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Ask Slashdot: Linux Fax Servers w/ WinTel Clients?
JimMcc asks:
"We are planning a new network installation with a Linux server running Samba and WinTel clients. One of the issues yet to be resolved is providing the users the ability to fax directly. We would like to offer a solution which provides shared fax modem(s) accessed through the network instead of a fax modem / analog line per user. The customer is a non-profit and is cost sensitive. Has anybody heard of a possible solution? Thank you for any pointers/ideas you may have. "
Hylafax has served up very well. The win32 client is a bit quirky, but the server is more than robust.
There is a client server little program out called
'respond'. It an smb printing script that talk's to a client on each WinTel PC. When the user submits a print job to the fax printer, a dialog pops up on the originators desktop asking for the number to fax to. Works well, unfortunately, I do not have the URL. I believe it is mentioned in the mgetty docs.
The windoze client for hylafax works pretty well. Fax from any windoze program by printing to a postscript printer that's routed to hylafax.
I think the client is WHFC.
We've tried Hylafax, but is sucks dogshit.
I tried to configure it. But come'on!
A simple fax server != Hylafax. The author
of that program must have been smoking somethin
bad, cause its to complex to begin with.
Then it has a special webpage about fax-modems
to avoid. Duhh thats weird. A good faxserver should be able to deal with any fax-modem.
While simple progams like minicom was able to chat
to my faxmodem, hylafax dies badly.
THAT SUCKS!
Is there anything like TalkWorks on Linux that works with Voice modems as well as faxing?
Quick to setup, quick to go down.
Difficult to setup, difficult to go down.
(At least, that's what the rest of my computer experience has been like...)
VSI*FAX is actually quite good software with two major downfalls. Glibc only binaries and it is quite expensive (~$2500US for the server and 25 user clients).
However, the server setup under Linux is VERY good and simple. I had it running in under 15 minutes.
The Windows client is decent but it is very slow. It seems to be programmed around Win 3.1 which would explain why it's so slow under 9x.
For commercial software, I would rate this as 7/10.
no, i expect fax server software to be as easy
/dev/cua1, start it', run client on windows, bingo'
as a printer.
But really the only bitch is the client side of things, ie will it allow me to print 50 doc, or will it print via o2k from word or will it work
in win2000 or is there a mac client? is there? is there a mac client?
hmmm
When ihave free 2hrs ill set one up. But its no 10min job of, 'install, tellit to use
hmm
There is a nice little gem called NPCOMM
m -e.html
:(
http://www.yk.rim.or.jp/~kurohara/English/npcom
that share the modem ( in fact serial port) on a Linux/windoze machine, the client for windoze is shareware but not much and the server for Linux is free, and you can use a gadzillion and one freeware fax programs that come with windoze.
NOT AC but Mircea C, but my account never arrived
I've read that document as well .. and i must say, it seems to me to be the most appealing .. I like the idea of not having client software, but i haven't tried it yet..
:(
You'd think, working for a telco, i'd have no problems getting a line installd
-KRAZ
2 weeks? *snarf*,*giggle*. Iff you're only hiring him for that job, then that's consultancy rates, which means you'll probably get (unless he's a really good friend), 3-4 *days* out of that. Unless of course, he's doing it out of the goodness of his heart, *AND* he's already got a day job.
Another cool thing would be to take some
opensource postscript printer driver for
windoze and hack its source to dump the postscript
to a file and send it to the fax-server automatically. That way, you would create
completely transparent sollution for
windows users.
WHFC + Hylafax seems not to work over masquerading (win clients, linux router, linux server). Is there a kernel module or can i make it use tcp only? This would be very nice, because otherwise I'd need to run 2 servers :P
I have been using HylaFax for 4 years, first on a Sun 4.1.4 box, then linux. Reliable as hell, I use it to fax copies of web inquiries to my clients. Tricky part was installing it on redhat linux, since some sort of fax program comes with the standard install. I had to find and remove the conflicts.
