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I've got a low end Brother MFC printer/scanner/fax, which works fine for printing in all ways, but won't scan. How can I diagnose what's wrong? I see a lot of contradictory and old advice here and elsewhere.

Brother MFC Linux Scanner Issues

Some console output is:

# brsaneconfig4  -q | grep 480
59 "MFC-7480D"
145 "MFC-J480DW"

# brscan-skey -l
MFC-J480DW: brother4:bus2;dev2  : USB Active

# scanimage
scanimage: open of device brother4:bus2;dev2 failed: Invalid argument

# grep 04f9 /lib/udev/rules.d/40-libsane.rules
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04f9", ATTRS{idProduct}=="2038", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"
ATTRS{idVendor}==”04f9″, ENV{libsane_matched}=”yes”

# lsusb | grep Brother
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 04f9:0384 Brother Industries, Ltd

What steps can be taken, in general, to figure out why a Brother MFC scanner won't work?

My specific configuration is MFC-J480DW connected via USB to Ubuntu 16.04 with drivers downloaded directly from the Brother website. I see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SettingScannerPermissions

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    Please edit the output of lsusb into your post. Thank you for helping us help you! :-)
    – Elder Geek
    May 4, 2017 at 19:01
  • Addded lsusb output
    – Bryce
    May 4, 2017 at 19:06
  • It looks like your device is on bus 2 device 5, not bus 2 device 2. Have you tried using the correct addressing? or plugging it back into the port it was in when you installed the driver?
    – Elder Geek
    May 4, 2017 at 19:07
  • If the problem is plugging into a different USB port, the approved answer should include how to fix that. It's not normal I think for the physical USB port to matter. I've actually just solved the problem for myself, but wish to leave this open for generic debugging and analysis steps per the question as asked. I'd expected given the Brother installer for this to "just work".
    – Bryce
    May 4, 2017 at 19:52
  • Congratulations! I'm glad you got it sorted. Self answering is encouraged here. Feel free to post your solution so that others with the same problem can benefit from your experience.
    – Elder Geek
    May 5, 2017 at 15:35

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