# Brother HL-2170W

This is a short tutorial on installing the Brother HL-2170W (and the HL-2140) printer with CUPS on Arch Linux. This printer will work a few different ways: with Foomatic, with the HP PCL6 driver, or with cupswrapper. For further info on cupswrapper please see the Brother MFC-440CN guide.

Note: As of July 2011, The foomatic/ljet4 driver using IPP has been shown to be really successful on most Arch setups, please attempt that first.

## Setup printer and CUPS

This printer has a web-based interface. To avoid some extra Google queries, the HL-2170w web interface default username is 'admin' and the default password is 'access'.

It is recommended to configure the HL-2170W to have a static IP so that CUPS will always work with it (steps not detailed in this article).

The needed pdd/drivers are available from this device from the OpenPrinting Database. There is no need to directly browse to this page or download ppd files directly; it has been given for reference only.

1. Install CUPS and Foomatic:

       # pacman -S cups foomatic-db foomatic-db-engine foomatic-db-nonfree foomatic-filters ghostscript

2. Start the cups socket

       systemctl start cups.socket

3. Optionally, enable the socket to load a system boot time:

       systemctl enable cups.socket

4. Open a web browser to http://localhost:631/
5. Click the Add Printer button on the Administration tab.

Continue to one of the following subsections:

### Using IPP (recommended method)

1. Select IPP from the list.
2. In the 'Connection' field, type

       ipp://THE_PRINTER_IP/ipp/port1

3. In the next form, give the printer a unique name (no spaces and the name be must unique from any identical printers), and select "Brother" from the printer make field.
4. Select "Brother HL-2170W Foomatic/hl1250" from the list of drivers.
5. The defaults options should be configured to the user's liking.

### Using the HP PCL6 driver (alternative method)

This driver is not ideal, but it works.

1. Click the Add Printer Button (fill out the form) (click Continue)
2. Select Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) from the drop down menu (click Continue)
3. In the Device URI field add the following line:

       http://printer:631/ipp/port1

   Where printer is the IP address or DNS name of the printer (click Continue)
4. Select "HP" from the printer make field.
5. Select "HP LaserJet Series PCL 6 CUPS (en)" from the list of drivers.

## Troubleshooting

Some simple reminders

1. Some users have reported problems characterized by error message like, "spool not ready" or "ipp backend failed." One solution is to resume the printer by selecting the Maintenance drop down and selecting Resume Printer.

1. If you notice that the printer margins are off, try installing brother-hl2170w and select that driver in CUPS, then edit the file at /usr/share/Brother/inf/brHL2170Wrc and change "PaperType" to "Letter". See this post for more information.

Category:

- Printers