Brother HL-2030

Introduction

This is a small tutorial to make the Brother HL-2030 printer work on Arch Linux. There are currently no drivers available from http://openprinting.org that work with CUPS. If you previously tried to install the printer in CUPS, remove it.

Foomatic drivers

This method also works with the Brother HL-2035 printer.

To install the required software and drivers, type:

# pacman -S cups foomatic-{db,db-engine} a2ps

Without a2ps there was only blinking LED on my printer and nothing more.

Then blacklist the usblp kernel module. See Kernel_modules#Blacklisting for instructions.

Now go to http://localhost:631

• Go to Administration
• Click 'Add Printer'
• Select your printer and click 'continue'
• Configure your printer

The printer should work fine now.

Brother drivers

Brother supplies official Linux drivers for the HL-2030. These, however, come in the form of RPM packages. They can be installed on Arch Linux in two ways: either using the brother-hl2030 package from the AUR or manually following these instructions. Please note that you may have to blacklist the usblp module for these drivers as well (see above).

Download drivers

First create a temporary directory. Then, you must download the official LPR drivers from the Brother web site in that directory. Click here. This is an RPM archive. You also have to download the cupswrapper file from here. This script creates the filters and PPD file for CUPS automatically. It is also an RPM archive.

Extracting the RPM files

Now, you need a small script called rpmextract which allows you to get the files included in the RPM you have just downloaded. As root, install rpmextract from the official repositories:

# pacman -S rpmextract

Extract both RPM files:

$ rpmextract.sh brhl2030lpr-2.0.1-1.i386.rpm
$ rpmextract.sh cupswrapperHL2030-2.0.1-1.i386.rpm

Note: rpmextract must be run as rpmextract.sh. Using rpmextract without the .sh suffix will not work.

It should give you two directories: usr and var.

Editing files to make them work with Arch Linux

Arch Linux uses its own file system organisation, so you have to edit some files. Use your favorite text editor to open the file named cupswrapperHL2030-2.0.1. If you created the temporary directory "tmp" in your home directory, it must be in /home/user/tmp/usr/local/Brother/cupswrapper. In this file, you must replace all of the /etc/init.d/ occurrences with /etc/rc.d/.

Then you have to edit the file usr/local/Brother/inf/setupPrintcap, and replace /etc/printcap.local with /etc/printcap.

When that is done, copy all of the files in their corresponding directories:

# cp -r /home/user/tmp/usr/* /usr
# cp -r /home/user/tmp/var/* /var

Installing the driver and printer

Go into /usr/local/Brother/cupswrapper/ and run the cupswrapper file:

# cd /usr/local/Brother/cupswrapper/
# ./cupswrapperHL2030-2.0.1

It will stop the cups daemon if it is running, and then restart it. Now, go to the CUPS page - http://localhost:631/ - and in the "Administartion" category, choose Manage printers. There you should see a HL2030 printer automatically installed and configured. Click to print the test page, and you can hear the sweet sound of your printer.

Compatibility with Brother HL-2035

Brother does not (yet) provide specific drivers for the HL-2035, but the HL-2030 drivers seem to work fine for this model as well. Use at your own risk, though.

Common Issues

If you have done all of the steps above, and the printer will either not appear in your CUPS interface or if you want to print sth. the printer will just warm up and then not print anything, the following is reported to have helped:

1. install the hal-cups-utils from the AUR
2. visit your CUPS interface, and under "Administration" hit "find new printer". Surprisingly, it should be found. In the next step, choose the PPD file (found in /usr/share/cups/model/HL2030.ppd) and everything should work just fine ...
3. make sure hal is running before the cups daemon is started

Note: HAL has been deprecated for some time now.