Something really crappy happened to Ubuntu between 18.04 and 20.04. When I upgraded, I discovered that my printing was broken. Network printers were found, and they even worked for a while, but they soon broke, the computer unable to communicate with them.
Here’s how I fixed it:
Go to the CUPS admin interface in a web browser (http://localhost:631/) and use the dialog to add a network printer. Any protocol will be fine, you’re going to change it. Make sure you rename the printer to something you’ll recognize as distinct from the name CUPS has given it. Select a driver like normal, then save.
NOW, open your Printers dialog. Find the printer and select Properties. Under Device URI, hit Change. Under Network Printer, select AppSocket/HP JetDirect. Specify the IP address of the printer for the Host field. Hit Apply.
On my brand new install, I lost the Print Test Page option. No biggy. Just open a file and print to this printer, the one you renamed. You’ll see the default CUPS name printer on the list, ignore it. Just print to the renamed one you just tweaked.
If your luck is as good as mine, it will work PERMANENTLY. Note that if you go back to the web-based CUPS admin and delete the original (non-working) printer, your renamed printer will vanish as well. So get used to seeing unusable printers on your print dialog.
This technique has worked flawlessly for my two Brother printers, an HL-L51000DN and a MFC-L3750CDW.
My problem is that the driver for my model isn’t listed. It only lists one driver and that is for a much newer Brother printer. I have no choice but to select that driver and of course it doesn’t work. It spits out blank paper until the paper tray is empty. So frustrating. I’ve even performed a clean install of an older version of Ubuntu server but that didn’t have the right driver either. I read that upgrading to 20.04 would solve the problem as this model is supported in version 20.04. It isn’t. To make matters worse, this used to work perfectly on one of my old laptops that I used as a local files server. It’s a USB printer model number hl-2104. Brother don’t give you a nice clean PPD file. Instead you are meant to use their driverless wrapper thing and that doesn’t work either. I’m doing all this for a friend of mine who wants a file server and a print server. Did I mention it’s all very frustrating? 😉 Windows won’t give us drivers for old printers on new operating systems and for a time, using an old computer as a print and file server seemed like a great solution. Not any more. I might as well go out and buy him a new printer. Would be much less frustrating and time consuming.
Have you considered trying again with 24.04?
Might do. Or I might just keep on running sudo do-release-upgrade. I’ve had enough for today. It’s almost half nine in the evening here. I’ll see how I fell about it next week and what else I’ve got on.
I found this: Being on debian testing (2024) I just had to install the proper package: # apt install printer-driver-brlaser .Then choose the recommended compatible driver, and it works fine.
On this website: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1156291/where-can-i-find-a-brother-hl2140-64-bit-driver
It seems to be working. I’ll try to remember to keep you updated.
It is also available to the network. Being a USB printer, this is a massive bonus. As I said before, it used to work fine but for some reason it has been a real painful experience this time. Hopefully it is sirted now and will remain so!
Outstanding! Here’s hoping someone else with the same issue will find this!
Thanks for contributing to a great cause.