RE: flexfax: FW: Hylafax - faxq unable to exec faxsend

["William H. Gilmore" <whgi@csi.com>]

Darren,

First of all, you need to relax.  I did not set out to indict your work. 
 If you look back through the archive you will see that I posted a detailed 
description of the problem that I was having twice.  It was only after I 
posted it the second time that anybody offered any advice.  I received one 
reply to the second note from someone who read the messages log too quickly 
and misread the actual error message.  Additionally, I have posted this 
same problem to three different Usenet groups and also didn't get a 
response.  So forgive my impression that there is no one out there who is 
interested in Hylafax on Linux not to mention RedHat Linux.  This 
impression was further heightened by notes that I have read on this list 
maligning Linux.

In general, I do not approach the authors of packages as step 1.  I try to 
do my own work first.  When I realized that you were active in the mailing 
list, I was hopeful that you would reply to my message.  Since you didn't, 
I respected your silence.

I have only been using Linux for six months.  Though I have used seven 
different variants of Unix over the last 8 years, I still consider myself a 
newbie to Linux.  And yes, in my opinion, the documentation for installing 
Hylafax on Linux needs improvement.  It took me about six different notes 
pulled from different places to get the tips to handle the dependencies 
correctly.  It would be nice to have these assembled into a single FAQ 
response and placed on the Hylafax FAQ.  As I stated in my previous note, I 
am willing to help on this (Don't flame volunteers)

I can only plead Mea Culpa for not attempting the SRPM.  For one, I simply 
didn't think about it since I haven't had to resort to it on any other 
package that I have worked with.  In all likelihood, it would have worked. 
 However, after spending the equivalent of days digging through output from 
strace, I thought it best to start with the unpatched source and go through 
it step by step.

I apologize for stepping on toes, but IMHO you are way too quick to fly off 
on this one.

Sincerely,

William


-----Original Message-----
From:	darren@hylafax.org [SMTP:darren@hylafax.org]
Sent:	Saturday, January 23, 1999 1:21 PM
To:	William H. Gilmore
Cc:	'FlexFax Mailing List'
Subject:	Re: flexfax: FW: Hylafax - faxq unable to exec faxsend


>>>>> On Sat, 23 Jan 1999, "WHG" == William H. Gilmore wrote:

  WHG> All,

  WHG> I finally gave up on attempting to get the RPM to work on my RH5.2
  WHG> machine.  I have been corresponding with another person who 
succesfully
  WHG> installed it.  In both of our cases, our configurations were created
  WHG> through the use of "standard" (whatever that means) RPMs.  In 
tracing
  WHG> through and RPM query on our respective machines, I could find not
  WHG> difference in libraries or external program depended upon by 
Hylafax.

[snip]

  WHG> I'll offer the following advice for RedHat users.  IF THE DEVELOPED 
RPM
  WHG> DOES NOT WORK AT FIRST BLUSH, ERASE IT AND COMPILE FROM SCRATCH!!!

  WHG> I would like to challenge someone to take ownership of Hylafax from
  WHG> a Linux perspective.  I realize that we cannot expect SGI to address
  WHG> since it would be a definite conflict of interest.  I will not 
volunteer
  WHG> myself because I am much more of a SysAdm than a programmer. 
 However, I
  WHG> will volunteer to help with testing, documentation, and the like.

<vent>
Look buster, if you're going to badmouth my work publicly, perhaps you 
could approach me privately in a slightly more constructive manner?
<\vent>

Seriously, I am aware of NO, ZERO, NADA showstoppers with the present RPM 
besides a few dependencies which might confuse the newbies out there. And 
if you've been reading this list at all, as you should before declaring the 
Linux support dead in the water, then you'll be pretty familiar with the 
simple fix to that confusion.

I'm extremely keen to promote HylaFAX from a linux perspective, and I we  
lcome your CONSTRUCTIVE comments on how I may improve the present state of 
affairs. For instance, a detailed description of the problems you have had 
with the RPM, the reasons why you were unable to compile using the SRPM, 
etc etc.

A new release of the RPM is imminent, but I'm really baffled by the tone of 
your message. The Linux RPM is well supported, I feel, between my efforts 
on the side and those of the list in public, and I think it's a good piece 
of work. I'm curious to know why you feel otherwise.

-Darren