I am new to NixOS but I love it so far. I am planning to switch from OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and have been testing it out in a VM but I am unable to get my printer/scanner to work. I have a Brother MFC-J4340DW and I am able to download the drivers in an rpm or deb package but can’t find anything suitable in NixOS.
I have been crafting my perfect config file with the help of some brilliant people from the community here and I’m all ready to finally switch but need my printer to work.
In principle we have brscan5 package in Nixpkgs that unpacks and installs the .deb package, and a NixOS test nixos/tests/brscan5.nix showing the scanner configuration. Whether this all is worth an effort is another story.
(Also, it is possible that OpenSUSE managing the drivers and Nix managing the library-conflict-prone software on top is a better choice anyway)
I’ve read in a few places that you just need to add brscan5 and enable it in the sane module but everytime I try, I get an error when rebuilding. I’ve got back to a completely fresh configuration.nix as I’m using a VM to get it working properly before installing on bare-metal.
Would you please do me a massive favour and show me what the config should look like?
Here’s the current fresh config - openSUSE Paste
Could you please show the error? I use scanners that write to USB drives, but my guess would be that you need to add nixpkgs.config.allowUnfreePredicate = (pkg: pkg.pname == "brscan5"); to confirm you are OK installing this unfree package.
But I have added the scanner part to the configuration.nix file:
type or paste code here# Edit this configuration file to define what should be installed on
# your system. Help is available in the configuration.nix(5) man page
# and in the NixOS manual (accessible by running ‘nixos-help’).
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{
imports =
[<nixpkgs/nixos/modules/services/hardware/sane_extra_backends/brscan5.nix>
# Include the results of the hardware scan.
./hardware-configuration.nix
];
# Bootloader.
boot.loader.grub.enable = true;
boot.loader.grub.device = "/dev/vda";
boot.loader.grub.useOSProber = true;
networking.hostName = "nixos"; # Define your hostname.
# networking.wireless.enable = true; # Enables wireless support via wpa_supplicant.
# Configure network proxy if necessary
# networking.proxy.default = "http://user:password@proxy:port/";
# networking.proxy.noProxy = "127.0.0.1,localhost,internal.domain";
# Enable networking
networking.networkmanager.enable = true;
# Set your time zone.
time.timeZone = "Europe/London";
# Select internationalisation properties.
i18n.defaultLocale = "en_GB.UTF-8";
i18n.extraLocaleSettings = {
LC_ADDRESS = "en_GB.UTF-8";
LC_IDENTIFICATION = "en_GB.UTF-8";
LC_MEASUREMENT = "en_GB.UTF-8";
LC_MONETARY = "en_GB.UTF-8";
LC_NAME = "en_GB.UTF-8";
LC_NUMERIC = "en_GB.UTF-8";
LC_PAPER = "en_GB.UTF-8";
LC_TELEPHONE = "en_GB.UTF-8";
LC_TIME = "en_GB.UTF-8";
};
# Enable the X11 windowing system.
# You can disable this if you're only using the Wayland session.
services.xserver.enable = true;
# Enable the KDE Plasma Desktop Environment.
services.displayManager.sddm.enable = true;
services.desktopManager.plasma6.enable = true;
# Configure keymap in X11
services.xserver.xkb = {
layout = "gb";
variant = "";
};
# Configure console keymap
console.keyMap = "uk";
# Enable CUPS to print documents.
services.printing.enable = true;
# Enable sound with pipewire.
hardware.pulseaudio.enable = false;
security.rtkit.enable = true;
services.pipewire = {
enable = true;
alsa.enable = true;
alsa.support32Bit = true;
pulse.enable = true;
# If you want to use JACK applications, uncomment this
#jack.enable = true;
# use the example session manager (no others are packaged yet so this is enabled by default,
# no need to redefine it in your config for now)
#media-session.enable = true;
};
# Enable touchpad support (enabled default in most desktopManager).
# services.xserver.libinput.enable = true;
# Define a user account. Don't forget to set a password with ‘passwd’.
users.users.vbox = {
isNormalUser = true;
description = "vbox";
extraGroups = [ "networkmanager" "wheel" ];
packages = with pkgs; [
kdePackages.kate
# thunderbird
];
};
# Enable automatic login for the user.
services.xserver.displayManager.autoLogin.enable = true;
services.xserver.displayManager.autoLogin.user = "vbox";
# Install firefox.
programs.firefox.enable = true;
# Allow unfree packages
nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true;
# List packages installed in system profile. To search, run:
# $ nix search wget
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
# vim # Do not forget to add an editor to edit configuration.nix! The Nano editor is also installed by default.
# wget
xsane
];
# Some programs need SUID wrappers, can be configured further or are
# started in user sessions.
# programs.mtr.enable = true;
# programs.gnupg.agent = {
# enable = true;
# enableSSHSupport = true;
# };
# List services that you want to enable:
# Enable the OpenSSH daemon.
# services.openssh.enable = true;
# Open ports in the firewall.
# networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [ ... ];
# networking.firewall.allowedUDPPorts = [ ... ];
# Or disable the firewall altogether.
# networking.firewall.enable = false;
# This value determines the NixOS release from which the default
# settings for stateful data, like file locations and database versions
# on your system were taken. It‘s perfectly fine and recommended to leave
# this value at the release version of the first install of this system.
# Before changing this value read the documentation for this option
# (e.g. man configuration.nix or on https://nixos.org/nixos/options.html).
system.stateVersion = "24.11"; # Did you read the comment?
}
and added the scanner part to hardware-configuration.nix
type or paste code here# Do not modify this file! It was generated by ‘nixos-generate-config’
# and may be overwritten by future invocations. Please make changes
# to /etc/nixos/configuration.nix instead.
{ config, lib, pkgs, modulesPath, ... }:
{
imports =
[ (modulesPath + "/profiles/qemu-guest.nix")
];
boot.initrd.availableKernelModules = [ "ahci" "xhci_pci" "virtio_pci" "sr_mod" "virtio_blk" ];
boot.initrd.kernelModules = [ ];
boot.kernelModules = [ "kvm-amd" ];
boot.extraModulePackages = [ ];
fileSystems."/" =
{ device = "/dev/disk/by-uuid/1a1ffffe-a0d9-475a-af5d-cb4aca7eac15";
fsType = "ext4";
};
swapDevices = [ ];
# Enables DHCP on each ethernet and wireless interface. In case of scripted networking
# (the default) this is the recommended approach. When using systemd-networkd it's
# still possible to use this option, but it's recommended to use it in conjunction
# with explicit per-interface declarations with `networking.interfaces.<interface>.useDHCP`.
networking.useDHCP = lib.mkDefault true;
# networking.interfaces.enp1s0.useDHCP = lib.mkDefault true;
nixpkgs.hostPlatform = lib.mkDefault "x86_64-linux";
hardware = {
sane = {
enable = true;
brscan5 = {
enable = true;
netDevices = {
home = { model = "MFC-J4340DW"; ip = "192.168.1.21"; };
};
};
};
};
}
and although the rebuild works, the scanner isn’t connected