Brother's printer/scanner drivers awkward to find and install

[Xavier Guillot]

Binary package hint: cupsys

Hello,

I have the multifonction laser printer and scan Brother DCP-7030.

It works very well in Ubuntu, but with some hard configuration. Printer is automatically detected when connected in USB, but Ubuntu does not propose DCP-7030 drivers, only DCP-7025, and it doesn't work well.

To get DCP-7030 fully recognized and well printing / scanning, I have to do this (it's a short summary) :
http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/before.html

- Printer BROTHER DCP-7030 :

cd ~/desktop
sudo aa-complain cupsd
sudo mkdir /usr/share/cups/model
http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/download_prn.html#DCP-7030
sudo dpkg -i --force-all --force-architecture brdcp7030lpr-2.0.2-1.i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i --force-all --force-architecture cupswrapperDCP7030-2.0.2-1.i386.deb
http://127.0.0.1:631/printers/DCP7030 : OK

After that printer works

- SCANNING :

Install scan-key-tools / Brscan3
http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/download_scn.html#brscan3
http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/instruction_scn1a.html

sudo gedit /lib/udev/rules.d/50-udev-default.rules : in section "libusb device nodes", replacer 0664 by 0666

sudo lsusb
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 04f9:01a Brother Industries, Ltd
Go to dev/bus/usb : bus 1 and device 4 is root owned
Open it in Nautilus as root, change it to my user name and take ownership

Now Simple Scan works, Brother-DCP is seen.

But... big problem !

At each restart of Ubuntu or DCP Brother, permission resets and comes back to root, I have to change ownership and re-log each time, this is not nice...

Is it a way to "protect" the file against erasing or permission change ?

It's also true for other models than DCP-7030 (like DCP-7040...). I do not know if it is a Cups / Ubuntu "bug" or Openprinting missing for new drivers, but as Brother gives functional drivers for Linux, this should be easily implemented I hope, as more and more materials are natively identified in Ubuntu.

Thanks in advance for your help. Best regards,

Xavier

[Xavier Guillot (valeryan-24)]

Scanner problem with root permission is reported since 2008 :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sane-backends/+bug/217571

This bug is not fully a duplicate because it's also concerning cups and missing driver automatic configuration of Brother DCP-7030 printer.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Update for the links to the Brother site:

http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/index.html

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

I have now sent an inquiry to Brother through the contact form, via the link "Contact Us( U.S.A./Canada/Latin America" at the bottom of their Linux page (link in my previous posting). The URL is

https://secure6.brother.co.jp/LinuxContactUs/contact/Linuxform.html

I have sent the following text:

----------
I am Till Kamppeter, leader of the OpenPrinting work group at the Linux
Foundation. The goal of OpenPrinting is to make printing under Linux "just work".

Linux distributions are developing concepts that installing and using software under Linux is as easy as possible so that one does not need any expert for using a computer with Linux. As on Mac OS X or on smartphones applications can easily get found with a software installation facility and a certain form of "AppStore". The selected software gets easily downloaded and installed, without need of doing any adjustments by the command line. All needed additional packages get automatically installed, too and also needed changes on the system configuration (like creating folders) is done automatically. This is Plug'n'Print and users and admins love this.

For setup of printers we get even further: If a printer is connected the distribution's printer setup tool automatically recognizes this, checks which model the printer is, and if no suitable driver is installed on the local system, it sends the printer model data to the OpenPrinting web site and the web site returns a suitable driver (hosted at OpenPrinting or at the printer manufacturer) to the user, which the system automatically installs.

Other major ptinter manufacturers already supply drivers and/or PPDs via OpenPrinting or supply a free software driver suite to the distributions.

For Brother printers setup under Linux is not very user friendly:

- The user must find Brother's Linux site: http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/index.html
- The user needs to install both an LPD driver and a CUPS wrapper.
- The user has to read the FAQ and other documentation to apply lots of configuration changes via the command line
- The user has often to install packages with special command line options (like "--force-all").
- Setting option defaults (like Letter/A4) does not work straight-forward with the standard methods of CUPS, but only by cryptic config scripts of ancient LPD times.

All this causes tons of bug reports at the distributions, like for example

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups/+bug/701856

By designing the drivers the right way or even better making them available as distribution-independent LSB packages for automatic download, Brother printers can be made the most user-friendly printers.

You only need to follow the instructions on this site to correctly design and package the drivers:

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/writingandpackagingprinterdrivers

Especially important for the driver design is the "What to do and what not to do section". Please also contact me for help as I have ten years of experience with integrating and packaging software for Linux distributions, with both RPM and DEB.

