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I have a Brother all-in-one system (MFC-J4420DW). I installed its drivers and I can print from Ubuntu 16.04. But, when I try to scan (using simple-scan), the scanner is not detected.

I ran Brother's diagnostic utility:

sudo brsaneconfig4 -d

and got, among other messages:

# No USB scanners found. If you expected something different, make sure that
# you have loaded a kernel driver for your USB host controller and have setup
# the USB system correctly. See man sane-usb for details.

I did not understand this message. I looked at man sane-usb but saw instructions that are probably outdated (e.g. that libusb should be at least version 0.1.6. I have 2:1.0.20-1).

How can I help Ubuntu detect my USB scanner?

Erel Segal-Halevi
  • 2,361

1 Answers1

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The solution was so silly... after hours of frustration, I just unplugged the USB cable and re-connected it. Then, I ran brsaneconfig4 -d again and got:

found USB scanner (vendor=0x04f9 [Brother], product=0x033d [MFC-J4420DW]) at  libusb:001:013
  # Your USB scanner was (probably) detected. It may or may not be supported by
  # SANE. Try scanimage -L and read the backend's manpage.

Now I can print with simple-scan!

Erel Segal-Halevi
  • 2,361
  • Thank you very much! You saved me some time. This was exactly what I had to do with my Brother DS 640. It might be important to not use sudo (which I did). Have a great day! Edit: I used brsaneconfig5 -d which worked. – Ohumeronen Sep 23 '20 at 19:30