Brother HL-L2325DW Printer on Arch Linux Will Not Print, Despite Showing That the Job Has Completed

Question

As the title says, I cannot get my printer (A Brother HL-L2325DW) to print. It beeps at me a few times once it receives my print job, and CUPS states that the print job is complete, but beyond the few beeps nothing happens.

I've done as the Arch Wiki suggests. I've installed CUPS:

$ pacman -Ss cups
extra/apcupsd 3.14.14-7
    Power mangement and controlling most of APC's UPS models
extra/bluez-cups 5.73-4
    CUPS printer backend for Bluetooth printers
extra/cups 1:2.4.7-2 [installed]
    OpenPrinting CUPS - daemon package
extra/cups-browsed 2.0.0-2
    a helper daemon to browse the network for remote CUPS queues and IPP network printers
extra/cups-filters 2.0.0-1 [installed]
    OpenPrinting CUPS Filters
extra/cups-pdf 3.0.1-7
    PDF printer for cups
extra/cups-pk-helper 0.2.7-1
    A helper that makes system-config-printer use PolicyKit
extra/libcups 1:2.4.7-2 [installed]
    OpenPrinting CUPS - client libraries and headers
extra/libcupsfilters 2.0.0-1 [installed]
    OpenPrinting CUPS Filters - contains all the code of the filters of the former cups-filters package as library
    functions
extra/pappl 1.4.6-1
    a simple C-based framework/library for developing CUPS Printer Applications
extra/python-pycups 2.0.1-6
    Python bindings for libcups
extra/splix 2.0.0-20
    CUPS drivers for SPL (Samsung Printer Language) printers
extra/system-config-printer 1.5.18-2
    A CUPS printer configuration tool and status applet
multilib/lib32-libcups 2.4.7-1 [installed]
    The CUPS Printing System - client libraries (32-bit)

Cups is also enabled:

$ systemctl status cups
● cups.service - CUPS Scheduler
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/cups.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: active (running) since Mon 2024-03-25 01:23:40 CDT; 8h ago
TriggeredBy: ● cups.socket
             ○ cups.path
       Docs: man:cupsd(8)
   Main PID: 196807 (cupsd)
     Status: "Scheduler is running..."
      Tasks: 1 (limit: 19027)
     Memory: 4.9M (peak: 21.2M)
        CPU: 1.139s
     CGroup: /system.slice/cups.service
             └─196807 /usr/bin/cupsd -l

Mar 25 01:23:40 arch systemd[1]: Starting CUPS Scheduler...
Mar 25 01:23:40 arch systemd[1]: Started CUPS Scheduler.

I want to discover the printer automatically, so I ensured Avahi was installed.

$ pacman -Ss avahi
extra/avahi 1:0.8+r194+g3f79789-1 [installed]
    Service Discovery for Linux using mDNS/DNS-SD (compatible with Bonjour)
extra/pacredir 0.4.7-2
    redirect pacman requests, assisted by avahi service discovery

I followed through on the hostname resolution steps on the Avahi Arch Wiki page

$ cat /etc/nsswitch.conf 
# Name Service Switch configuration file.
# See nsswitch.conf(5) for details.

passwd: files systemd
group: files [SUCCESS=merge] systemd
shadow: files systemd
gshadow: files systemd

publickey: files

hosts: mymachines mdns_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] resolve [!UNAVAIL=return] files myhostname dns
networks: files

protocols: files
services: files
ethers: files
rpc: files

netgroup: files

I installed the drivers for the printer from the AUR:

$ yay -Ss brother-hll2325dw
aur/brother-hll2325dw 4.0.0-1 (+0 0.00) (Installed)
    Brother HL-L2325DW CUPS driver (based on Brother's rpm package)

Finally, from the CUPS administration tab I went to find new printers, where it showed

I've tried all three options, using various combinations of suboptions. All of the other options I tried got me nowhere -- the printer did not act at all. The beeping came only if I selected the second option.

That brought me to the following screen, where I selected Brother and then hit continue:

I was then asked to select the model. There seem to be two options that meet my printer. The indicated option gets me the beeping, the other driverless one listed there does not even give me that much. After making the selection I hit add printer.

I am brought to the following page:

Hitting Set Printer Options brings me here:

Hitting Set Default Options gets me here

Now if I try to print and I go to the jobs page on the CUPS localhost site, I see something like this:

It shows completed, but nothing has been printed, I just get my printer to beep as I mentioned before. This printer successfully prints over the network without any hassle on Windows.

Any advice on where to go from here?

Thanks.

Answer 1

It looks like your printer is supported for IPP everywhere or Airprint - which means you don't need to provide explicit ppd files, as the printer can provide them by initiating the printer setup with the command such as this, as root:

lpadmin -p AirPrint -E -v "ipp://10.0.x.y/ipp/print" -m everywhere

where the ip address is whatever is assigned to your printer on your local network. Most printers in recent years support this mode of setup, and you can check if your printer is supported at https://openprinting.github.io/printers/