Also note that CUPS is the principal printing system. Support f...

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Unfortunately, at Ubuntu we cannot fix this problem with a reasonable effort. There was already a volunteer some time ago who repackages Brother's driver package in an easy-to-install way, but he has given up after some time and Brother continues to issue support for new printers in the same awkward ways as before. The only one who can really solve the problem is Brother.

[Xavier Guillot (valeryan-24)]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your answer and detailed explanation.

I'll also try to write to Brother, in hope it will help things progressing.

Just a question : as I said, for example Brother DCP-7025 is recognized
in Ubuntu (when I install my DCP-7030 it proposes me 7025 drivers), was
it an inclusion from Brother, Ubuntu, Openprinting, external developers ?

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

till@till:~/ubuntu/cups/bzr/debian-trunk/debian/local/filters/pdf-filters$ lpinfo -m | grep -i DCP-7025
openprinting-ppds:0/Brother/BR7025_2_GPL.ppd Brother DCP-7025 BR-Script3
foomatic-db-compressed-ppds:0/Brother-DCP-7025-Postscript.ppd Brother DCP-7025 Foomatic/Postscript
till@till:~/ubuntu/cups/bzr/debian-trunk/debian/local/filters/pdf-filters$

There are two options for the DCP-7025. One is a generic PPD file (Foomatic/Postscript). This is done by me, as a part of the Foomatic upstream project which is part of OpenPrinting. The other option is a native PPD file actually supplied by Brother, but they sent me PPD files only once, and that was back in 2005 (2005-12-09, see ChangeLog of the foomatic-db upstream package), well before they started to provide binary drivers for non-PostScript printers.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

I have also sent the message of comment #3 to the Brother contacts known at the PWG (Printing Working Group, http://www.pwg.org/).

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

I succeeded to get the contacts to the developers of the the Brother drivers via the PWG contacts. The developers told that they will "investigate the documents and reply you some feedback in a few weeks".

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

The Brother developers are also invited to the OpenPrinting Summit in April, where I will also give a short tutorial about driver packaging.

[Xavier Guillot (valeryan-24)]

Hi,

Thanks a lot again for your help and efforts to make Brother help to fix
this bug and provide better drivers for Linux and Openprinting foundation.

I hope it will be positive and they will answer to your invitation, have
an active participation, but if not we would have done our best to try...

I also sent them a message on the contact page you gave me, here is a copy :

"Dear Sir,

I'm a french Linux user (I write here because brother.fr has no specific
linux support) who use at home a Brother Scan / Printer DCP-7030.

I'm very satisfied of it and it works very well on Linux Ubuntu, but
driver configuration isn't easy.

I made this bug report on Ubuntu Launchpad :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups/+bug/701856

All details are here, well explained, and a responsible for Open
Printing also contacted you at this purpose.

Please, as Brother still makes a lots of efforts to provide Linux
drivers, and thanks for that (on contrary to other printer companies),
that was one of the reason I choosed a Brother printer, would it be
possible that you update the linux drivers in the way they become
compatible to Open Printing and Linux distributions standards ?

Because today I want to buy a new color laser printer & scanner for
home, and at work (where 2/3 of computers run on Ubuntu, too) we need a
multi-function fax-printer-scanner, but if it remains so difficult and
unpleasant to configure Brother printers in Ubuntu, perhaps I'll see
with HP, which provides integrated drivers :
http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/index.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HpAllInOne
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting

Thanks in advance for your answer. Best regards,

Xavier"

[Xavier Guillot (valeryan-24)]

I got today an answer from Brother support, here is the copy of the mail
received :

"Dear Brother Customer,

Thank you for your inquiry. The Brother Linux FAQ’s for Linux related
issues are listed here:
http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/faq_prn.html#f00090

We hope this information will be useful to you. If we can be of further
assistance, please let us know.

Sincerely,

Customer Service
Brother International Corporation"

I will test this, but I hope you will have better exchange and
discussion with the Brother developers, perhaps at the OpenPrinting
Summit if they come.

[Xavier Guillot (valeryan-24)]

Hello,

Finally, did someone from Brother come to the OpenPrinting Summit ?

Because now in Ubuntu Natty, even with the previous indications, it is impossible to install Brother DCP 7030 as ther is a problem of compatibility with libc6...

If I try the solution from Brother - http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/faq_prn.html#f00090 - it's just the one that I described before but automatic, and it also installs all ia32 and lib32 that I don't want.

