Scanner software for Brother mfc8480dn

I agree with your assesment, but the software seems not to.... Near as I can tell simple-scan brings up a window titled Document Scanner. It reports looking for a scanner but finds nothing, even while I'm logged into the printer via telnet at the same time. If it's supposed to auto-detect, it doesn't. There's a preferences dialog, but nothing related to finding the scanner.

I really wonder if sane-net and/or saned is a required intermediary. Both are installed, neither is running AFAIK. Saned might be for incoming connections to a local scanner, I need an outgoing connection to the mfc8480

Xsane is installed and can't find the mfc. I just discovered libsane isn't installed, but adding it made no difference. Later on I'll reboot the Pi5 to see if that helps.

It really feels like something(s) missing on the Pi side.

Thanks for writing,

bob prohaska

Those instructions include a link to sane-supported devices. It looks as if mfc8480dn isn't on the list. That's bad 8-(

If I had a long enough cable I'd try. That's looking like my last hope.

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska

Here's a snippet of what I get:

Trying 192.168.1.250... Connected to 192.168.1.250. Escape character is '^]'.

Welcome. Type <return>, enter password at # prompt

# Brother NC-6800h Command Console Copyright(C) 2000-2009 Brother Industries, Ltd. KASAGO TCP/IP Copyright (c) 1997 Elmic WESCOM, Inc. Copyright(C) 1983-1998 PACIFIC SOFTWORKS INC.

Type HELP for command list

Enter username> admin Local> ls

EXIT/^D Exit program HElp Information on available commands INitialize Reset unit CLear Remove configuration item SET Modify unit parameters SHow Display unit parameters ZEro Zero statistical counts

Type 'HElp <cmd>' for more information

Local> ?

EXIT/^D Exit program HElp Information on available commands INitialize Reset unit CLear Remove configuration item SET Modify unit parameters SHow Display unit parameters ZEro Zero statistical counts

Type 'HElp <cmd>' for more information

Local> show

CIFS CIFS Parameters EMAIL E-mail Parameters ENET Ethernet Parameters FRee Memory Available FTP FTP Parameters IP LPD/TCP/Telnet Parameters IPP IPP Parameters JOB Print Job Parameters LLMNR Linklocal Multicast Name Resolution Parameters LLTD Link Layer Topology Discovery Parameters LOAd Firmware update Parameters LPD LPD Protocol Parameters MDNS mDNS Parameters NETBIos NetBIOS Parameters NETSCan Network scan Parameters PCFAX PC fax receive Parameters POP3 POP3 Parameters PORT Port Parameters RAWPort RAWPort Parameters REMOTESEtup Remote Setup Parameters SERVEr Server Parameters SERVIce Service Parameters SMTP SMTP Parameters SNMP SNMP Parameters SNTP SNTP Parameters TELnet Telnet Parameters TEStpage Print test Page TFtp TFTP Parameters VErsion Server Version WEBBasedmanagement Web Based Management(Web Server) Parameters WEBServices Web Services Parameters

Local> show netscan

Network scan is Enabled

It appears to be a sandboxed shell; normal unix commands like ls and cd just repeat the help output. There might be a magic word to dig out of the sandbox, but I've no clue how to find it.

The "productive conversation" with Brother tech support concluded with me showing a successful telnet connection to the printer. So far, there's been no reply regarding what to try next.

It would make a great deal of sense if I'm just missing a bit of intermediat software to bridge from the USB connection the scanner applications expect to the network connection the mfc presents to the LAN.

Thanks for writing,

bob prohaska

Saned is often configured to run from inetd, in which case it won't be started until something connects.

$ grep sane /etc/inetd.conf sane-port stream tcp nowait saned:saned /usr/sbin/saned sane

Front-end software such as xsane connects to saned, then saned finds available scanners and tells the front-end, which presents the choice to the user.

Supported scanners have config files in /etc/sane.d or are found by a dynamically loaded library listed in /etc/sane.d/dll.conf or in files under /etc/sane.d/dll.d (for me, the latter: the package libsane-hpaio provides /etc/sane.d/dll.d/hplip).

Surely the scanner driver must be some kind of binary blob more than a script full of text.

I dl'd the Brother .deb for the scanner driver to look inside it and Bro gives linux instructions for installing it for both USB & network devices.

Brother also has a faq/s page for troubleshooting such as linux installation where it talks about the limitations of its packages:

Of course, that sort of info isn't necessarily accurate, as I regularly use .deb/s for installing stuff for both Puppy and EasyOS which are based on Deb.

