Arch Linux

jperry

Member

Registered: 2009-01-30

Posts: 17

Printer configured with avahi disappears after a few minutes

This has only started happening since a recent update.

When I first power on my Brother WiFi printer (DCP-L2540DW), CUPS can locate it and print to it, and I can also see it in avahi-discover. But after a few minutes, it disappears--if I try to print, CUPS gives "Unable to locate printer", and it's gone from the avahi list. If I reboot the printer, CUPS finds it again and can print, but again after a few minutes it's gone. Other machines can still print to this printer with no problems.

I believe I have avahi and name resolution configured correctly according to the wiki. Before recently, I never had this problem; printing worked fine for many months with this setup.

I have tried re-adding the printer with both ipp: and dnssd: connections, and the same thing happens. Thanks for any suggestions.

BluishHumility

Member

Registered: 2023-03-31

Posts: 26

Re: Printer configured with avahi disappears after a few minutes

and it's gone from the avahi list.

Check to see if there are any clues in the journal.

journalctl -u avahi-daemon.service

jperry

Member

Registered: 2009-01-30

Posts: 17

Re: Printer configured with avahi disappears after a few minutes

Thanks. I looked, and all the avahi-daemon journal entries are from right after boot and seem successful, e.g., "Joining mDNS multicast group on interface wlan0.IPv4". The only questionable message is "No service file found in /etc/avahi/services." Could that be a problem? Again, I can see all other devices in my house in avahi-discover, it's just this printer that goes away.

BluishHumility

Member

Registered: 2023-03-31

Posts: 26

Re: Printer configured with avahi disappears after a few minutes

If your printer driver is an AUR package, have you tried rebuilding it since the update when the printer stopped working reliably?

jperry

Member

Registered: 2009-01-30

Posts: 17

Re: Printer configured with avahi disappears after a few minutes

That's a good idea, so I did that. But I don't think the driver is the problem, because it was driverless and it's about avahi not finding the device at all. Anyway, for now I just hard-coded the IP address like I used to do and am using a socket:// URL.