If I try the manual method - download the drivers, dating from February 2008 for the 7030 (!) and sudo dpkg -i --force-all --force-architecture brdcp7030lpr-2.0.2-1.i386.deb then sudo dpkg -i --force-all --force-architecture cupswrapperDCP7030-2.0.2-1.i386.deb :

Both fail and I get the error message (translated from french)

brdcp7030lpr:i386 depends from libc6 (>= 2.3.4-1).
dpkg : treatment error of brdcp7030lpr:i386 (--install) :
dependency problems - left unconfigured

Same for cupswrapperdcp7030:i386

So for the moment I am unable to use my Brother printer on Natty...

[Xavier Guillot (valeryan-24)]

Scanner does not work, too. On Brother site, there are this time 64 bits deb, updated in 2011 for brscan3, I install them, scanner is detected but when I run Simple Scan, nothing happens...

All (printer + scanner) was working well on Ubuntu Maverick.

Regarding your experience, due to HPLIP software, would the HP Officejet Pro 8500 A910 - http://www.openprinting.org/printer/HP/HP-Officejet_Pro_8500_A910 - work better on Ubuntu Natty ?

If Brother does not improve very quickly their drivers, I will change...

[Xavier Guillot (valeryan-24)]

Other user has same problem : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/brother-lpr-drivers-laser/+bug/755458

Bug 755458 marked as duplicate of this one.

I also read that Epson will make drivers automatically available by download with Avasys and Openprinting project, that's very good, I hope Brother will cooperate, too.
http://global.epson.com/newsroom/2011/news_20110331.html

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Epson's drivers are already available for auto-download. Client-side support for binary driver package auto-download is available from Natty on. If you connect a supported Epson inkjet to a Natty machine the driver will be automatically downloaded via OpenPrinting.

[Roland S. (kaiser-ger)]

I'm reporter of Bug 755458.

The annoying Brother printer driver situation gets a new quality with Natty.

I don't understand why the dependency on libc6 (>= 2.3.4-1) is a problem since 2.13-0ubuntu13 is installed :-(

[Xavier Guillot (valeryan-24)]

Hello,

Perhaps you can try to write also an email to <email address hidden>
and ask them to update their drivers for Ubuntu Natty, as I did.

The more we are to complain about it, the best are the chances to get a
working driver, or if I dream, an Openprinting compatibility !

[Xavier Guillot (valeryan-24)]

Last answer received yesterday evening from Brother Linux Support :

"Dear Brother Customer,

Sorry for any inconvenience you may have experienced.

Unfortunately we do not support beta2 environments

We hope this information will be useful to you. If we can be of further assistance, please let us know.

Sincerely,

Customer Service
Brother International Corporation"

No comment... I told them that Natty final version will be released in less than 10 days (!), this means at this date all users installing Ubuntu 11.04 with a Brother printer and drivers not upated will be unable to make it work anymore ?

I hope they will try to correct it, it does not seem to be a big problem...

[Xavier Guillot (valeryan-24)]

And just now, I receive 2 new different mails at the same time from
Briother Linux support :

- "Dear Brother Customer,

We have reviewed your request and we would be glad to offer you the
assistance you need. Yes we will fully support Ubuntu Natty official
version.

We hope this information will be useful to you. If we can be of further
assistance, please let us know.

Sincerely,

Customer Service
Brother International Corporation"

- Dear Brother Customer,

Thank you for taking the time to write to us. Unfortunately we do not
support beta2 environments.

We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you again.

Sincerely,

Customer Service
Brother International Corporation"

So, 10 days to wait and asking them again, when Natty will be in final
version and no more beta2...

I'm very surprised and disappointed by their answer and lack of concern
regarding their clients, my next printer will surely be HP or Epson with
full Openprinting compatibility.

[Yousry Abdallah (yousry-abdallah)]

Here is a workaround for the problem:

HOWTO:
Patch brdcp7030lpr-2.0.2-1.i386.deb cupswrapperDCP7030-2.0.2-1.i386.deb for NN

Problem:
  dpkg doesn't understand the the libc version 2.13-0ubuntu13 >= 2.3.4-1

Solution:
 remove the libc dependency

Instructions:

Create a directory.
move the .deb files into the directory
open a shell
change dir into the directory

For each package do the following:

1. dpkg -x [package].deb common
2. dpkg --control [package].deb
3. vim DEBIAN/control
4. remove the "Dependency: libc (..." line (move to line than press 'dd' than ESC:x)
5. cp -a DEBIAN/ common/
6. dpkb -b common [package].deb
7. dpkg --force-all -i [package].deb
8. rm -rf common DEBIAN

With some additional tweaking (read the other manuals) you should be able to use your printer. The Scanner should work without these steps.

