Brother MFC-9840CDW: Setup on Arch Linux

2013-08-07
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After more than a year of struggling with my Brother printer, I finally got it to print flawlessly. I will kindly refrain from getting into the drama, and just write a short tutorial to set it up with CUPS in Arch Linux.

First, install the cups package, as well as the Brother driver packages in the AUR:

Then, enable the cups daemon with systemd, and then start it:

sudo systemctl enable cups.service
sudo systemctl start cups.service

Now go into your favorite web browser, and go to http://localhost:631, to find the CUPS web admin interface. From here, just add a new printer using the web form buttons. When adding the printer, use the LPR/LPD protocol, as follows:

lpd://IP_ADDRESS_OF_PRINTER/BINARY_P1

and use the appropriate IP address that your printer has on the network. For the driver, select the CUPS driver for the MFC-9840CDW model (the various Brother drivers will only appear after installing the Brother driver packages from the AUR).

Done!