Problem

Needed to set up printing via CUPS to a Brother MFC-5840CN multi-function printer that exists on our home LAN.

The Fix

This was not particularly straight-forward, but the steps involved are listed below (links open in new window so that you can easily return to these instructions). Update: These instructions were written for OpenSUSE 11.2. In 11.4, I was able to skip steps 3, 5, 6, and 7.

1. From Brother's "Solutions" site, download the LPR and cupswrapper drivers (RPM files) for the MFC-5840CN
2. Per the instructions provided by Brother, do not use the Software Installation tool to install the drivers; instead, use the following from the command line:
   rpm -ihv --nodeps (lpr-drivername)
   rpm -ihv --nodeps (cupswrapper-drivername)
3. This may or may not be necessary, I'm not sure: Update your printcap file using the instructions in step 5 of the LPR driver instructions
4. Be sure to complete step 5b in the Brother instructions linked above, to adjust the CUPS setting for the printer, via the Web browser interface
5. Make a link from where the (presumably 32-bit?) brlpdwrapperMFC5840CN filter is installed to where CUPS will look for it, using:
   ln -s /usr/lib/cups/filter/brlpdwrapperMFC5840CN /usr/lib64/cups/filter
6. Restart CUPS (again) from the command line using:
   /etc/init.d/cups restart
7. If the Web interface for CUPS shows that the printer is stopped, click the button to start it
8. Print a test page to make sure it's all working

Hope this helps other OpenSUSE / Brother MFC-5840CN users!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License