The state of Linux device drivers is really worsening day by day :(

[Colan Schwartz (colan)]

I used the contact form over at https://secure6.brother.co.jp/LinuxContactUs/contact/Linuxform.html. Maybe if they get enough letters, they'll update the debs faster.

[Roland S. (kaiser-ger)]

Yousry Abdallah, thank you very much! Workaround ist good enough for now.

[Joseph Rios (joeylrios)]

I officially nominate Yousry as "Printer Ninja". The fix worked perfectly. Thank you very much for the clear description. I'm also going to email Brother to keep the pressure on them for driver support.

[Paul McQuesten (mcquesten)]

#21: Just for the record, I also wrote to Brother via the Linux contact form. Said I would not buy nor recommend another Brother product until they support Ubuntu.

#20: Worked for me. Thanks. (But Brother has stolen another hour of my life.)

[Vincent Bernat (vbernat)]

I also wrote to Brother through the provided form. I have also asked for source code for the lpd filters. I have pointed them to this page for additional information.

#8: Did you get some feedback from Brother?

[Xavier Guillot (valeryan-24)]

Personally, I never got any answer from Brother, I bought a HP printer, it works perfectly with HPLIP...

[stoggy (stooggy)]

I couldn't get the ubuntu packaged Brother drivers to work at all.

I got a tool from Brother's website. That installed the printer, worked perfectly.

I downloaded the brscan2 and brscan-keytool from brother's website. At first this didn't work. but a strace showed why. the problem here isn't the drivers its the libraries, no matter what they have to be in /usr/lib/ not /usr/lib64/

this cant be a brother problem they have no control where simple scan and the like look for libraries. I re-ran ldconfig but no help. Had to link.

Here is how i fixed it. It is just listing the files in the deb, finding the libs and linking the /usr/lib64/files to /usr/lib/

for i in `dpkg -c brscan2-0.2.5-1.amd64.deb | awk '/lib/{gsub(/^\./,"",$6); print $6}'`; do
     file=`basename $i`; newdir=`dirname $i | sed -e 's/64//'`;
     sudo ln -sf $i $newdir/$file;
done

[Roland S. (kaiser-ger)]

As part of the big bug review for 16.04 LTS I have tested this on 15.10 and the bug is still there. I think this is a feature request rather than a bug.

[Tommy Trussell (tommy-trussell)]

I just upgraded to Xenial and the situation is the same. However I wanted to note that the script in comment #27 didn't work for me.

Here's a procedure to get the brscan2 package work in Ubuntu Trusty or Xenial:

1) Install the latest brscan2 package (I have brscan2-0.2.5-1.amd64.deb )

2) Copy the drivers from /usr/lib64 to the correct directory:
  $ cd /usr/lib64
  $ sudo cp -pr lib* sane /usr/lib

3) Edit the file /lib/udev/rules.d/40-libsane.rules
ADD the following 2 lines

# Brother DCP-7020
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04f9", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0183", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"

AFTER this line

LABEL="libsane_usb_rules_begin"

4) Tell udev to reload the updated rule file
$ sudo udevadm control --reload-rules

[Tommy Trussell (tommy-trussell)]

I just upgraded to from Xenial 16.04 to Bionic 18.04 and unfortunately the scanner broke again.

Unfortunately the changes affect two places -- udev seems to have made big changes to the scanner section, so I wrote a completely new udev file, and the sane-dll backend doesn't look in the same directory.

I composed my new udev script, then after lots of tinkering and some judicious use of the debug command:

$ SANE_DEBUG_DLL=128 scanimage -L

I discovered the changes to the sane-dll backend. I installed an instance of Trusty 14.04 and used the above command to confirm Trusty looked for brother2 in:
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane
/usr/lib/sane

Bionic ONLY looks for brother2 in:
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane

I manually linked the files the brscan2 .deb installs into /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane/ and /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ into /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane/ and /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ and it seems to work.

I will attempt to write up a procedure (for my benefit if nothing else). But it may take me a little while.

[Colan Schwartz (colan)]

I gave up on Brother after having to fiddle with the config on every OS upgrade, and I recommend that everyone else do the same. I tried opening a support ticket the last time, and they said Linux support is only available in the forums, which tells me they don't actively support it any more (if they ever did).

So as suggested in comment #26, I ran out and bought an HP, and never looked back. I got everything working fairly quickly, and it hasn't broken since.

