Brother Printer (HL-2035) on Debian minimal Template

I have successfully installed my (old) Brother printer on a standaloneVM.

Now, I am trying to create a printer setup based on a debian-11-minimal.

Qubes setup:

  • deb-11-m-printer (templateVM)
  • printer (appVM)

Packages I have installed:

  • qubes-core-agent-passwordless-root
  • qubes-core-agent-nautilus
  • qubes-usb-proxy
  • system-config-printer
  • cups
  • nautilus
  • zenity
  • evince
  • pdftk
  • eog

Device setup:

  • (old) Brother HL-2035
  • USB connected (routed with sys-usb)

It looks ok but I do not get a printer job executed also the test-page does not work. All jobs are in waiting mode “Processing” or “Pending” (waiting for the previous job)

I have run the original bash installer script from:
https://support.brother.com
went through without any issue.

The current status:

printer-1

Any hint to debug the print job?
Any missing package?

Interesting - I have CUPS disabled and, like wifi and remote access, I don’t let any print services anywhere near the internet, either so…that’s particularly interesting. Thanks for posting!

I was never able to get my HP printer to work in Debian Minimal, despite installing all the necessary packages. My printer works fine in Debian. There must be a missing package for printers to work in minimal.

I’m using a debian 11 minimal template as well.

The only things I install are hplip, hplip-gui, and system-config-printer. Once this is done, however, you need to run system-config-printer on the template to set up the printer (or forever be doing it in your appvm/disposable). [yes, running even that setup on a template is suboptimal! I’m working on shifting the printer to a dedicated template so at least only that one template is contaminated.]

To use the scanner (if you have a combined scanner/printer) one must install some sort of scanner software (e.g., simple-scan) on the qube that’s going to do the scanning, otherwise, your printer/scanner will simply think it’s not hooked up to anything.

@Sven apologizes to point you directly to this issue but I remember you as a Debian minimal expert. Hopefully, you can support us on this printer issue on (deb-11-minimal) or at least provide us some hints to further dig into this issue (currently we have no approach to debug since everything looks ok; but the printer process is simple not executed).