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Re: [PLUG] Brother MFC-9840CDW & Linux
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Thank you for the great summary. Your results are almost exactly the
same as mine with the HL-4040cn that I mentioned on the list earlier. I
even had the same issue with AppArmor. Glad to know it worked out
great, and glad to know Linux support is so close to being at the same
level as OS X/Win.
--Gordon
JP Vossen wrote:
> I thought I'd follow-up and let everyone know how my recent printer
> question worked out. I got the Brother MFC-9840CDW on sale at Newegg
> for $530, and got it in 2 days, which was a surprise since it's huge and
> weighs 85 pounds. (Actually, I got 2, and shipping was only about $60.
> I'm very pleased. The other printer is for someone else.)
>
> Thus far, it works great! The bad news is that Linux is still a second
> class citizen. The good news is that it's an official citizen at all.
>
>
> The Gritty details
> ------------------
> The "main" web site and all promo materials list only Windows and Mac,
> but Linux support is official and maintained. Oh yeah, except firmware
> upgrades via Windows or Mac only, as far as I saw. :-/
>
> The Linux drivers were trivial to install and with one exception Just
> Worked. They are available in deb or rpm, but curiously not tgz; they
> recommend using alien to extract the tgz. And that's typical of
> Brother's "separate-and-not-quit-equal, not quite as slick as Win/Mac"
> Linux approach. The Linux material is well done but requires a mixed
> skill level. Most is very easy step-by-step, but then there's the
> occasional oops like this "use alien for tgz" thing, when it would be
> far easier for them to just post the darn tgz with the deb and rpm. So
> we're talking 'dpkg -i' and not 'make && make install' but we're not up
> to the point-n-click auto-run fancy GUI stuff. (Some may argue that's a
> good thing, but Ubuntu is proving that slick has a place. :)
>
> The part that didn't Just Work is that they seem to put CUPS stuff in a
> place that Ubuntu's App Armor config doesn't like, so you have to put
> that into "aa-complain" mode for cupsd (see the FAQ below).
>
> The Windows printer drivers were fine. The CD runs a Flash app (but
> only on Windows, so--why now?) with a bunch of choices. I only
> installed the over-the-wire printer driver, I don't care about scanning,
> administering, monitoring, or anything else on Windows. The tools look
> slick and complete, from what I saw of them. Just for the heck of it I
> installed that Mac tools on my old PPC Mac Mini. It *forced* me to
> reboot, which not even Windows did! Though to be fair it installed all
> of the tools (since it never gave me a choice). I can't find the
> duplexer. though since I was only test printing one page maybe,
> Mac-like, it didn't give me the option.
>
> I am only using the Ethernet interface, but it has USB and wireless too.
> The Linux CUPS printer drivers expose all the bells and whistles I'm
> interesting in, especially including the duplexer! **Scanning using
> Xsane worked out-of-the-box over the wire!** (Well, after I trivially
> installed the drivers.) The unit has scan to email, ftp server and
> other settings as well. I've also set it to email me a weekly report on
> itself. Of course it has a built-in web server, which is a lot easier
> to use than the front keypad for config options. The keypad isn't bad,
> it's just--a keypad.
>
> One minor web interface grip is that if you goof up a setting, like by
> putting dashes in the fax station ID, the web server won't give you an
> error, it will just totally ignore that setting, which is annoying.
> There's no built-in NTP server that I see either, so you have to
> manually set the clock. Hell, I could automate that even on my ancient
> HP OJ K-60! Though now that I think about it, I could probably script
> an HTTP-POST to set the time. :-)
>
> One other minor gripe is that my old HP OJ K-60 had an auto-answer
> button for the fax part. This printer has a gazillion cool fax options,
> but they are menu-driven. To switch between my 99.9% manual to my 0.01%
> waiting-for-a-fax modes will be harder than hitting 1 button on or off.
> Or I can stand there and hit a button when the fax comes in. Oh well.
>
> What printing and scanning I've done so far is crisp and clear; it just
> looks great. A full page color photograph printed in seconds, even from
> sleep mode. I scanned something at 1200DPI and it took quite a while,
> but it worked, right into Xsane on Ubuntu 8.04. Regular scanning at
> 200-400DPI was about as fast as I expected.
>
> The printer is large and heavy, dead quiet while sleeping and reasonably
> quiet when printing even while duplexing. Quiet is important because it
> sits right next to me. It's drawing 18 watts while sleeping but hit
> 1000 several times and 1200 watts once during power-up, according to my
> Kill-a-watt.
