Saturday, October 24, 2009

Brother MFC-7440N on Ubuntu 9.04

Mostly so I can remember if I need to do this again...

  • Go to http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/download_prn.html#MFC-7440N and download the deb packages for the lpr *and* cupswrapper drivers
  • Follow the instructions listed at that link (http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/instruction_prn1a.html), remembering you have to run them as root (that is, do 'sudo dpkg...')
  • When you get to step 5b, you have to get the IP address of your printer. The easiest way I found to do this is to go to the printer and print out the network configuration. Press the 'reports' button, press down until the screen says '6. Network Config', and press the 'OK' button. You want the 'IP Address' under the 'IP Settings' section.
  • The instructions say to enter 'your printers name', but I didn't really get that. After you pick your printer vendor (Brother), it gives you a list of printer models, but the 7440N didn't show up in the list for me. Where it says "Or provide a PPD file", I went to /usr/share/ppd and there was a "MFC7440N.ppd" file there, which I selected. (That's all I had to do, and after that if I went back into the modify printer screens the model showed up correctly.)