Brother brsane4 scanner driver for Linux updated

In a recent post, I had described a bug we encountered when accessing our brscan4-driven Brother scanner via a “saned” Linux scan server. From a comment received, the problem is not limited to the scanner we used, but probably affecting all brsane4-driven scanner models.

While or first contact with the German Brother support team has not brought any real progress, we we given the opportunity to discuss the issue with their European support team, which presented itself as not only highly competent, but very willing to help resolve this issue, too. By our description they were able to reproduce the symptoms, escalated the issue to Brother development and shortly after offered us an updated (beta) driver version. Needless to say, that updated driver works like a charm.

So if you’re hitting the same problems, be on the lookout for a new brscan4 driver (a version number higher than “0.4.2-1” – if you’re using RPMs, use “rpm -qi -p <rpm file name>” to check the package details: The build date should be newer than March 2014). Our version was labeled “0.4.2-2”, but as this needn’t be the final build, that number could easily be different on release. As of this writing, The Brother download page still lists 0.4.2-1 as the current driver – interestingly stating “March 12 2014” as it’s date, while it is still the same RPM as we downloaded in October 2013, and reports an RPM build date of “Mi 25 Sep 2013 07:35:41 CEST”…

We were very impressed how professionally, friendly and dedicated the (European) Brother support folks acted on our report (a big “thank you!” to Yves and James) and I can only repeat my earlier statements: We kept buying Brother devices for their outstanding support for Linux environments – and this new experience seamlessly fits into this history, so we’ll be loyal customers in the future, too!