Saturday, July 30, 2022

Trouble with lpr and Brother wireless printer

Hi all,

I'm having trouble getting printing to work using lpr(1) and a
Brother wireless printer[1] that should support it. This seems to
be a perennial topic on the list, but despite trying what I've found
in the archives, I'm stumped.

Here's my /etc/printcap:

lp|brother:\
:rm=192.168.xxx.xxx:\
:rp=brother:\
:sd=/var/spool/output/lpd:\
:lf=/var/log/lpd-errs:

(The `xxx`s are, of course, actually digits).

But entering `$ lpr filename.ps` does nothing. The printer remains
quiet. Nothing shows up in the queue. `lpq` gives this output:

Printer Name: brother
Jobs: No Jobs in Queue

The output of `lpc status` is similarly unremarkable:

lp:
queuing is enabled
printing is enabled
no entries
printer idle

My permissions also seem fine:

$ ls -la /var/spool/output
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 512 Jul 30 14:24 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root wheel 512 Apr 11 16:45 ..
drwxrwx--- 2 root daemon 512 Jul 30 20:21 lpd

Oddly, if I attempt to print something from Firefox, using the
system dialog and setting lpr as the printer, the printer wakes up
and starts spewing out blank sheets until I manually cancel it using
the power button on the printer. So it seems that the issue is not
connecting to the printer, but how I am invoking lpr ... maybe?

What am I overlooking?

- Ben

[1] https://www.brother-usa.com/products/hll2350dw

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