Brother Printer

[Bill Tillman]

From: Da Rock <freebsd-questions at herveybayaustralia.com.au>
To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org 
Sent: Friday, March 2, 2012 10:37 AM
Subject: Re: Brother Printer

On 03/02/12 23:57, Michel Talon wrote:
> On Fri, 02 Mar 2012 22:40:21 +1000 Da Rock wrote:
>> Are you sure its just a script? Any clue as to what shell it is using?
>> Bash? I do believe there should be some binaries there somewhere as well.
> Yes im sure. I have a ppd File, they linked
> to /usr/local/libexec/brlpdwrapperMFC730 and thats a shell scipt.
> 
> I just went to the Brother site and downloaded a cups driver from here. It is not exactly
> the same as yours, it is for the MFC7320 but for sure there is a shell script plus a binary.
> called brcupsconfig3, which is called in the shell script called cupswrapperMFC7320-2.0.2.
> 
> The binary is
> niobe% file brcupsconfig3
> brcupsconfig3: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs),
> for GNU/Linux 2.2.5, not stripped
> 
> So at best you can hope to run it with Linux emulation. Personally i have an Epson dot printer
> and it is the same, the Linux driver contains binary blobs and cannot be run under FreeBSD.
> 
> If you want to  avoid such problems the only solution is to buy a printer with postscript
> or pdf support and direct network connection, that is an expensive one. Here at the lab we are very happy
> with Xerox sublimation models (i think it is an evolution of the old Tektronix phaser)
> for doing color prints. In particular the use costs are low, much lower than with color laser printers,
> in par with black and white laser printers.
> But if you want to produce nice photographic prints, unfortunately you have to rely on good
> epson dot printers or similar, which means FreeBSD is excluded, unfortunately.
How good are the sublimation printers? When I was at Xerox, the C410 produced brilliant photographic prints and it was laser; I'd expect better from the subs. I'm also surprised epson doesn't work.

As to this brother problem, I've also heard from Robert, so this also influences this discussion.

Could it be possible to run the binaries under linuxulator? Don't port it as such. The whole premise of cups is a pipeline, so this should work surely? Forget compiling and run it all under linuxulator - main program _and_ .so. I considered this before with other printers.
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I'm just a cheap, lazy hack and when faced with a similar problem with my Brother Laser printer I opted for the cheap, lazy way out. I plugged the printer into a USB port, installed Ghostsctipt (free), made a simple printer filter file which redirected the PS input to ghostscript, setup the needed spooling directories under /var and installed lpd with the -w switch so it would take print jobs from wireless laptops which are running on another router in my home. Then on each Windows workstation and my son's Mac book, we installed a simple PS printer, on the Windows machines I had to install Unix Printing Services, then directed these printers to lpr port on my FreeBSD server. It works without CUPS, without Samba, it just works. I don't know if ghostscript would have a compatible driver for your model of printer but it didn't have one for mine either. I just found one that was compatible and it's been working now for several years without any hassles.