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I've got a low end Brother MFC printer/scanner/fax, which works fine for printing in all ways, but won't scan. How can I diagnose what's wrong? I see a lot of contradictory and old advice here and elsewhere.

Brother MFC Linux Scanner Issues

Some console output is:

# brsaneconfig4  -q | grep 480
59 "MFC-7480D"
145 "MFC-J480DW"

# brscan-skey -l
MFC-J480DW: brother4:bus2;dev2  : USB Active

# scanimage
scanimage: open of device brother4:bus2;dev2 failed: Invalid argument

# grep 04f9 /lib/udev/rules.d/40-libsane.rules
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04f9", ATTRS{idProduct}=="2038", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"
ATTRS{idVendor}==”04f9″, ENV{libsane_matched}=”yes”

# lsusb | grep Brother
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 04f9:0384 Brother Industries, Ltd

What steps can be taken, in general, to figure out why a Brother MFC scanner won't work?

My specific configuration is MFC-J480DW connected via USB to Ubuntu 16.04 with drivers downloaded directly from the Brother website. I see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SettingScannerPermissions

Bryce
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    Please [edit] the output of lsusb into your post. Thank you for helping us help you! :-) – Elder Geek May 04 '17 at 19:01
  • Addded lsusb output – Bryce May 04 '17 at 19:06
  • It looks like your device is on bus 2 device 5, not bus 2 device 2. Have you tried using the correct addressing? or plugging it back into the port it was in when you installed the driver? – Elder Geek May 04 '17 at 19:07
  • If the problem is plugging into a different USB port, the approved answer should include how to fix that. It's not normal I think for the physical USB port to matter.

    I've actually just solved the problem for myself, but wish to leave this open for generic debugging and analysis steps per the question as asked. I'd expected given the Brother installer for this to "just work".

     – Bryce May 04 '17 at 19:52
  • Congratulations! I'm glad you got it sorted. Self answering is encouraged here. Feel free to post your solution so that others with the same problem can benefit from your experience. – Elder Geek May 05 '17 at 15:35
  • I have a similar problem with my Brother MFC scanner, details and (workaround) solution see here. PS: For me, scanimage also shows wrong bus and device information, but it works nevertheless. – dessert Aug 13 '17 at 16:32

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