[hylafax-users] Multi-host setup: Problems with RPM based installation, and a fix

[Toralf Lund <toralf@kscanners.com>]

I think I forgot to tell anyone about this earlier, so I'll do it now:

I've made some modifications to the "Red Hat RPM" version of hylafax
4.1beta2 that makes it work better on a fax _client_, i.e. an host that
has no modem connected, but is able to submit fax jobs by contacting the
hylafax daemon on a different host. The updated version is available in
source RPM form on

ftp://ftp.kscanners.no/pub/SRPMS/hylafax-4.1beta2-6rh6.src.rpm

The relevant entry from our internal problem resolution archive is
included below.

- Toralf
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: Multiple, daily error messages from hylafax sent to
faxmaster + hourly messages sent to root
From: Toralf Lund (toralf@kscanners.com)
Date: Mon Aug 07 2000 - 17:44:32 CEST

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> An example faxmaster message is included below:
>
> FATAL ERROR: /var/spool/fax/etc/setup.cache is missing!
>
> The file /var/spool/fax/etc/setup.cache is not present. This
> probably means the machine has not been setup using the faxsetup(1M)
> command. Read the documentation on setting up HylaFAX before you
> startup a server system.

The problem is that HylaFax RPM distribution on Linux-
hylafax-4.1beta2-6rh6 or similar - makes the assumption that all
machines where the software is installed should be configured so that
faxes may be sent using a modem directly connected to the host. It
therefore installs some cron scripts (/etc/cron.daily/hylafax and
/etc/cron.hourly/hylafax) that checks checks if the config files are
correct and sends error messages to faxmaster or root if it isn't.

This assumption is not valid in our setup, or in the general case, since

we want to run one fax server and multiple clients, and need to install
the RPM on all of these (or the ones that are running Linux, anyway) to
provide the client commands ("sendfax" etc.). 'faxsetup' (refer to error

message) is run on the server only, the other hosts don't need this as
they send fax messages by connecting to the host across the network.

Anyhow, we have now created a modified RPM (by downloading the source
RPM and editing some files) - hylafax-4.1beta2-7rh6 that solves this
problem by letting the cron scripts test if the fax server is enabled -
they execute their real jobs if, and only if, "hylafax" service is
enabled! We will try to publish our changes somehow later.

- Toralf



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