Receiving faxes with efax.

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original in en Mark Nielsen

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Purpose

Efax and fax are really the same thing. 'fax' is just a script calling efax.

Config Files

Copy /usr/bin/fax to /usr/bin/fax_custom, and I changed the following lines:

FAXDIR=/var/spool/fax/incoming
NAME="AudioBoomerang.com Computer Fax Server"
FROM="+1 111 222 3333"
ANSFNAME="fax_%Y%m%d_%H%M%S"

In /etc/inittab, I changed:

S0:2345:respawn:/bin/sh /usr/bin/fax_custom answer

Efax and fax -- single receive

efax -d /dev/ttyS0 -l "268 1162"  -c 1,5 -r reply

fax answer

If you don't want to have fax spawn in the background waiting for the next fax connection, then don't add changes to /etc/inittab I mentioned in the "Config Files" section.

Efax and fax -- multiple with inttab

If you issue the command:

ps auxw | grep efax

The nice thing is, if you kill the process id "1698", it will respawn and I believe reread the /usr/bin/fax_custom file. Thus, if you make changes to that file, just kill the process running efax before you try to fax to it when you want to test your configuration.

What do you do after you receive faxes?

If you want to print it out, use efix like,

efix -ops fax_20020606_014847.001 | lpr

I would recommend that you print the file and then store it in a backup directory.

Sending faxes

1. ln /usr/bin/fax /usr/bin/faxlpr
   

2. In /etc/printcap.local

      fax:lp=/dev/null:sd=/var/spool/fax:if=/usr/bin/faxlpr_perl:
   

3.     mkdir /var/spool/lpd/fax
       touch /var/spool/lpd/fax/lock
   

4. /etc/rc.d/init.d/lpd restart
   

Now my changes are as follows:

1. In /usr/bin/faxlpr, I changed

   l=`$FAX send "$num" fax$$`
   to 
   
   `gs -q -sDEVICE=tiffg3 -dNOPAUSE -sOutputFile=fax_out fax$$ </dev/null`
   l=`efax -t $num fax_out`
   `rm fax_out`
   

   and also changed these three lines in the faxlpr section:

     num=` echo "$cfile" | sed -e /^[^J]/d -e s/..//`
     host=`echo "$cfile" | sed -e /^[^H]/d -e s/..//`
     user=`echo "$cfile" | sed -e /^[^P]/d -e s/..//`
   

2. I saved a perl script at /usr/bin/faxlpr_perl and did chmod 755 /usr/bin/faxlpr_perl:

   #!/usr/bin/perl
   
   my $String = "";
   foreach my $Arg (@ARGV)
     {
     if ($Arg =~ /\-j/)
       {
       my $Copy = $Arg;
       $Copy =~ s/\-j//;
       open(FILE,">lock"); print FILE "hfA$Copy"; close FILE;
       }
     }
   my $Command = "/usr/bin/faxlpr";
   system ($Command, @ARGV);
   print 1;
   

3. This part I really hate, but I had to "chmod 666 /dev/ttyS1" so that the lpr user which controls print jobs can use the modem.

The perl script make it so faxlpr can find the process number and changing the "fax" command to "efax" was required because it attempted to create lock files which I didn't want it to create.

I believe my method of sending faxes also breaks the lock files, so it might screw up if you try to send a fax while it is receiving one.

After all this pain and suffering, your program that prints needs to be able to specify the "-J" option so that it can do a command like 'lpr -P fax -J "555 1212" file.ps'. Otherwise, print to a file and then print that file out with a line command.

Also, you could just use the efax command to send out a fax and not do it through the print service. You have to use gs to convert it before you send it out, which is still a pain.

Conclusions.

• Send out faxes with samba with mgetty. I would replace /usr/bin/fax_custom with mgetty in inittab so that I can receive and send faxes without all the cludges. Receiving faxes and manually sending them with efax was okay, just sending them through the print service ws a pain.
• See if I can use mgetty not only for faxes, but voice and login sessions.

Efax is only a temporary solution before I figure out how to get mgetty to work (which I tried to but failed). The only reason why I didn't use hylafax was because it clashed with mgetty when I tried to install the rpm and then I got interested in mgetty, and then diverted with efax. I am going to try and use mgetty in the future since I would like voice and login sessions as well with the same modem. It seems like it might be possible to use voice, login, and fax all on the same modem -- but it seems like there might be some problems with some modems to properly detect fax vs voice vs login. I really don't like sending out faxes with efax and the print service. I hope mgetty will solve some issues I had.

References

1. The Easy Fax Server!
2. A Linux Fax Server for a Windows Network
3. Linux Fax for Dummies
4. Hylafax

Article Version 1.2 : Date Last Changed Thu Jun 13 04:17:31 2002