Notes: Brother HL-5170DN with CUPS under FreeBSD

R. Lonstein included in category

Aug 21, 2006 Aug 21, 2006 118 words One minute

Contents

The Brother HL-5170DN is an inexpensive networked, duplexing Postscript-compatible printer. Networked printing using [CUPS](http://www.cups.org) under FreeBSD is easy, assuming you have the ports tree and net access:

1. Install, either by hand or using portinstall, the cups metaport and, if you’re like me and want the BSD command line tools, the cups-lpr port.
2. Put the [GPL-ed PPD available from linuxprinting.org](http://www.linuxprinting.org/download/PPD/Brother/BR5170_2_GPL.ppd) in /usr/local/share/cups/model/. The same file is available from the [Brother Solutions](http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/linux/cups_drivers.html), but you need to convert from rpm or deb to extract the file.
3. Edit /etc/rc.conf and add cupsd_enable=“YES” so it will start at reboot.
4. Start the daemon manually with /usr/local/etc/rc.d/cupsd start.
5. Finally, browse to the localhost and port 631 and configure the printer.