[Solved] Brother Printer "Filter failed" Error

General system Kernel, boot, graphics & hardware
1

I have a Brother MFC-8810DW printer connected via USB to my newly installed EnOS system (KDE Plasma). I have installed the printer and scanner drivers from AUR. (Scanning works fine, btw.)

I have tried to install the printer from the KDE System Settings control panel, as well as via the cups http://localhost:631 on my firefox browser. In both scenarios, it appears that the printer is installed correctly. I can print a Self Test Page from the maintenance options. I can poll the printer for its default options. But, I cannot print a Test Page or a document. It gets stuck in the print queue with the message ā€œFilter failed.ā€

I have polled via lsusb and it finds the printer:

Bus 002 Device 005: ID 04f9:02d4 Brother Industries, Ltd MFC-8810DW

I have followed the EnOS wiki on the printer topic, without finding anything wrong so far. The output of the avahi-daemon is:

systemctl status avahi-daemon
ā— avahi-daemon.service - Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Stack
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/avahi-daemon.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
     Active: active (running) since Tue 2020-08-11 13:26:11 EDT; 40min ago
TriggeredBy: ā— avahi-daemon.socket
   Main PID: 701 (avahi-daemon)
     Status: "avahi-daemon 0.8 starting up."
      Tasks: 2 (limit: 18818)
     Memory: 3.0M
     CGroup: /system.slice/avahi-daemon.service
             ā”œā”€701 avahi-daemon: running [hpz230office.local]
             ā””ā”€709 avahi-daemon: chroot helper

I have hit the wall with my diagnostic skills and would appreciate some assistance as to what more I should try. I am fairly sure that it is something simple, but Iā€™m at a loss.

TIA for any assistance!

Barry

2

Looks like a communication issue.
There are multiple ways to connect your printer. From my experience with wireless Brother printers the AppSocket/JetDirect approach works best.
capture-200811-211600

1 Like
3

Thanks, but that also failed with the same ā€œFilter failedā€ error, as did using ipp and http. Could this be an issue with a misconfigured lpdwrapper?

4

Hmm not sure, but here is something more that you could try that is unintuitive:
cups-pdf is apparently also a needed package for the [wireless Brother] printer to work.

5

If this printer is connected to the computer via USB, why are you looking at ipp and http? These are networking protocols.

Let me do some research as it has been a LONG time since I hooked up a local printer on USB.

Pudge

6

@anon31549144 cups-pdf is installed

@Pudge Yes, this is connected via USB and I was not thinking clearly. I couldnā€™t get it working via usb connection, so I tried other options. Mea culpa.

I have looked at the arch wiki re: filter failed error, but donā€™t see (read: Iā€™m not able to understand) anything that may be helpful, here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CUPS/Troubleshooting#CUPS:_ā€œFilter_failedā€

7

In a terminal window
$cat /var/log/cups/error_log should reveal which filter is causing your grief.

Then we can go from there.
What are we working on now? USB, wireless, or networked?
Pudge

8

for case USB , cupds needs ipp-usb added

9

No particular expertise here, but I do have a Brother hooked up with USB. I found that after using the scanner, I had to change ownership of the device back to the printing from the scanning - if you see what I mean. Not on the relevant machine at the moment - but will try to figure out the details if you need them. I was surprised that permissions entered the equation at all - but it ā€˜fixedā€™ the problemā€¦

10

Here is the link to my command, ā€˜cat /var/log/cups/error_logā€™

http://ix.io/2tV8

Could this line be telling?

D [11/Aug/2020:15:27:37 -0400] [Job 46] PID 24134 (/usr/lib/cups/filter/brother_lpdwrapper_MFC8810DW) stopped with status 113 (Permission denied)

Thanks so much for your help!

11

@Stephane Thanks. Iā€™m going to try direct usb connection for now, not using ipp, but noted this information.

@freebird54 I would appreciate more information on this, as I donā€™t understand what changes the permission back and forth.