>
> Useful links:
> http://www.brother-usa.com/mfc/modeldetail.aspx?PRODUCTID=MFC-9840CDW
> http://www.brother-usa.com/mfc/ModelDisclaimer.aspx?Model=MFC9840CDW#SysReqs
> http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/index.html
> Drivers:
> http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/download_prn.html#MFC-9840CDW
> http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/download_scn.html#brscan2
> FAQ:
> http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/linux/linux_faq-2.html
> App-Armor issue:
> http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/linux/linux_faq-2.html#141
>
> Thanks for the help,
> JP
> _______________________________
> PS--In case anyone cares, here's the unit's HTTPd info. Sort of:
> $ lwp-request -eUd http://nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn
> User-Agent: lwp-request/2.06
>
> Content-Type: text/plain
> Client-Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2008 07:30:01 GMT
> Client-Warning: Internal response
>
>
> And an nmap scan. Lots of protocols, bad TCP Sequencing, and something
> about the scan made a line of gibberish to be printed on 1 page:
>
> # nmap -P0 -O -v -sS -sU -sR -p 1- -oN nmap.scan printer
>
> Starting Nmap 4.11 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2008-12-06 16:05 EST
> Initiating ARP Ping Scan against 192.168.xx.xx [1 port] at 16:05
> The ARP Ping Scan took 0.01s to scan 1 total hosts.
> DNS resolution of 1 IPs took 0.10s.
> Initiating SYN Stealth Scan against 192.168.xx.xx [65535 ports] at 16:05
> Discovered open port 23/tcp on 192.168.xx.xx
> Discovered open port 21/tcp on 192.168.xx.xx
> Discovered open port 80/tcp on 192.168.xx.xx
> Discovered open port 25/tcp on 192.168.xx.xx
> Discovered open port 54923/tcp on 192.168.xx.xx
> Discovered open port 54921/tcp on 192.168.xx.xx
> Discovered open port 9100/tcp on 192.168.xx.xx
> Discovered open port 54922/tcp on 192.168.xx.xx
> Discovered open port 515/tcp on 192.168.xx.xx
> Discovered open port 631/tcp on 192.168.xx.xx
> The SYN Stealth Scan took 7.54s to scan 65535 total ports.
> Initiating UDP Scan against 192.168.xx.xx [65535 ports] at 16:05
> The UDP Scan took 9.44s to scan 65535 total ports.
> Initiating RPCGrind Scan against 192.168.xx.xx at 16:05
> Discovered open port 69/udp on 192.168.xx.xx
> The RPCGrind Scan took 4.07s to scan 16 ports on 192.168.xx.xx.
> For OSScan assuming port 21 is open, 1 is closed, and neither are firewalled
> Host 192.168.xx.xx appears to be up ... good.
> Interesting ports on 192.168.xx.xx:
> Not shown: 131054 closed ports
> PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION
> 21/tcp open ftp
> 23/tcp open telnet
> 25/tcp open smtp
> 80/tcp open http
> 515/tcp open printer
> 631/tcp open ipp
> 9100/tcp open jetdirect
> 54921/tcp open unknown
> 54922/tcp open unknown
> 54923/tcp open unknown
> 69/udp open tftp
> 137/udp open|filtered netbios-ns
> 138/udp open|filtered netbios-dgm
> 161/udp open|filtered snmp
> 3702/udp open|filtered unknown
> 5353/udp open|filtered unknown
> MAC Address: 00:80:77:xx:xx:xx (Brother Industries)
> Device type: VoIP gateway
> Running: AudioCodes embedded
> OS details: AudioCodes MP-108 VoIP Gateway FXS
> Uptime 0.010 days (since Sat Dec 6 15:50:40 2008)
> TCP Sequence Prediction: Class=trivial time dependency
> Difficulty=1 (Trivial joke)
> IPID Sequence Generation: Incremental
>
> Nmap finished: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 25.636 seconds
> Raw packets sent: 131106 (4.720MB) | Rcvd: 131099 (6.687MB)
> ----------------------------|:::======|-------------------------------
> JP Vossen, CISSP |:::======| jp{at}jpsdomain{dot}org
> My Account, My Opinions |=========| http://www.jpsdomain.org/
> ----------------------------|=========|-------------------------------
> "Microsoft Tax" = the additional hardware & yearly fees for the add-on
> software required to protect Windows from its own poorly designed and
> implemented self, while the overhead incidentally flattens Moore's Law.
> ___________________________________________________________________________
> Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
> Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
> General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
>
___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
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