The wireless printer of Brother HLL3240CDW does not have an open source driver. Since I don’t like to run a closed source program on my Linux, I preferred to install the driver inside a container. Most tutorials on the internet were about installing the driver on the host and accessing it from inside the container, or to allow a USB printer to be accessed from the container, etc. So I started to figure this out by myself and some help from chatGPT!
Step 1: Dockerfile
FROM devuan/devuan:latest
RUN apt update \
&& apt install -y \
curl \
cups \
lpr
RUN curl \
-s 'https://download.brother.com/welcome/dlf006893/linux-brprinter-installer-2.2.4-1.gz' \
-o linux-brprinter-installer-2.2.4-1.gz \
&& gunzip ./linux-brprinter-installer-2.2.4-1.gz \
&& printf "y\nY\n8\n192.168.0.142\nN\n" | bash ./linux-brprinter-installer-2.2.4-1 HLL3240CDW
COPY ./entrypoint.sh /
RUN chmod +x /entrypoint.sh
ENTRYPOINT ["/entrypoint.sh"]
Step 2: entrypoint.sh
#!/bin/bash
/usr/sbin/cupsd -C /etc/cups/cupsd.conf -s /etc/cups/cups-files.conf &
sleep 2
lpadmin -p HLL3240CDW -v lpd://192.168.0.142/BINARY_P1 -E
lpstat -p
# If no command is passed to the container, run bash by default
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
exec /bin/bash
else
# Run the command specified in the docker run arguments
exec "$@"
fi
Step 3:
Some scripts to make printing easier for future:
print-a4.sh
#!/bin/bash
link=`readlink $0`
dir=`dirname "$link"`
cd "$dir"
if [ "x$2" != x ]; then
pageRanges="-o page-ranges=$2"
fi
docker run \
-ti \
-v "$1"':/a' \
printer \
/bin/bash -c ' \
lp \
-d HLL3240CDW \
'"$pageRanges"' \
/a \
&& echo "Press enter once you are done." \
&& read \
'
print-a4-color.sh
#!/bin/bash
link=`readlink $0`
dir=`dirname "$link"`
cd "$dir"
if [ "x$2" != x ]; then
pageRanges="-o page-ranges=$2"
fi
docker run \
-ti \
-v "$1"':/a' \
printer \
/bin/bash -c ' \
lp \
-d HLL3240CDW \
-o ColorModel=Color \
-o BRMonoColor=FullColor \
-o BRColorMatching=Normal \
'"$pageRanges"' \
/a \
&& echo "Press enter once you are done." \
&& read \
'
print-photo.sh
#!/bin/bash
docker run \
-ti \
-v "$1"':/a' \
printer \
/bin/bash -c ' \
lp \
-d HLL3240CDW \
-o ColorModel=Color \
-o BRMonoColor=FullColor \
-o BRInputSlot=Tray1 \
-o BRMediaType=Glossy \
-o PageSize=Postcard \
-o BRResolution=600x2400dpi \
-o BREnhanceBlkPrt=ON \
-o BRColorMatching=Normal \
-o BRPrintBorderless=ON \
/a \
&& echo "Press enter once you are done." \
&& read \
'
Of course you need to have docker installed on the host and know how to run docker and those bash scripts. But you get the idea. Hope it helps 