12

@bkaplan

https://endeavouros.com/docs/hardware-and-network/printers/

Edit: I also have a Brother laser printer hooked up via usb with cups. I installed the printer from the AUR for mine.

13

I tried to follow that wiki post faithfully before posting here, but couldnā€™t progress past this filter -related error. Iā€™m trying to figure out what I may have missed. Thanks for any ideas.

Edit: and I am using the aur drivers specific to my printer

14

That line is very telling. Here is what I have with my Brother DCP-l2550DW
Terminal window: $ ls -al /usr/lib/cups/filter

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     61 Jun 14  2018 brother_lpdwrapper_DCPL2550DW -> /usr/share/brother/Printers/DCPL2550DW/cupswrapper/lpdwrapper

This is a symlink to the proper lpdwrapper. Permissions should be lrwxrwxrwx root root

$ ls -al /usr/share/brother/Printers/DCPL2550DW/cupswrapper
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 26369 Jun 14 2018 lpdwrapper

Check the permissions and owners of these two files.
I have installed quite a few Brother printer/scanners and never had permission problems before.

Here is what is installed on my setup
$ pacman -Q | grep cups
cups 2.3.3-2
cups-filters 1.27.5-1
cups-pdf 3.0.1-5
cups-pk-helper 0.2.6-4
libcups 2.3.3-2

In particular cups-filters 1.27.5-1

15

My command yields:

$ pacman -Q | grep cups
brother-mfc8810dw-cups-bin 3.0.2-1
cups 2.3.3-2
cups-filters 1.27.5-1
cups-pdf 3.0.1-5
libcups 2.3.3-2
python-pycups 2.0.1-1

I do not have a /usr/shar/brother/ folder whatsoever, nor a symlink to the lpdwrapper in /usr/lib/cups/filter.

Perhaps I should try reinstalling the aur package? Or should I manually recreate your above structure using the packages (seemingly correct) at /opt/brother/Printers/MFC8810DW/cupswrapper/ ?

16

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/brother-mfc8810dw-cups-bin/
Look at this web page from the AUR
There are a few things that bother me
first, it is a bin file

It lists the source as a .deb package, which I guess works but is not normal in a PKGBUILD

|First Submitted: |2019-11-19 19:15|
|Last Updated: |2019-11-19 19:15|

This page has the Maintainer listed as ā€œorphanā€
This IS the AUR. So who knows if it ever worked in the first place.

Let me download the drivers in rpm format and see if I can retrieve the PPD file. Then in localhost:631 in the driver selection page you can enter the PPD and try that.

Pudge

17

Okay, I extracted the PPD file from the RPM package and put it on my website. Download file
From my web site.
I would suggest using pacman to remove the brother-mfc8810dw-cups-bin 3.0.2-1 package. If you end up needing it, yay is just a step away.
In localhost:631
If you are still trying to connect through USB, on the first page where it lists detected printers, I believe you need to check one of the choices under ā€œLocalā€
Then on the page where it says to enter the preferred driver OR enter a PPD, browse to the PPD file you downloaded then select that.

I donā€™t know if this will work, but it is worth a try.

Pudge

1 Like
18

Thank you, trying now. Remind me, is it best practice to use my local user or the root account in the localhost:631 setup?

19

When you click on add printer, it asks for a password.
I always enter ā€œrootā€ then rootā€™s password.

Pudge

1 Like
20

Thank you for that. So now, it acts as though it is printing from the software side; however, the data light on the printer does not start flashing, and no output actually occurs.

So that I have a clean error_log file for the current configuration, I deleted the old one, rebooted, and tried printing again. There is no error reported in the printer queue. Hereā€™s the current output from ā€˜cat /var/log/cups/error_logā€™:

http://ix.io/2tVO

I donā€™t see anything other than perhaps a misconfiguration in the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf file. Does that need to be somehow regenerated? Iā€™m at a loss.