Re: unsuccessfully install of printer brother hl-l2360dw

Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> wrote:

I've been trying to install a Brother HL-L2360DW.  I managed to install
it at /etc/printcap and use it just fine with lpd.  I installed as:
 
lp:Brother HL-L2360DW:\
      :lp=9100@BRWB052162167A6:\
      :if=/usr/local/libexec/lf2crlf:\
      :sh:sd=/var/spool/output/brother:\
      :lf=/var/log/lpd-errs:
 
The name BRWB052162167A6 is the hostname of the printer:
 
# ping BRWB052162167A6
PING BRWB052162167A6 (192.168.15.16): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.15.16: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=3.197 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.15.16: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=2.978 ms
^C
--- BRWB052162167A6 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 2.978/3.087/3.197/0.110 ms
 
This way I can print ASCII documents.  Even UTF-8 text documents won't
print out correctly.  Apparently the printer is not a PostScript
printer, so we can't send PostScript to it.  When I tried, I got
PostScript code out on paper.  So I figured /etc/printcap wouldn't
suffice.  I then tried CUPS.
 
The experience with CUPS was nice, but again I had to set the printer's
driver to a raw thing and then I was able to get ASCII plain text out.
So I convinced myself that I needed a driver really.  Looking at the
spec of the printer (URL and PDF below), I see it has PCL emulation.  So
I tried CUPS' generic PCL driver.  Testing, I got a print out saying
 
--8<-------------------------------------------------------->8---
%!
  userdict dup(\004)cvn{}put (\004\004)cvn{}put
 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%%% If you can read this, you are using the wrong driver for your printer. %%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
--8<-------------------------------------------------------->8---
 
So then I convinced myself that I really need some kind of Brother
driver.  Then I found drivers at
 
  https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?c=us_ot&lang=en&prod=hll2360dw_us&os=128
 
But these are not for FreeBSD, so the hopes were not high.  Looking at
the debian packages, I see some Perl scripts and a file with extension
PPD.  I tried both
 
  CUPSwrapper printer driver (deb package)     
  Generic CUPSwrapper printer driver (deb package)
 
Adding the PPD file which I found in data.tar.gz inside the debian
package, I end up getting the error of a missing file in
 
  /usr/local/libexec/cups/filter
 
The missing file appears to be a Perl script, which I also found in the
debian package, so I added the file to this directory, with permissions
0755 (as all others in the directory).  I changed the Perl path in the
script from /usr/bin/perl to /usr/local/bin/perl to match the Perl I
have installed.  Once again, I get
 
--8<-------------------------------------------------------->8---
%!
  userdict dup(\004)cvn{}put (\004\004)cvn{}put
 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%%% If you can read this, you are using the wrong driver for your printer. %%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
--8<-------------------------------------------------------->8---
 
when I ask for a printer self test from the CUPS web interface.
 
Is there any hope of using a Brother HL-L2360DW with FreeBSD?  My father
has a laptop running Windows 10 or 11.  Perhaps I could somehow connect
the printer to his computer and then use CUPS to connect my FreeBSD to
his new shared printer?  Any ideas?  Thanks very much.
 
(*) Specs
 
The specifications for the printer can be found at
 
  https://www.brother-usa.com/products/hll2360dw#specification
 
There's a PDF at
 
  https://www.brother-usa.com/-/media/brother/product-catalog-media/documents/2020/04/28/14/44/hll2360dw_brochure_compact-laser-printer.pdf

No direct help, but IIRC part of the cups install process should have
forced you to specify what kind of printer you have. If that didn't
happen, I'd suggest de-installing all the print-related ports or
packages and simply starting over. Cups relies on Ghostscript, I
think, and ghostscript is responsible for generating the correct
printer control langauge. A web search for ghostscript and the
printer model might reveal something useful.

I've not tried to configure a printer on FreeBSD for a long time,
so don't take anything I say very seriously.

hth,

bob prohaska