I believe Spartacom, www.spartacom.com, makes a fax serfvewr to do just this for NT and *nix. I use it with NT and a Digiboard
I haven't actually tried any Linux solutions (I'll be checking out some of the solutions mentioned above however), but I do have one client using the WinFax Pro server and it's been generally ok. It's running on a 486/33 under win95; if I don't reboot it every couple of weeks it sometimes hangs (imagine!) but otherwise it's pretty solid. The server software was about $130 (I had to get it direct from Symantec). The pain for a nonprofit is you have to buy the WinFax clients too, but if you can stand that & the twice monthly reboots it'll do the job.
Just a heads up on HylaFax. We receive over 1,000 faxes an hour with about 30 multi-tech fax modems. Hylafax works without a hitch. The uptime on our Hylfax Server right now is 148 days. (It would be longer, but our network engineer bumped to power switch.)
We've found Hylafax to be the most reliable fax software we've ever used, as long as we use Multitech modems. If you want easiness of setting up, just use the RPMS. They're pretty painless.
They may be slow as a dog, but they are super simple. Just hang them on a network and they are another node, they usually provide two seprate lines.
If his client is really cost sensitive and Small (5-15) people buying one of these used could really be the trick instead of having to install more services on the shamba server or add a second serer plus modems.
This souns like the typical attitude from someone who is either to lazy or to darn stupid to read some documentation, either grow up or buy yourself into micros~1 (hey it will only cost you your soul, seems like a bargain to me :)
The man was talking about a good programmer, not an arrogant basterd like yourself who probably can't code himself out of a brown paper bag. The only reason why you are making lots of money is because your boss is probably as ignorant and incompetent as yourself.
And the same probably applies for you too... Boy we really miss your fantastic programming skills here back in Holland, and how is your new job at micros~1?
:)))
Hey I might not earn tons of money but at least I get to work on neat stuff ALL the time
I'm currently working on setting up HylaFax. Getting the server up wasn't too bad, but for some reason, some Win95 clients, using WHFC, can't connect to the server, while others can. Haven't figured out why. Anyone run into this? LinuxWorld had a good article about this a couple months back that I found to be helpful.
Petre Scheie
pmscheie@ra.rockwell.com
First we tried redhat rpm's, those failed
badly because of bad locking. Ahh well that
can happen.
Yep we've got the source,
hylafax-v4.0pl2-tar.gz lets build it.
Mwaahhh, holy shit what is this : ?
/usr/bin/g++ -I.././zlib -D__ANSI_CPP__ -I. -I.. -I.././util -I.././util -I/usr/local/include -I.././regex -g -O -c ModemExt.c++
/usr/bin/g++ -I.././zlib -D__ANSI_CPP__ -I. -I.. -I.././util -I.././util -I/usr/local/include -I.././regex -g -O -c SendFaxJob.c++
SendFaxJob.c++: In method `unsigned char SendFaxJob::createJob(class SendFaxClient &, class fxStr &)':
SendFaxJob.c++:499: no matching function for call to `SendFaxClient::sendZData (int &, unsigned char (FaxClient::)(fxStr &, fxStr &), fxStr &, fxStr &)'
FaxClient.h:273: candidates are: FaxClient::sendZData(int, unsigned char (FaxClient::*)(fxStr &, fxStr &), fxStr &, fxStr &)
make[3]: *** [SendFaxJob.o] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/hylafax-v4.0pl2/util'
make[2]: *** [default] Error 2
Why for gods sake name does a bloody freaking
faxserver package need stupid C++ code!!
Nope there's nothing wrong with my box, its
a standard redhat 5.2 (full install).
Arrghhh...
I've spend now 3 full days to get the shite going,
its definitely exit for me with this package.
.
The ideal solution is to have no client components on the Windows boxes. Samba can be configured to receive postscript output from the windows machines and reroute it to your fax software, but you still need to supply information on the fax. So how about using a CGI script on the web to collect information from your users. Then, when a fax comes in from a certain IP address, your spooler (what samba send the PS file to) gets info provided by the web script (optionally waits until the user provides it), generates a cover page, and sends the lot to your Fax software for delivery along with the phone number.
Sort of along hte lines of the guy using an X client to prompt for info, but seems to be easier to implement on the client side.