Here's a different direction; I'm a big fan of booting live linux distro/s w/ 'persistence'. One problem w/ persistence is that there is more than one 'kind'. The most popular kind which is employed by the most distro/s and also by the Ventoy scheme is for the device to have a separate place for 'storage', but the persistence isn't for the changes to the system. That is no good for me.

The kind of persistence I like the best is often called a 'frugal install'. I can get Mageia to provide that kind of persistence only off a USB using their specific software to write the Mageia to the USB.

I can get MX persistence in my favorite way, booting from a Ventoy SSD and using their 'elaborate' choices of a number of different kinds of persistence which includes 'frugal' which is the one I want.

I can also get the baked in kind of persistence that Puppy and EasyOS provide and also on SSD.

Where I'm going w/ this elaborate discussion is that the problem w/ the RPi is that it has a different kind of architecture that might be 'confounding' the problem that the Brother linux support isn't all that great in the first place. I think I would rather setup my scanning on such as a live MX using its frugal persistence.

My idea would be to first be booting up one of the distro/s which has a good form of persistence and which is likely to be compatible w/ the Brother linux ware, just to see if I could get it to scan live w/ additions. Then if that worked out, I would rig such as a USB so that I could have live w/ persistence of the scanner (w/ or w/o printer) that I rigged. Then when I needed to do that, I would boot that USB.

Good things about the RPi5 is that it likely has plenty of ram for these purposes and it also has USB3 for better speed than my most frequent USB activity which is 2.

MX is based on Debian, which the Brother ware likes, and MX also has some very smart MX tools for 'network things'.

That is, I'm sure the RPi5 will boot and run MX in ram from the USB just fine, and be able to use all kinds of Brother and software for printing and scanning and faxing for that matter because you have the 'wealth' of Debian.

There is a MX 'respin' specifically for the Pi:

I'm trying to learn some stuff on my own system that I don't yet have working in every way I'm trying.

Now I'm in a live MX on the LAN that the LM w/ the USB Pixma is. I tho't I had the printer configured as shared, but when I use the web interface for CUPS it does NOT say the printer is shared.

I realize this isn't the same as a 'network' printer and maybe it will be harder than a network printer would be. But I'm going to try to scan w/ it from the live MX on the network.

Progress in the status of shared and the status of being able to print from the Live MX; but not scan yet. The other day when I was focused on the Brother situation, I found some commands to try to locate a scanner.

Back to Brother again; comparing what I find in the script 'installer' (not much) w/ what I find in the scanner .deb, there is 'sensible' stuff in the scanner .deb according to the Brother howto instructions for scanner namely the brsaneconfig3 tool:

Ha.

I've found -1- commercial software -2- 'free' sane configuration instructions

It is necessary to both have the Brother scanner enabled via the scanner driver AND to help sane be able to FIND the scanner on the network. The instructions for configuring sane to find a network scanner are similar but different from a USB scanner on a network device.

I would do all of that w/ the Pi MX spin as opposed to some other system on the Pi.

Sane or simple-scan can only recognize the networked Brother for scanning if it has both the proper driver AND the proper network access.

That is a completely 'separate' process than using such as CUPS and the cups browser configuration for a printer. printer != scanner

Mmm. I needed to get a scanner for 120 negative scanning. Only Epson do that well at a sane (sic!) price.

Epson make some crude scanning software for linux that is good enough to get an imafe and that's enough for me

Cheap USB scanners mostly 'just worked' with sane etc.

The OP's Brother is /not/ listed as supported 'OOTB' out-of-the-box by sane.

... and Brother instructions address sane.

A 'fly in the ointment' is that the Brother linux tools in .deb & .rpm may be 'limited' in their applicability to 'something' running on a RPi

Sounds like you want something like a “union” or “overlay” file system, like I had on my old Asus Eee 701 with its preinstalled Xandros OS: you could make whatever changes you liked in the overlay, including making it look like files had been deleted, but wipe the overlay, and you are back to the original pristine underlying OS.

Doubtful, because they're i386 and amd64 which won't run on a Pi. You may have some mileage in setting up QEMU user mode to emulate x86 binaries on the Pi, but I couldn't say whether that wpuld work for these particular drivers (wouldn't if they're kernel drivers, but I doubt they are)

Theo

It looks to me like most of the Bro stuff is bash scripts. But I don't have the skills to analyze that.