Re: [hylafax-users] Fax Archival System

[Lee Howard <faxguy@howardsilvan.com>]

On 2003.06.27 08:02 Waldo Jaquith wrote:

> I recognize that it's
> possible that this archival problem is a limitation of Cypheus, and
> not of
> Hylafax, but I've been unable to find any information regarding how
> this
> ought to be done in Hylafax.

HylaFAX "archives" received faxes in the recvq directory.  By default 
faxcron may delete them after a month, so to truly archive them you'd 
need to configure faxcron.  Still, archiving received faxes may not be 
a good idea because someday the sequence number will be "reset" and 
begin again at 1 and thus possibly overwrite archives.  Also, as the 
recvq directory increases in quantity of files client programs (such as 
Cypheus) take longer to get listings, and on networks with a large 
number of client-running workstations the network bandwidth consumption 
may become a real concern.  However, Cypheus can utilize (so far as I'm 
aware) all TIFFs stored in the recvq directory.

HylaFAX archives sent faxes in the archive directory in a structure 
detailed by the bin/archive script when indicated by faxqclean (see 
'man faxqclean').  To my understanding, Cypheus cannot utilize the 
contents of the archive directory, and understandably so since its 
structure will likely vary from locale to locale.  This archiving also 
suffers from the possible overwriting problem indicated above due to a 
reset sequence number.

I may be mistaken, but I had thought that Cypheus had its own 
Samba+MySQL-based archival system.

> Can anybody tell me how you are archiving faxes in Hylafax?

One of my clients has etc/FaxDispatch make a copy of incoming faxes in 
a separate directory which is created daily (named "MM-DD-YY").  That 
directory is browseable by a Samba share.  Thus, they delete faxes from 
the recvq directory after they're viewed with the HylaFAX client and 
look for them in the Samba share if they need to refer to the 
archives.  As for naming the files meaningfully, it's only done 
occasionally; they do that manually and copy those files to yet another 
Samba share in order to preserve the integrity of the read-only archive.

> Is there
> some
> sort of a built-in method of establishing browsable archival
> directories
> within Hylafax that would be recognized by clients, including Cypheus?

I don't think so, otherwise the archival system would be proprietary to 
the client.

>  Am
> I misusing Hylafax by attempting to do this?

No.

Lee.

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