-Shimon Rura, usually phuse but I don't have my password around today. phuse@one.net
If I remember it correctly, it is possible to install MS Fax on a Win95 machine, let's say \\myfaxserver, and share it as a share, with name defaulted to \\myfaxserver\fax, then any workstation on the network, let's say "foo1", can install its own MS Fax while setting the \\myfaxserver\fax as the fax machine.
My question is: is there some way to emulate \\myfaxserver\fax at the server side using Linux without twisting the clients? The reason for insisting this is that the client base may be too large to change the clients and to maintain the compatability with MAPI messaging apps of the clients.
We've been working on exactly this at our installation. Our solution uses the Efax software package (which is quite awesome). Its a set of perl scripts, there is a master fax spool (a BSD style printer) that documents are printed to, it then deals out jobs to the individual fax modems. The fax modems attempt to send the file, if they fail, the job is spooled again for retry up to a maximum number of retries. E-mail about the results of sends can be easily sent.
In order to print from the Windows side, there are two options, the 'lpr' command supplied with NT Workstation, or a samba method. The samba method uses a postscript printer driver, on the server side, the postscript file is parsed for text and the Fax Number pulled out based on a tag. This is quite close to foolproof (GhostScript is used to parse out the text), then the file is submitted to the master fax spooler. It should be noted this is not done the same way as in the 'sendfax' package.
This solution is amazingly convenient since no special software is required on the Windows side, and most other platforms have implementations of LPR anyways.
If you are interested in more details of this solution, please e-mail me.
delius@progNOsoc.uts.eNOdu.au
(Remove all instances of NO to get valid address)
We use cheezo fax for win95 (can't remember the exact name, I think it's Quicklink) and I'd love to go to something a bit more reliable.
:(
Last weekend, the power went out, and windoze didn't reboot - it stopped where it asks you if it's OK to run scandisk... oh GEEZ!
Anyway, the feature we'd most like to keep is the log of faxes received, along with an icon to indicate if they've been viewed yet.
Does Hylfax/sendfax do these things, with the WFHT client software? Can you look at a fax soft copy, without printing it first?
It looks like this is about to disappear from the front page, so you if you could also e-mail me at bens@saber.net I'd greatly appreciate it! =)
-Benjamin Smith
PS: I forgot my login password, and for some reason I'm not getting the e-mail of the password being sent to me...
Maybe it's *written* in C++?
Nick
If you're using Wintel clients, check out the Outlook Fax Integration with VSI-FAX. Slick! And if you think VSI-FAX is expensive, check out their commercial competition. VSI-FAX is a steal by comparison.
You may want to have a look atu SEFax_WIN32/
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/SuSE-Linux/suse_update/S
mgetty+sendfax is your answer. We use it exclusively and with good
results. I even fax from my workstation at home which is on a dialup
connection with a Linux box as the router. It also allows client login
with secure shell. Check it out
http://www.leo.org/~doering/mgetty/
You can do that w/ sendfax, its pretty easy, and works. Look in the sendfax docs (dont remember which file in /usr/doc/sendfax it is) but there is a pointer to a web page that tells you how to use this program called respond? (grep respond /usr/doc/sendfax/) that allows you to print to a special printer in windows that is actually a fax, then respond opens and asks for the phone number etc. Works nicely, and its all free software I believe --nrl
Depending on the amount of faxing that goes on, faxaway might not be cost-effective. My previous employer used Faxaway and we found it to have a lot of hidden costs, such as fees if a certain percentage of faxes were not delivered. We ended up settling on an in-house NT based system though, so I'm not much use for alternatives.
Depending on how much you're faxing, and what your LD rate is, faxaway can end up being quite a bit more expensive than a fax server. (we ended up saving about 4 cents a fax by not using Faxaway)
btw: the faxaway webpage currently shows $.11/minute as the going rate.
You could use VSI*Fax. They now have a Linux server. http://www.vsi.com The Windows client has a print driver that sends the data directly to the linux server. I've used this software on a AIX server and it worked pretty slick. A bit of a problem to setup, but once it's going it's a snap.
- U
This is just to add to all the stuff already mentioned: NT has per-seat licencing. That means if you have 100 people using NT server you need to buy 100 client licenses. (last I checked they were somewhere around $50 each). You also need to buy Zetafax client licenses. Add to that the base price of NT and Zetafax, and you get a pretty large sum.
