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alexkemp

Member

Registered: 2018-05-14

Posts: 376  

How To Fix A Printer Freeze

Printer: Brother DCP-L3510CDW

$ neofetch
   ..,,;;;::;,..                   alexk@ng3 
           `':ddd;:,.              --------- 
                 `'dPPd:,.         OS: Devuan GNU/Linux 6 (excalibur) x86_64 
                     `:b$$b`.      Model: 90BJ008CUK Lenovo H30-05 
                        'P$$$d`    Kernel: 6.12.111+deb13-amd64 
                         .$$$$$`   Uptime: 29 mins 
                         ;$$$$$P   Packages: 3419 (dpkg) 
                      .:P$$$$$$`   Shell: bash 5.2.37 
                  .,:b$$$$$$$;'    Resolution: 1920x1080 
             .,:dP$$$$$$$$b:'      DE: Xfce 4.20 
      .,:;db$$$$$$$$$$Pd'`         WM: Xfwm4 
 ,db$$$$$$$$$$$$$$b:'`             WM Theme: Default 
:$$$$$$$$$$$$b:'`                  Theme: Clearlooks-Phenix-Sapphire [GTK2/3] 
 `$$$$$bd:''`                      Icons: oxygen [GTK2/3] 
   `'''`                           Terminal: xfce4-terminal 
                                   Terminal Font: Monospace 12 
                                   CPU: AMD A8-7410 APU with AMD Radeon R5 Grap 
                                   GPU: AMD ATI Radeon R4/R5 Graphics 
                                   Memory: 1338MiB / 7362MiB

The printer is a LCD colour laser printer/scanner/copier that uses toner cartridges. It was bought via Amazon on 1 July 2019 & has worked flawlessly under Devuan using standard CUPS drivers ever since.

Very recently it reported "Toner Low for Y + M (yellow + magenta catridges; there are 4: CYMK [Cyan | Yellow | Magenta | Black]). This was the first ever change with the exception of changing the black catridge.

After the replacing the Y+M with non-Brother catridges it appeared to restart OK but still refused to print. lpstat -p reported "unplugged or turned off".

I then had a 4-day hair-pulling horror, which included struggling with a Brother online AI which lied to me by saying that it would connect me with a human, but did not do so.

I got a hint whilst searching that the printer needed to be rebooted.

In the end, I rebooted computer + printer both at the same time (remove the power socket from the printer & reconnect only when the computer booted up). Before the desktop came up I heard the printer print my Virgin statement. It worked! Afterwards:

$ lpstat -p
printer BRPPL3510CDW-CMYK is idle.  enabled since Mon 12 Oct 2026 01:26:11 BST
printer DCP3510W-RGB disabled since Thu 09 Oct 2025 23:34:55 BST -
	File "/usr/lib/cups/filter/brother_lpdwrapper_dcpl3510cdw" not available: No such file or directory

HTH