flexfax: problems when calling sendfax from crontab

[Yves Carlier <Yves.Carlier@barclab.com>]

I wonder if someone can help me out.
I am having troubles getting sendfax to run from the crontab.

We are using the crontab to start sending faxes at a certain time every
day.
I have written a Perl wrapper script round sendfax which handles all
logic
which faxes to send to whom.  
If I run this script from the command line, everything works great.
But when I try to run the same script from the crontab, "sendfax" exits
with an error:

If I isolate the "senfax" call, and place the fill following in the
crontab:
  34 11 * * * /usr/bin/sendfax  -D -i "##ID##" -f "##from##" -r
"##regarding##" 
  -c "##comment##" -d "##destination##"  <FILENAME> 1> /tmp/sendfax.log
2> /tmp/sendfax.err

the sendfax program aborts/exits with an error:

  Error creating cover sheet; command was "/usr/bin/faxcover 
  -C '/usr/share/fax/faxcover.ps' -D '%a -1073742428 %b %Y, %H:%Mh' 
  -c '##comment##' -f '##from##' -n '##faxnmbr##' -r '##regarding##'
  -s 'A4' -t '##to##' -p '1'"; exit status 0

>First of all, the "-1073742428" seems strange to me, since the DateFormat in 
>hyla.conf is defined as "%a %d %d %Y, %H:%Mh".

Trying to run the "faxcover" command directly from the crontab also
gives an error,
caused by the -D option.  Removing all "%x" entries makes the program
without errors.
But of course this is not a solution ;-) I want the real send date on my
coversheet.

One would think that setting the DateFormat in hyla.conf to a fixed
string would 
fix the problem is wrong.  Running sendfax from the crontab gives the
same error:
  Error creating cover sheet; ....



Is there a bug in the "strftime" or something else?
Did other people also encounter this problem?
The crontab file contains the PATH and SHELL entries,... 
Did I miss anything?
Can somebody give some help?


thanks,
YC

PS. I'm running on a Linux RedHat 5.0 system.
 

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