This has probably been answered before in the past. But I couldn’t find it in my forum search and I get to use the “new guy” card for at least another month.
How do I get a wireless printer to sync with my L14? I know the printer works and is connected to my home wireless because it works with our other computers (windows). When I click add a printer in the printer settings (L14) it scans for a moment and then the only thing that shows up is CUPS-BRF-Printer, which is not the Brother printer I have.
The supremely weird thing is that the first night I had my L14 running it had automatically synced with the very printer that I now can’t get to work. I was testing various things and that night I just opened a libreword doc and just typed a few words and hit print. Lo and behold the Brother printer appeared as an option. I was amazed an how simple it was. It appears now that it was just a happy accident.
Is the printer turned on? Do you know its IP address? Can you ping it?
On most Linux systems and in PureOS cups (the common unix printing service) is taking care of finding and managing printers. You can open http://localhost:631 to see the settings. The printer settings in the Gnome System Settings also talk to cups.
The printer is turned on. I do not know it’s IP address. I do not know how to ping it. I went to the link but I wasn’t sure how to interpret the information there.
Any advice on the ping IP thing?
Also, I’ve heard from others it is related have the proper driver on my laptop. I’ve found some website that have downloadable drivers. But when I download it I just have a file sitting in a folder. I don’t know how to make the information in that file do what it’s supposed to do.
Can you tell us the company and model of the printer?
To find the IP maybe the printer has a display and settings menu where you can look it up? Or you can open the settings page of your router and try to see which devices are connected to the wifi network?
Yet another alternative might be to look for the exact URL or IP on one of the windows computers where the printer works.
To ping an IP address, for example “192.168.1.1”, on your network, go to the terminal and type ping 192.168.1.1. It will keep pinging until you hit Control-C to cancel. This process tells you whether the ping successfully reaches the destination, and how long it took to get there.
If you see “Destination Host Unreachable,” it means either the address you typed is wrong, or you have no connection to it.
You can also ping websites, for instance ping wikipedia.org.