I'm sure you had some kind of special deal so that the $100 you mentioned covers all the costs, didn't you? Or did you accidentally misplace the decimal point? Obviously you are not pirating, are you?
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Seems like a fake reason to me since you could put the internal code in a seperate DLL or whatever. The only source released is for language DLL creation. I suspect the author is working towards a non-free (as in free beer) version, if you ask me.
On the other hand, nothing stops you from using Respond (which comes with source code) because it also supports Hylafax, according to the docs.
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Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
I am really glad to see good and affordable commercial fax solutions for Unix/Linux! Open source fax software can be a little bit more difficult to install and use than your average open source software. I guess this is because of the analog component :-).
However, there is also a solution in between. What if you can get support for Hylafax/sendfax/efax etc. from an individual or a company? Then you have the free software, no licencing problems and you don't need to spend that much time (the individual/company does that) in case your time is worth something.
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Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
I was not precise enough: the Postscript could actually be converted to facsimile (G3 TIFF) on the server but Hylafax's 3 second timeout kicked in immediately so it thought the conversion had failed. It turned out that Hylafax really gets confused timingwise when it had been stopped and started from an "at" job, as we did to have it reread its configuration files. Somehow this "at" job screws up Hylafax alarms/signals/timers.
I'm not a hard-core Unix systems programmer, but again, I'm glad I had the Hylafax source which helped me find the trouble spot! Your point about the MS dialect of Postscript is right though for another thing I mentioned. Cover pages are difficult to create. End-users tend to create their cover pages in Word. The MS Postscript is very difficult to adapt for Hylafax cover pages because you don't know where to put the Hylafax Postscript macro's (From:, To:, Regarding:, etc.).
We ended up export the Word document to HTML and converting it to Postscript under Linux!
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Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
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Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
That sounds great, since time is expensive. However, you fail to mention 34 of the 35 possible fax server solutions. Not only that, but the cost of Zetafax (as found at http://www.tmcnet.com/articles/ctimag/0498/review0 03.htm) is $525 for a 5 user version or $2,250 for 50 users.
I think that this means Hylafax looks much better, especially considering that you will get all your upgrades for free (both the application and the OS). If it takes a few hours to understand and install, hey, at least you'll be able to maintain the software better too.
Do you work for Zetafax? Micro$oft? You certainly aren't able to provide much helpful advice.
How does your NT box seem for stability anyway? Perhaps that might be important too?
Just curious... how can you print to PostScript from Win9x? Is there a generic PostScript driver? I looked, but didn't see anything like that.
Steve
I just set up a similiar system at work with one old AMD k5 and three microso~ win95 boxes. The AMD linux box is a samba server, gateway, and fax server. It runs hylafax which isn't too hard to install. The sucky machines which crash alot run WHFC. This works like a charm, you can print from WordPerfect and it brings up a little window asking you what the number is. You hit send, and it emails you if the fax went through (or if it didn't). It really put my boss over the edge with enthusiasm for Linux. Email me if you have specific questions on how to get this to work.
I have installed Hylafax and have no problems with it, but I have never used the Windows client(s), not having any Windows machines around to try it on. All I know is that I have read of it, probably in the hylafax documentation. So I'm not really helping much, am I? :-(
--
Infuriate left and right
I sat down last week and had it up and running within 20 minutes, including relocating the box after testing. Run faxsetup, add your clients to /var/spool/fax/etc/hosts and make sure faxgetty is running, 'faxgetty ttySwhatever' even if you're only doing outbound faxes, they just seem to want to sit in the queue otherwise.
Yeah the whfc driver for the win clients is kinda funky, but it does works.
Good luck.....
Some years ago I used such combination on a LAN to send and receive faxes. It was still time of the first Slackware, RedHat had just come in and everyone flamed them.
;) After a few monthes the company went bankrupt :)
The scheme was quite simple but the realization gave some trouble. However this thing worked for nearly two years without having serious problems.
