Installing driver for brother scanner ds-640

Questions
1

I’ve downloaded the driver and it is sitting in downloads. I have the instructions from brother to install Linux .deb 64 bit for Ubuntu. Here they are:

  1. Download the driver.

  2. Login as a superuser (or use “sudo” option if required) .

  3. Install the driver.

  4. Turn on your MFC/DCP and connect the USB cable.

  5. Open the terminal and go to the directory where the driver is.

  6. Install the scanner driver.
    4.Command (for dpkg) : dpkg -i --force-all (scanner-drivername)*

  7. Check if the driver is installed.
    5.Command (for dpkg) : dpkg -l | grep Brother*

In trying to work in terminal, this is what I’m getting:
kim@kim-Inspiron-5570:~$ cd Downloads
kim@kim-Inspiron-5570:~/Downloads$ dpkg -i --force-all
dpkg: error: required read/write access to the dpkg database directory /var/lib/dpkg
kim@kim-Inspiron-5570:~/Downloads$ dpkg -i --force-all br-5
dpkg: error: required read/write access to the dpkg database directory /var/lib/dpkg
kim@kim-Inspiron-5570:~/Downloads$ dpkg -l | grep Brother
ii brscan5 1.2.9-0 amd64 Brother Scanner Driver brscan5
ii printer-driver-brlaser 6-1build1 amd64 printer driver for (some) Brother laser printers
ii printer-driver-ptouch 1.4.2-3 amd64 printer driver Brother P-touch label printers
kim@kim-Inspiron-5570:~/Downloads$ update all

kim@kim-Inspiron-5570:~$ cd Downloads
kim@kim-Inspiron-5570:~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg -i --force-all brscan5-1.2.9-0
[sudo] password for kim:
dpkg: error: cannot access archive ‘brscan5-1.2.9-0’: No such file or directory
kim@kim-Inspiron-5570:~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg -i --force-all brscan5-1.2.9-0
dpkg: error: cannot access archive ‘brscan5-1.2.9-0’: No such file or directory
kim@kim-Inspiron-5570:~/Downloads$ dpkg -i --force-all brscan5-1.2.9-0.amd64.deb
dpkg: error: required read/write access to the dpkg database directory /var/lib/dpkg
kim@kim-Inspiron-5570:~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg -i --force-all brscan5-1.2.9-0.amd
dpkg: error: cannot access archive ‘brscan5-1.2.9-0.amd’: No such file or directory
kim@kim-Inspiron-5570:~/Downloads$

I’ve tried every iteration I can think of to install the file. I cannot open the .deb file in terminal. Everything is extracted. The GDebi Package Installer tells me the scanner is already installed, but I can’t find it.

Any ideas? Thanks.

2

you should be appending sudo i.e.
sudo dpkg -i --force-all scanner-driver-file-name-here.deb…

Alternatively you can use gui gdebi package manager as well and simply navigate to to your Downloads folder, select it, click install and it will prompt you for superuser(sudo/root) credentials(password) and inform you of any additional download of dependencies to support it.

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3

Thanks for the help! It’s fascinating what happened. Gui gdebi pkg mgr would do nothing except download it. However, you indicated something (one option) I hadn’t tried previously in naming the scanner file. Once I used that, all went smoothly. Thanks for your help and your time!

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