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I decided to upgrade the printer in home and got  a Brother MFC-9970CDW multifunction laser color printer, these are the instructions I had to follow to enable the printer on my Ubuntu 12.04 laptop.

Download Drivers

The drivers are available from the Brother Solutions Download web site and you have to download them manually. I downloaded:

  • Printer Drivers (cupswrapper)
  • Scanner Drivers (brscan & scan-key-tool)

 

Install Drivers

Before installing the downloaded packages make sure to run the following command:

$ sudo mkdir /var/spool/lpd

 

Install Printer Drivers

Install the printer drivers by executing:

$ sudo dpkg -i mfc9970cdwlpr-1.1.1-5.i386.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i mfc9970cdwcupswrapper-1.1.1-5.i386.deb

 

The driver installer will add the MFC-9970CDW printer into the CUPS configuration assuming it is connected on the USB port. In order to fix this:

  • Launch the Printer manager
  • Removed the existing configured MFC-9970CDW printer
  • Add the printer as a Network Printer.

This new configuration will show your printer as if it is on the 'localhost'. Don't worry about it because if you login into the CUPS Administrative web page (http://localhost:631/admin) you'll see that the printer connection configured looks like this:

dnssd://Brother%20MFC-9970CDW._pdl-datastream._tcp.local/

 

For more information on what protocols are supported by your printer have a look into your printer's web site (http://192.168.1.100/ as an example)

You should be able to print now!

 

Install Scanner Drivers

Install the scanner drivers by executing:

$ sudo dpkg -i brscan4-0.4.1-2.i386.deb

 

Then you need to configure your scanner (btw, Brother's instructions refer to an old driver version):

$ brsaneconfig4 -a name=mfc9970 model=MFC-9970CDW ip=192.168.1.100

 

You should be able to open an application with scanning support (Gimp, OpenOffice, etc) and scan from your device.

 

My scanner information showed as:

Device: brother4:net1;dev0
Vendor: Brother
Model: mfc9970
Type: MFC-9970CDW

 

UPDATE: As of today (12/1/12) I had proof read this instructions by having my 3 kids to configure their Ubuntu systems to print/scan using the new MFC9970CDW.