Take the 2-minute tour ×

Our printer (Brother HL-5340D) does not print correctly on Ubuntu 12.10/13.04. Almost every print-job looks like this:

example of faulty print job

As you can see, the printer is possessed :). Despite that, everything works fine on 12.04 and older versions. The drivers (Brother HL-5350 DN Br-Script3) are the same for 12.04 and 12.10/13.04.

Test-pages are printed correctly. Sometimes we also get an extra page that looks like this:


How can I fix this behavior?

share|improve this question
add comment

4 Answers

I was hitting this exact same issue today when trying to print PDFs. I was also using the Br-Script3 driver but switched to the Brother MFC9840CDW Foomatic/Postscript driver.

I would rather use the (correct) former driver, but it appears to be an issue that has not been resolved and this is an adequate workaround for my purposes.

share|improve this answer
add comment

I have the HL-5250DN, and I've run across this myself. It's a pain. I haven't had the time (and I usually just use my windows box instead), but you might try one of the HP PCL drivers instead. They've worked for me on Windows when I've had a PC that didn't have the brother drivers installed, and not a lot of time. The older the PCL driver is, the better your chances will be (but fewer features will be supported)

share|improve this answer
add comment

For us, on Ubuntu 12.10 it wouldn't print anything (not even test page) and would blink red/orange the bottom 4 lights when we tried to print. We resolved it by switching drivers to a generic driver (the linux ones listed on Brother's website 1 did NOT appear to work, maybe I messed up the install) and even double-side printing works now! Ubuntu seems to recognize the printer and automatically add using the Br-Script3 driver. To change it, since I have cinnamon, I went into cinnamon-settings (gnome-control-center does NOT appear to let you change the driver associated with an automatically recognized printer), Printers> HL-5340D > right click, Printer Properties > Settings, Make and Model, Change ... > Select Printer from Database, Generic, Forward > PCL 6/PCL SL > Generic PCL 6/PCL XL Printer -CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.9.


I have included a screenshot of the appropriate settings. Cinnamon Settings is what you want, on the left/bottom. Gnome-control-center on the right does not work. Actually I don't have enough reputation so instead it is linked 2.


Edit: my friend got it to work without cinnamon by going to localhost:631 and then roughly do the same procedure (select the printer, Administration - Modify Printer, ...).

share|improve this answer
add comment

Your Answer


