Fun With Setting Up HylaFAX, Part Eight

Wait, what? Part Eight? What happened to parts two through seven?
I didn't waste time blogging on them when they occurred, but here, I'll sum them up for you:

Part 1: As you may recall, I got stuck at what I thought was VMWare ESXi Server. I may have been incorrect at that.

Part 2: Realized that using Windows XP and VMWare Workstation wasn't helping me, either. No serial ports forwarded.

Part 3: Installed Ubuntu directly on the machine and loaded Hylafax. Still can't talk to the modem? WTF?

Part 4: Realized you can't call up a softmodem when it relies on software which is only available for Windows. Returned softmodems, feeling like a moron; bought a US Robotics and a Hayes external modem for $99.99 and $69.99, respectively. Will return them soon, most likely, if they don't work.

Part 5: Hayes modem can be spoken to, and it talks back to me! Woot! This is going to be GREAT!

Part 6: Can actually talk to fax machines w/ the Hayes modem, but for some odd reason, getting DIS/DTC 3 times, losing the transmission every time. Played around with init strings, but nothing seems to work. Not making sense.

Part 7: Hooked up the US Robotics modem and re-ran faxsetup. Test fax outbound works like a charm!

Part 8: So here we are, at Part 8, which was completed last night. After configuring faxdispatch and dumping it into the /etc directory (not /etc/hylafax, which is what I was doing initially), I actually received my first test fax! The received e-fax looks like this:

recvq/fax000000002.tif (ftp://:4559/recvq/fax000000002.tif):

Sender: 770XXXXXXX

Pages: 1

Quality: Normal

Size: North American Letter

Received: 2008:11:10 18:05:18

Time To Receive: 0:14

Signal Rate: 14400 bit/s

Data Format: 2-D MMR

Error Correct: Yes

CallID1:

CallID2:

Received On: ttyS0

CommID: 000000071 (ftp://:4559/log/c000000071)

That's a bit too much detail for the average user, so I'll modify the /etc/hylafax/templates/en/faxrcvd-success.txt file to remove things like the quality, size, signal rate, data format, etc. All a user really cares about is that a fax was received and, more often than not, that it's in PDF format.

Next step: need to find a way to have Hylafax interface with Exchange for outbound faxes so I don't need to install a print-to-fax client on each machine.

When using the FAX address space, Microsoft formats the address like this: IMCEAFAX-faxnumber@company.com.

Knowing this is all well and good, but even so, you still have to have something which will accept the message, strip off the excess, and pass the appropriate info (with attachment) to HylaFAX. May need to interface with Samba and smbfax to make something work. I'll see what I can come up with/find, and post results later.

In the interim, I'm just happy as hell to have a working, open-source fax server. I can increase or decrease as many lines or users as I have space for without having to pay additional licensing fees, which is important for any small company. For additional lines to come off our T1, I have an SLA on the way to convert a single digital channel to two analogue channels (already have one in place, so I'll have four fax lines total), and a RocketPort card I purchased on eBay. Here's hoping the bloody thing works when it arrives. The HylaFAX documentation points to this card as being compatible, so here's hoping....