flexfax: ghostscript doing nothing; can't get tiff to work either

[Nicholas Riley <nriley@staff.feldberg.brandeis.edu>]

Hi; I installed HylaFAX 4.0pl2 on a NetBSD 1.2G system (planning on
upgrading to 1.3 soon, but haven't had the time). The machine runs a print
server, and hopefully soon to be a fax server. I'm having two different
problems, although for all I know they may be the same problem. My
apologies for the length of this email - I just want to make sure it's
clear if I'm making any inappropriate assumptions. 

The first is when I try to run sendfax from the fax server machine. I get
the following log messages with ServerTracing set to 150273 (I've
replaced the phone number with nnn):

Mar 23 18:24:50 roadrunner FaxQueuer[16684]: JOB 19 (active dest
+1617nnnnnnn pri 127 tts 0:00 killtime 2:58:58): CONVERT DOCUMENT:
bin/ps2fax -o docq/doc19.cover;30 -r 98 -w 1728 -l 280 -m 48 -1
docq/doc19.cover
Mar 23 18:25:08 roadrunner FaxQueuer[16684]: JOB 19: CONVERT DOCUMENT:
Could not reopen converted document to verify format

So, as the troubleshooting guide instructs, I tried running ps2fax
manually, with sh -x, and found that the shellscript ran through until
ghostscript was called. Then I extracted the line of the script and
executed it.  Nothing appeared - no error message, no output file. I tried
removing -q and changing the output directory and filename:

# /usr/local/bin/gs -sDEVICE=tiffg3 -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER=true
-sPAPERSIZE=letter -r204x98 -sOutputFile=./doc19.cover.fax - < docq/doc19.cover
Aladdin Ghostscript 5.01 (1997-6-22)
Copyright (C) 1997 Aladdin Enterprises, Menlo Park, CA.  All rights reserved.
This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
Loading Helvetica-Bold font from
/usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/Helvetica-Bold... #

This produced some more messages, which made me think that at least
Ghostscript was interpreting the file.. There are other instances of
'setfont' in the cover sheet, but nothing is printed in any fonts but
Helvetica-Bold and Helvetica-BoldOblique (which I believe is
algorithmically derived from Helvetica-Bold). I tried sending the
doc19.cover to my PostScript printer with 'lpr' - it sat there processing
for a while, then gave up without an error, remarkably similar to what
Ghostscript did.

Next I tried using 'lpr' to print the PostScript file that was generated
from the text file argument to sendfax. The file printed fine, in a nice
bold Courier. That suggested that the cover page was causing the problem,
so I gave sendfax the -n flag. This caused the same error with Ghostscript
as before, except while converting the document instead of the cover page. 
I tried the exact commands that the shellscript used, minus the -q and
with a filename change...

# /bin/cat docq/doc39.ps.21 | /usr/local/bin/gs -sDEVICE=tiffg3 -dNOPAUSE
-dSAFER=true -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -r204x98 -sOutputFile=docq/doc39.ps.30 -
Aladdin Ghostscript 5.01 (1997-6-22)
Copyright (C) 1997 Aladdin Enterprises, Menlo Park, CA.  All rights
reserved.
This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
Loading Courier-Bold font from
/usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts/Courier-Bold... #

Just to check again, I tried printing doc39.ps.21; no problem there.

Is this a Ghostscript problem? (I know very little about Ghostscript.) A
HylaFAX problem? I'm up to my ears in logfiles here, so if anything more
is necessary to find the problem, let me know. 

Next I tried a Mac client, MacFLEX. I didn't understand the error
messages, so I didn't know how to proceed; the session is reproduced here:

Mar 23 18:37:46 roadrunner HylaFAX[16741]: Filesystem has SysV-style file
creation semantics.
Mar 23 18:37:46 roadrunner FaxQueuer[14006]: FIFO RECV "Sclient/16741:20"
Mar 23 18:37:46 roadrunner FaxQueuer[14006]: SUBMIT JOB 20
Mar 23 18:37:46 roadrunner FaxQueuer[14006]: JOB 20 (suspended dest  pri
127 tts 0:00 killtime 23:59:14): CREATE
Mar 23 18:37:46 roadrunner FaxQueuer[14006]: JOB 20 (ready dest
+1617nnnnnnn pri 127 tts 0:00 killtime 23:59:14): READY
Mar 23 18:37:47 roadrunner FaxQueuer[14006]: FIFO SEND client/16741 msg
"S*"
Mar 23 18:37:47 roadrunner FaxQueuer[14006]: JOB 20 (ready dest
+1617nnnnnnn pri 127 tts 0:00 killtime 23:59:13): PROCESS
Mar 23 18:37:47 roadrunner FaxQueuer[14006]: JOB 20 (active dest
+1617nnnnnnn pri 127 tts 0:00 killtime 23:59:13): ACTIVE
Mar 23 18:37:47 roadrunner FaxQueuer[14006]: JOB 20 (active dest
+1617nnnnnnn pri 127 tts 0:00 killtime 23:59:13): PREPARE START
Mar 23 18:37:47 roadrunner FaxQueuer[14006]: JOB 20 (active dest
+1617nnnnnnn pri 127 tts 0:00 killtime 23:59:13): PREPARE DONE
Mar 23 18:37:47 roadrunner FaxQueuer[14006]: JOB 20: bad exit status 0xb
from sub-fork
Mar 23 18:37:48 roadrunner FaxQueuer[14006]: NOTIFY: bin/notify
"doneq/q20" "failed" ""
Mar 23 18:37:57 roadrunner FaxQueuer[14006]: JOB 20 (done dest
+1617nnnnnnn pri 127 tts 0:00 killtime 23:59:03): DEAD
Mar 23 18:37:57 roadrunner FaxQueuer[14006]: JOB 20 (done dest
+1617nnnnnnn pri 127 tts 0:00 killtime 23:59:03): DELETE

The communication went OK as I see a doc38.tif.20 file in the
/var/spool/fax/docq directory.  I ftp'd that file back to the Mac, and
GraphicConverter was able to open it as a "TIFF Fax 3" type document,
which looked right. I don't know what "bad exit status 0xb from sub-fork"
means.

OK, that's all... I've put my best effort and about 5 hours into solving
the problem and I am getting nowhere. Help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

--
Nicholas Riley <nriley@staff.feldberg.brandeis.edu>