i bought a Brother network printer/scanner etc because until now, they were
the simplest to get working both under Linux and Windows. Well the printer
works fine but I cannot get the scanner to work under xsane. It reports:
'failed to open device 'brother2:net1;dev0'; invalid argument. I have used 
the same drivers for several printers on my office LAN without ad trouble
whatsoever but this MFC-845CW is giving me a headache. My system is
MDV-2008.1

[ follow-up set to u.c.o.l ]

Alan Secker wrote:
> i bought a Brother network printer/scanner etc because until now,
> they were the simplest to get working both under Linux and Windows.

Says who? From what I've seen and experienced HP printers/MFDs are the
best supported (by HP themselves) under Linux and have been for a good
while. Windows support is a given for any device...

According to the SANE website no Brother MFC-* devices are supported.
I'm afraid you're out of luck :(

Having said all that searching the Brother site reveals this page:
http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/linux/sane_drivers.html

Any help?

> Well the printer works fine but I cannot get the scanner to work
> under xsane.

That's a common problem: printers are easy, scanners aren't esp. on MFD.

chris wrote:
> 
> [ follow-up set to u.c.o.l ]
> 
> Alan Secker wrote:
>> i bought a Brother network printer/scanner etc because until now,
>> they were the simplest to get working both under Linux and Windows.
> 
> Says who? From what I've seen and experienced HP printers/MFDs are the
> best supported (by HP themselves) under Linux and have been for a good
> while. Windows support is a given for any device...
> 
> According to the SANE website no Brother MFC-* devices are supported.
> I'm afraid you're out of luck :(
> 
> Having said all that searching the Brother site reveals this page:
> http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/linux/sane_drivers.html
> 
> Any help?
> 
>> Well the printer works fine but I cannot get the scanner to work
>> under xsane.
> 
> That's a common problem: printers are easy, scanners aren't esp. on MFD.

I am currently using the Brother MFC-7840W under Mepis Linux 7.0 without 
any problems whatsoever. The Brother website Linux web page does note 
some steps that you must perform for everything to work, including 
adding the device to the config file. I would double-check that I have 
followed all the steps.

Regards,
Phil Gilmer

chris wrote:

> 
> That's a common problem: printers are easy, scanners aren't esp. on MFD.

The error message I received was indeed correct. The IP address for the
printer had been set up as xxx.xxx.1.101. I changed the value in the ip
address for the scanner in /usr/local/Brother/sane/brsanenetdevice2.cfg
to xxx.xxx.1.102 and that fixed it. I could have deleted that file and
reinstalled with brsaneconfig2 using the new ip address instead.

Brother give superb support for Linux on their machines. They just don't
stick it on their CDs but who does?

Thanks, Alan

Alan Secker wrote:
> I've found the answer. The printer was assigned an IP address of
> xxx.xxx.1.101. I used the same number for the scanner. I flipped it to 102
> and started xsane. All OK.

You appear to be copying messages between uk.comp.os.linux and 
alt.os.linux.mandriva. This is called multiposting. It may interest you 
to know that it is also possible to post a message to both groups 
simultaneously. That would be crossposting.

You may wish to read http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/usenet/xpost.html

You are of course free to post whichever way you want, but crossposting 
would mean less cut&paste work for you, as well as letting people in 
both groups see the replies from both sides.