They actually work with the open-source community so I'll keep supporting them. I'm never buying a Brother again.

[Tommy Trussell (tommy-trussell)]

Here's a procedure that worked for me in Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic.

For this procedure the user is "bob"

1) Install the latest brscan2 package (I have brscan2-0.2.5-1.amd64.deb which I downloaded in 2014)

2) Manually link the drivers brscan2 installed into /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane/ and /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/

  bob:~$ cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane

  bob:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane$ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother2.so

[sudo] password for bob:

  bob:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane$ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother2.so.1
  bob:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane$ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother2.so.1.0.7

  bob:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane$ cd ..

  bob:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu$ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libbrcolm2.so
  bob:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu$ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libbrcolm2.so.1
  bob:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu$ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libbrcolm2.so.1.0.1
  bob:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu$ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libbrscandec2.so
  bob:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu$ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libbrscandec2.so.1
  bob:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu$ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libbrscandec2.so.1.0.0

3) At this point scanimage -L should detect the scanner when run as root.

  $ sudo scanimage -L

3a) If it doesn't work and especially if you're running something other than Ubuntu Bionic, you might make verify SANE is looking in the right directory using the debug flag

  $ SANE_DEBUG_DLL=128 scanimage -L

4) Create a udev file so the scanner is accessible to a scanner group

  $ sudo gedit /lib/udev/rules.d/96-brother-scanner.rules

   -- with the following contents:

# Brother DCP-7020 scanner
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb" \
, ATTRS{idVendor}=="04f9" \
, ATTRS{idProduct}=="0183" \
, ACTION=="add", \
, MODE="0664", \
, GROUP="scanner" \
, ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"

# note this udev instruction ends lines with \
# backslash so the single comma-separated
# udev command is not crammed onto one line.
# END OF FILE

5) Add the user bob to the scanner group (as specified in the udev file above):

  $ sudo adduser bob scanner

6) If you're bob and you weren't already in the group you'll have to log out and back in, or reboot the system. To reload udev:

  $ sudo udevadm control --reload-rules

--> Everything should work after you reboot / login / reload. Yay.

[Tommy Trussell (tommy-trussell)]

UPDATE: On a freshly installed Bionic (minimal install) system I also had to install libusb-0.1-4

This procedure worked for me to get a Brother DCP-7020 scanner working in Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic.

For this procedure the user is "bob"

1) Install the latest brscan2 package (I have brscan2-0.2.5-1.amd64.deb which I downloaded in 2014)

2) Manually link the drivers brscan2 installed into /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane/ and /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/

[Note that in /usr/lib64/sane/ BOTH libsane-brother2.so and libsane.brother2.so.1 both link to libsane-brother2.so.1.0.7 so the others could all link to that one file but this is easier.]

  bob:~$ cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane

  $ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother2.so
  $ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother2.so.1
  $ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/sane/libsane-brother2.so.1.0.7

  bob:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane$ cd ..

(now in directory /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ )

  $ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libbrcolm2.so
  $ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libbrcolm2.so.1
  $ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libbrcolm2.so.1.0.1
  $ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libbrscandec2.so
  $ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libbrscandec2.so.1
  $ sudo ln -sf /usr/lib64/libbrscandec2.so.1.0.0

3) Install this libusb library (if it's missing)

  $ sudo apt install libusb-0.1-4

4) At this point scanimage -L should detect the scanner when run as root.

  $ sudo scanimage -L

4a) If it doesn't work and especially if you're running something other than Ubuntu Bionic, you might make verify SANE is looking in the right directory using the debug flag and see where it's not finding the pieces it needs

  $ SANE_DEBUG_DLL=128 scanimage -L

5) Create a udev file so the scanner is accessible to a scanner group

  $ sudo gedit /lib/udev/rules.d/96-brother-scanner.rules

   -- with the following contents:

# Brother DCP-7020 scanner
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb" \
, ATTRS{idVendor}=="04f9" \
, ATTRS{idProduct}=="0183" \
, ACTION=="add", \
, MODE="0664", \
, GROUP="scanner" \
, ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"

# note this udev instruction ends lines with \
# backslash so the single comma-separated
# udev command is not crammed onto one line.
# END OF FILE

6) Add the user bob to the scanner group (as specified in the udev file above):

  $ sudo adduser bob scanner

7) If you're bob and you weren't already in the group you'll have to log out and back in, or reboot the system. To reload udev:

  $ sudo udevadm control --reload-rules

--> Everything should work after you reboot / login / reload. Yay.