Slashdot Mirror
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. "
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
-------
Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
Sounds like a great area for one of the developers or even a consultant that has a lot of experience with hylafax, etc., to make a living out of working with free software.
This is certainly something I would consider once I finish school with (insert your free software project here), if Linux and Open Source is at least as big as it is now.
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 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.....
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.
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...
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.
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
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.
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.