We had a telephone line only dedicated to faxes. mgetty was answering for the line 24 hours a day. Every fax that came in was converted and dispatched to a network printer. Meanwhile stations working on Windows sent faxes through a fake network printer in postscript. On Linux box a few scripts on perl converted the the stuff and sended it to mgetty.
There were some problems with realization of this scheme. First some features exist on fax format that "spoiled" its conversion on the printer. So there was some need to rewrite the stuff. Besides there was the problem for mgetty to know where to send the fax. We made it through a "hack" on the printer. In reality on the spool directory entered the postscript file and a small file with the telephone number.
Anyway after three monthes of relatively hard work (well then Linux was a headache to costumize) we managed to have an automatical system that solved a lot of problems. One remarkable thing was that "lost faxes by the staff" were almost gone.
As I said the thing worked for two years. It didn't work longer because I quit and the replacement loved other OSes
I actually spent about a week working on a similar project, (creating a method for a workgroup to send faxes via a web page...) WHFC was REALLY shaky for me, it worked spotty on NT.
.doc/.xls -> .ps converter, and it was working fair/poor depending on the input file type. RTF worked great, Word 97 with lotsa pictures ended up looking significantly different from the original, so I gave up. Applixware may be up to the task now, if anyone knows any other methods I would LOVE to hear about them.
The basic interface was a web page with an upload of a postscript file from the client machine (with the necessary attributes to send to the sendfax command line), then sendfax is invoked from a perl script that calls sendfax with proper arguments.
I used the Apple Laserwriter PS printer drivers installed as file printers. DON'T TRY AND USE THE HP DRIVERS. It appears that they encapsulate the postscript in PCL, and that just won't work. (Hylafax chokes on this.)
Step 1, Get Hylafax, install it, become good friends. (I have been told that there are numerous security holes in Hylafax; please take that into consideration.)
Step 2, Write the cgi's, they are not long or complicated, I'll be happy to send you the tarfiles of what I did, however I am not responsible if you get burned using them. Email me if you are interested.
Step 3, test test test, figure out the real needs of your clients and make sure your solution is workable for them.
The more interesting problem to solve would be how to fax office documents by uploading thru some (web/other) interface. I was working with the applixware office suite to create a
Another neat idea would be to have an interface to the incoming faxes and have some administrative person be able to email them to the correct party. Kinda like efax for the small office situation. This would be really easy to do, just that I got busy with other stuff and couldn't get to this.
peril@nospam.u_de_l.edu
get rid of the nospam and the underscores for email.
The solution I'm using is: mgetty+sendfax, samba and X-Deep/32 (a X Server for Win32). I install a simple PS printer on Windows (Apple LaserWriter) and point it to a Samba queue that is configured to pop-up a Gtk+ application on the sender of the job, asking for fax information. A cron job that calls faxrunq do the rest.
You can find XDeep32 on http://www.pexus.com
-- (
you could also take a look at tcp-int for cheap long distance faxing. you ship your fax via e-mail to a fax machine that can deliver your fax with a local call. Otherwise, I've heard hylafax is a real good solution as well.
-earl
I've heard some good things about halyfax and mgetty+sendfax and respond, but the one thing that neither of them seems to support is DID routing. Where I work, I'd love to use a linux fax server, but we had to go with something else (in our case Optus FacSys, which generally works, but occasionaly really sucks) because we wanted to do DID fax routing with 100+ users. There was one package that I saw that would not only do DID routing, but would OCR faxes, look for a To: field and route based on the name in that field. Does anyone know if there is a linux product that deals with DID's, or if any work is being done on programming drivers for DID boards (the only ones I know about are Brooktrout and Dialogic Gammalink boards)?
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
Besides saying me too I also have an URL for respond (the page also has some docs):
http://kulichki-lat
Let me just say that we are using it here and it really works well. Users can just print to a special printer and after one second (or so) respond comes up and asks for the phone number and some other information. Very easy to set up too.
And it it is very cost effective
Ciao Jens.
I am German but my email isn't...
With all of the readers weighing in with Hylafax, I thought I'd just add that mgetty+sendfax and respond works great.
