HylaFax

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HylaFAX on the SME Server

Maintainer

http://www.dungog.net

Description

HylaFAX is an enterprise-class system for sending and receiving facsimiles as well as for sending alpha-numeric pages.

The software is designed around a client-server architecture. Fax modems may reside on a single machine on a network and clients can submit an outbound job from any other machine on the network.

Documentation

HylaFAX Handbook

Installation

Install HylaFAX

Download the latest RPM from http://www.hylafax.org/content/Red_Hat_Packages

Install with the following command and it will install all of the required packages for you.

yum localinstall hylafax*


Configure modem

Make sure that your modem is plugged into the serial port and turned on.

/usr/sbin/faxsetup 

Answer the questions as required. Accept the defaults on most everything except the county & area code and telephone number of the fax line.

Take note of your modems tty (The first serial port is ttyS0 and the second is ttyS1)

Note. The inittab template assumes you are using ttyS0. see hacks below for how to change to ttyS1

Internal Modems most likely will not work.

Install smeserver-hylafax

smeserver-hylafax configures SME Server to suit HylaFAX

rpm available here, please add comments, success or failure, new fragments/features http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2457

yum localinstall smeserver-hylafax* 
signal-event post-upgrade; signal-event reboot

a new user, 'faxmaster' is created optionally forward the mail for faxmaster to suit, to a user or group

a domain 'fax' and a user 'faxsender' is created to enable the email to fax gateway as well as other support scripts and changes

Usage

Receiving faxes by e-mail

All incoming faxes go to the faxmaster's e-mail box, or forwarded as you have configured

Sending faxes by e-mail

One of the main uses for HylaFAX is as an e-mail to fax gateway. This gateway unifies a users communications, so that faxing is as simple as using an e-mail client. The user can e-mail john@08812345678.fax and know that the message typed, and any attachment will be faxed via HylaFAX.

To setup an e-mail to fax gateway using HylaFAX, a few simple scripts are needed to convert attachments into postscript so that HylaFAX can then use them. By default you can send e-mails with pdf attachments, postscript attachments or tiff attachments.

Testing

Send an e-mail from your favorite mailing software to the SME-Server. This means that the smtp server in your e-mail software must be set to the SME-Server. Because the e-mail address we are going to be using will only be known by our server. Then we will send an e-mail with the following recepeint: Name@FaxNumber.fax


e.g: John_Smith@5555551212.fax

  • The name can be any name.
  • The fax number is going to be used for faxing the document.
  • Mail can only be send as a plain text e-mail.
  • Mail can have a postscript, pdf or tiff attachment, this attachment will also be faxed.
  • Don't expect your html formatted e-mails to be faxed! Sorry!


HylaFAX clients

Download Client Software from:


Login on your SME Server with ssh and make new faxusers:

faxadduser -p password username
faxadduser -p password2 username2

Install the HylaFAX Client, configure with these values:

Server IP: Your SME Server IP
Port: 4559
Username: above username
Passord: above password

Other Modifications

ports other than ttyS0, eg

config setprop hylafax port ttyS1
/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/inittab
/sbin/init q

Change permissions and other settings in the config.MODEM file

nano -w /etc/hylafax/etc/config.ttyS0

# make attachments readable
RecvFileMode:           0666
LogFileMode:            0666
DeviceMode:             0666
# for shared lines
RingsBeforeAnswer:      10
# change to suit
SpeakerVolume:          on
LocalIdentifier:        "Pagen Vegan Pty Ltd"


Bugs

Please raise bugs under the SME-Contribs section in bugzilla and select the smeserver-hylafax component or use this link .