[hylafax-users] HylaFAX/smbfax fails near end "COMMAND FAILED"

["Jon M. McNamara" <jmcnamara@aerospacedisplay.com>]

Hello all,

Hardware: Pentium 60Mhz; 64MB RAM; Hayes Accura 288B V.34+FAX (Internal)
Platform: Slackware 7.1 ('stock', w/glibc-2.1.3, ecgs-2.91.66, Perl 5.6,
using the supplied Apache 1.3.12 and Samba 2.0.7 from the distribution disk.
Added the required Perl Modules for smbfax) No other out of the ordinary
daemons or programs running, no 'dbmsd', nfsd, mountd, or gpm, etc.

Goal: Build a 'light use' Fax Server for about 5 or 6 internal Win98 clients
using HylaFAX 4.1 (July 1st release) and smbfax 1.4 (latest release), and
Apache, and Samba on Linux (what else ! :) Didn't want to put ANYTHING on
the client except another print driver (comes with Windows) which is why the
HylaFAX/smbfax combo looked so attractive.

Compiled HylaFAX 1.4 with out any issues. Faxmodem was set up OK. I AM able
to do 'sendfax' from the command prompt - works repeatedly, reliably and
fine. 'Faxstatus' seems to give good and correct information each time.
Modem, port, locks, etc. seemed to open and close correctly. Command line
switches seemed to respond OK (Cover Page, No cover page, e-mail notif., NO
e-mail notif., etc). So HylaFAX, I was guessing was looking good at this
point. Apache and Samba are running without errors. I went through the
procedure for smbfax and had to do the Perl 5.6 "wrapper" thing they suggest
to get it run suid correctly. OK, that worked. Went through carefully and
made some path corrections for smbfax as per my distro (ie. where sendfax
and other HylaFAX programs are located, etc.) OK, no problems, plenty of
commentary in the .conf files, etc...

So at this point, the whole 'chain' almost works:

I can print to the Samba printer (Samba passes to smbfax), I get the e-mail
notification to "Complete Your Fax"(Sendmail is routing), the CGI appears to
activate correctly (Apache/Perl::CGI responds) when I follow the link from
the e-mail (I get the 'fax completion' page), I can fill out the form as
desired with the number, and select the coupla' options as desired...

The rub is, when I press the "Send Fax" button at the bottom of the form, I
actually get the message (page is returned to the browser) that says "Fax
Sent", but then right below that (in that same page) is an error message
"COMMAND FAILED" and then below that:

(returned non-zero exit status "255")

There is no error message sent back via e-mail (as is suggested in this
'completion page'), and since the server (in prototype mode) is sitting
right next to me here in my office, I can say for certain that I never hear
the modem go "off-hook" to attempt to fax anything via HylaFAX - nor does
anything ever appear in HylaFAX's 'fax sent log'. It's like the final
"handoff" to HylaFAX isn't taking place. Right away, I'm leaning
'permissions'... Also, I'm thinking the smbfax script should not return a
"fax sent" signal to the user until HylaFAX has somehow 'confirmed back' to
smbfax that it actually WAS sent.

One other note, I do have to add a "9" to the front of the number when I
fill out the smbfax form. But again, when I do a command line 'sendfax',
HylaFAX doesn;t seem to have a problem with it.

I was searching the archives and poring through the box yesterday for about
2-1/2 hours yesterday still thinking it's a permissions thing (as in when
smbfax is supposed to 'hand off' to HylaFAX from the CGI script some UID
'isn't allowed' to do so (sound reasonable ?) All the 'paths' from smbfax to
HylaFAX programs look good (double-checked).
Haven't had much time today to hack on it some more - thought I'd join and
get this off to the list.
I know this list is more for HylaFAX proper, and again, HylaFAX itself seems
to actually be working fine. From the archives, I had seen some other posts
from folks trying to use smbfax and thought (since HylaFAX/smbfax seems like
a 'killer' combo - I try (hard !) not to add ANYTHING to Win32 after we do
our basic company 'ghost' image on the client drive, but heck, a printer
driver for 6 clients (out of 60, from an authentic Win98 CD) I can live
with -  they'll probably be even more posts about smbfax.

Thanks for any help at all - sorry for the length, will keep it shorter in
future...

Jon M. McNamara
Information Systems Manager
Aerospace Display Systems, LLC




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