(Linux would work just as well, by the way) It was a bit hard to set up, but with the new Samba features I could even get it recognized and browsed under the domain. I orignally tried WHFC but it does not work well with machines that have multiple ethernet ports. (AARGH!) I also set up the local CD-R drive on the box, for added value. :)
We are running a hylafax server with 30 (multitech) modems, and hundreds of faxes/day. We use the WHFC client.
It has worked great for us, and replaced 3 unreliable windows-based fax servers.
I also patched tiff2ps to fix the scaling problems with long/short pages. My patch is available at hylafax.org.
As easy as printer? Hmmm....
let me put it this way:
If you want simple, straightforward, unflexible fax software, do NOT choose hylafax.
If you want flexible, reliable fax server software that can handle very high loads and very complex configurations, then hylafax will probably be a good choice.
It sounds to me like hylafax is *definitely* not for you.
Well, you got one thing right - hylafax isn't simple. It is, however, very powerful and extremely reliable. We've been running it on a linux box with 5 modems for a couple of years with absolutely no problems. It is rock solid. We send over 200 faxes each day and receive over 100 every day. It is the core of the operation here (a relatively prestigious scientific journal). Most of the communications in and out of the office are via fax (a lot of signed forms and letters - they never let me finish the web-based stuff).
Because hylafax is so flexible and easy to use, we were able to very easily add logging of incoming and outgoing faxes in MySQL and make all of that accessible via a set of web pages. Users can view the status of their faxes, find out why there were errors, view incoming and ougoing faxes, etc.
If you have a decent fax modem and are willing to configure it and the software correctly, you will love it. If you are an ignorant fool and expect plug-and-pray functionality, give up now and go buy something from microsoft.
Why is there a list of crappy fax modems? ummm...let's see...I guess that would be because they suck. You should be glad that there's a resource that isn't afraid to tell the truth about crappy hardware.
You expect fax server software to be as simple as a terminal program? You are an idiot.
$1000 != a good programmer for two weeks.
do the math 52 weeks a year $500 a week comes to $26,000 a year before taxes. And you are not talking about any fringe benifits. you might get a brilliant student programmer that thinks this is a majore cool project and get him for that. BTW I am pro LINUX but the math is wrong.
However any good programmer out there that thinks $26000 is good pay let me know I can find you something to do.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Just a note: licensing schemes that lock software
to a particular host are a royal nuisance.
I was going to download your software and try it out, but have decided not to as I refuse to be forced to identify my hosts in order to evaluate
software.
NT server costs more than $1000 (dfl 2579,--). That's not what I call cost-sensitive. You could hire a real GOOD programmer for 2 weeks with $1000 that could write you a custom fax-server for Linux/BSD and windows-drivers (GPLed offcourse). I'd not use NT just because it's way too expensive.
0x or or snor perron?!
I'm in a similar situation, I think. I was going to experiment with HylaFax. Would a hylafax/samba combination be enough?
...These aren't the droids you're looking for....Move along....
Respond is a Great Thing (TM) and works very fine with mgetty+sendfax and samba.
"Is it friday yet?"
I've configured HylaFax on an old 486 box running RH Linux 5.0. There were some configuration issues with the Fax/Modem (US Robotics Sportster 56k x2 upgraded to v.90), but those were easily resolved. (It was a flow-control issue).
I can now effortlessly support faxing from both Win* clients (using WHFC) on the network and the Mac clients. To support the Mac clients currently you need to enable the older Hylafax protocol which is seriously insecure. If you do that, be sure that the box is well inside your network's borders. The author of the Macintosh Hylafax client said that a newer version is coming that supports the new HylaFax 4 protocol, but there is no time frame.
All links for both HylaFax and the clients can be found from HylaFax's homepage (http://www.hylafax.org/).
Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product. -- Ferenc Mantfeld
Samba comes with a printing FAQ that documents a neat way to have it detect the number the FAX should go to without any software on the client side. Basically you prefix the number with something (say, "FAX #:") on the cover sheet (where you want to put the recipient's fax number anyway), and make sure you format the leading string and the fax number all the same. Then generate postscript and hand off to samba. Since postscript uses 7-bit ASCII, it looks through the file to find the leading string, then determines the number to fax it to. Pretty cool.
