the Brother Scanner edit.
The following Terminal commands can be used to identify scanners on the system:
sane-find-scanner
This usually sees the scanner but if Scanimage does not see it then you still have a problem:
scanimage -L
The following command lists installed Brother devices:
dpkg -l | grep Brother
On a fresh install, you may need to re-install Sane:
sudo apt-get install sane
sudo apt-get install libsane-extras
Check permissions are correct by adding saned to the group which owns your scanner device:
sudo adduser saned scanner
Note: Under Ubuntu 17.10, you can no longer run GUI processes as super user, such as Sane, Simple-scan. I hacked around this block but it did not help getting scanner working so just more time wasted.
