Ask Slashdot: Linux Fax Servers w/ WinTel Clients? 79
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. "
SuSEFax Win32 (Score:1)
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/SuSE-Linux/suse_update/S
Fax Solution (Score:1)
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/
Sendfax (Score:1)
Faxaway -- cost effective? (Score:1)
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.
VSI*Fax (Score:2)
licenses... (Score:1)
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?
Non-free as in free speech, not free beer (Score:1)
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.
Or, get someone to install the free software (Score:1)
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.
Re:Hylafax experiences (Score:1)
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!
Hylafax experiences (Score:2)
yeah right (Score:1)
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?
Re:Or, get someone to install the free software (Score:2)
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.
Slightly off subject (Score:1)
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
Hylafax and WHFC (Score:3)
Answer is ...yes! Hylafax! (AFAIK) (Score:1)
--
Hylafax, three post-install steps.... (Score:2)
Yeah the whfc driver for the win clients is kinda funky, but it does works.
Good luck.....
mgetty+sendfax+fake printer (Score:1)
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
Hylafax / Perl / Postscript (Score:3)
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.
XWindow server for Windows (Score:1)
You can find XDeep32 on http://www.pexus.com
network faxing (Score:1)
-earl
another question... (Score:1)
Re:Respond (Score:2)
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.
Re:Respond (Score:1)
I used hylafax+respond under FreeBSD... (Score:1)
Another vote for HylaFAX (Score:1)
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.
Re:Hylafax sucks! - NOT! (Score:1)
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.
Re:Hylafax sucks! - NOT! (Score:2)
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.
Re:Slightly off subject (Score:1)
use the "QMS PS 810" driver which gets installed with every win9x/NT base system.
this is a completely generic Postscript driver that samba
Re:NT Fax software (Score:1)
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.
Re:Consider the Faximum Messaging Server (Score:1)
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.
Re:NT Fax software (Score:1)
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.
Faxing (Score:1)
Re:Respond (Score:1)
Respond is a Great Thing (TM) and works very fine with mgetty+sendfax and samba.
HylaFax Works Period (Score:2)
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/).
Cool printing w/o extra software (Score:1)
Hylafax client is non-free (Score:1)
Generic solution (Score:1)
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).
Re:Faxing (Score:1)
I agree - I've just set up Hylafax myself... looking pretty damned good! and it has a nice email2fax gateway interface that runs through sendmail.
HylaFax URL --> http://www.hylafax.org [hylafax.org]
Very good software
Regards,
Andrew
NT Fax software (Score:1)
Respond & mgetty+sendfax worked out well for me... (Score:2)
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...
Faxaway and efax Re:network faxing (Score:2)
Actually I'm not hassling with fax machines for receiving, either, since I got a free fax number from eFax.com [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.
Re:another question... (Score:1)
P.S. - OCR on fax resolution images (not to mention handwritten coversheets) is so hit and miss that it is probably not even worth trying. Manually routing faxes using a browser to view the fax (see our manual routing demo [faximum.com]) is very speedy and much much more reliable.
Re:Samba & Hylafax/mgetty+sendfax & elbow grease (Score:1)
The approach you outline with Samba is one we are considering for a future release of the Faximum Messaging Server [faximum.com]. Your proposal of using a web page to provide the fax addressing information is a good one and one we have thought of. The only problem is that it is a two-step process: (1) the user prints to the special Samba fax pseudo-printer and (2) the user hits the appropriate page on the fax server to provide the addressing information. And if the user forgets the second step his fax languishes on the fax server forever.
The approach we take with FMS [faximum.com] is, IMHO, easier for the user.
The FMS Print Driver enables users to "print to fax" (in the same manner as your Samba approach) but then a dialog box pops up asking for the addressing information (name, company, fax number). This info is converted into an email address of the form (Person_Name/Company_Name/Phone_Number@fax.your.co m) and then MAPI is used to invoke your email client of choice with the above address already in the To: field and the TIFF produced by the FMS Print Driver already attached.
This requires almost the same amount of software on the client side as your Samba approach (i.e. FMS Print Driver as compared to a PostScript print driver) but has the added benefit of (a) doing the print-to-fax conversion on the client side so it can be previewed, and (b) popping up a dialog box so the user need not remember and manually invoke the second step of running a web browser to specify the addressing information.
Re:Consider the Faximum Messaging Server (Score:1)
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.
Consider the Faximum Messaging Server (Score:2)
If I might be so bold as to suggest you try our company's product: the Faximum Messaging Server (FMS) [faximum.com].
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/ [faximum.com] for more details.
Re:Hylafax experiences (Score:1)
Remember, the fax standards (last time I heard) was at 14.4. Most fax machines cannot connect faster than this. Having a rockin 56k modem will do you absolutely no good sending faxes faster. A good well supported 14.4 will do just fine.
Office97 bastardized the Postscript language. M$ Office97 produces incorrect Postscript in some instances. You obviously found them. Find another program to generate Postscript in Win as M$ doesn't follow the Postscript standards. You cannot expect other applications to break the language just because M$ does.
-mwe
Re:NT Fax software (Score:1)
Hey; I have a family to maintain while I work on neat stuff in my free time.
Hajo
try "uplink" (Score:1)
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.
Respond (Score:1)