As I understand it, the best Win32 client for Hylafax is not free software. Something to think about if you are sensitive to that kind of thing. Not that I have a better idea..
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
A pretty generic solution I've used with success in the past is to use the COMT serial port-to-telnet redirector (which has grown up to be "Dialout/IP", from Tactical Software) with a homegrown telnet-to-modem server on the server side (there's apparently an open-source server side solution called sredird available now that would handle the server side of this).
This gives the WinTel client a virtual modem to play with. Then you can use any fax/communications software with it (WinFax Pro worked fine).
I know that setting up a rebust Linux fax server is a total bitch and a half. We tryed hylafax but the time it spent on setting it up was not worth the effort. We paid less than 100.00 for ZetaFax server software for NT and clients for win9x boxes and it all worked right out of the box. There are about 35 different Fax server software packages for NT that does not cost that much. but will save you money in the time spent to set everything up. But that is if your time is worth something.
I find this strangely ironic - this is what I spent the morning wrestling with at work - finding and installing a suitable Linux-based network faxing system! (or at least what morning was left after I finally crawled out of bed on a Sunday to go into work...)
Have to admit, there seems to be a lot of support here for Hylafax, and while I looked at it briefly, I admit I haven't really played with it much. The solution I found that fit our needs (I work for a small firm with about 30 WinNT workstations and, of course, my Linux box running the show...) came from a Respond, which someone mentioned earlier. It's available from http://www.boerde.de/~horstf/. What it consists of is a Win32 client that sits and listens on a TCP port and a set of perl scripts running on the server. The actual "fax printer" is set up under Samba as a normal print share, from which Samba invokes one of the perl scripts. This script contacts the client machine that queued the print job, and the little Respond TCP client pops up and requests a phone number. From there, it will interface to either Hylafax's sendfax or standard mgetty+sendfax, judging by the config sections. I chose to use go with the mgetty option. Either way, everything was very much a drop-in install, and I had it found, installed, and working on all clients in less than two hours total. That's my two bits...
tcp-int is nice if you're faxing in the areas they cover, but their coverage is spotty. I've been using Faxaway for all my faxing; their rates are fairly reasonable ($.10/minute, and a 2-page fax is typically 1 minute), and zero fax hassle (no fax machine, no fax line, no modem sharing) since like tcp-int, you just e-mail your documents to get them faxed.
Actually I'm not hassling with fax machines for receiving, either, since I got a free fax number from eFax.com. The faxaway/efax combination has been downright convenient, not to mention cheap. My understanding is that efax now offers fax send capabilities as well, but I haven't checked out the details.
But unfortunately software piracy continues to be a significant problem and one has to try to walk the fine line between protecting the fruits of one's labour and making the software too difficult to install/evaluate.
Another approach taken by some packages is to deposit hidden files or data in various places in the file system to be able to detect an attempt to run an eval on a machine that has already had an eval. Some people object more vehemently to such file system "pollution" than to software that is tied to a machine ID (be it IP number or node name).
And in the final analysis, the software is worth something (IMHO) and the eval is being offered free. The quid pro quo is we provide the eval (which is not crippled) at no charge, you identify yourself and your machine.
With that said, your point is a valid one and is something we consider every time we launch a new release of the software.
Thanks for your feedback. It will be circulated amongst those here who make the decisions.
If I might be so bold as to suggest you try our company's product: the Faximum Messaging Server (FMS).
Consider:
If you want to fax from something like Microsoft Word you can use the FMS Print Driver which allows you to "print to fax" which creates a TIFF file and uses MAPI to invoke your favourite email client with the TIFF file already attached.
Thank you for your tolerance of this commercial message and please visit http://www.faximum.com/fms/ for more details.
Hi, "uplink" is a free complete solution for a
fax/email/http/other gateway. It supports
faxing from windows using a samba print queue.
The URL is
http://www.ime.usp.br/~ueda/uplink/
"uplink" is currently beta software, but the fax
features are under heavy usage in more than
one installation. Cheers,
Ricardo Ueda.
If you use mgetty+sendfax, there is a "Respond" package that you can use. It isn't a very elegant solution Windows-wise, but it basically works. It requires the Windows client to run a daemon (the "Respond" program).