Handbook:Server Operation:Receiving Faxes

One of the most common customizations that is performed on HylaFAX installations is that of changing faxrcvd from the default. This is to be considered normal. Each business or fax user seems to have a unique way of getting information to its recipients as well as the manner of presentation. Faxes are no different.

Default faxrcvd Delivery

A default faxrcvd configuration from the HylaFAX installation will e-mail a notification of the received fax to FaxMaster. The notification will appear similar to this:

Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 23:02:08 -0600
To: FaxMaster@faxserver.mydomain.com
From: The HylaFAX Receive Agent 
Subject: facsimile received from

recvq/fax00008.tif (ftp://faxserver.mydomain.com:4559/recvq/fax00008.tif):
    Sender: Remote Fax ID
     Pages: 1
   Quality: Fine
      Page: ISO A4
  Received: 2000:08:19 23:00:27
TimeToRecv: 0:20
SignalRate: 14400 bit/s
DataFormat: 1-D MR
ReceivedOn: ttySx
CommID:     c00000010 (ftp://faxserver.mydomain.com:4559/log/c00000008)

If etc/hosts.hfaxd and RecvFileMode are configured for your access, then you should be able to view or retrieve the fax image or the CommID file by following the listed ftp link.

Attached TIFF/PostScript/PDF Mail Delivery

By using this procedure, the default mail will be sent with the fax image attached to that notification mail.

Create the file etc/FaxDispatch (usually /var/spool/hylafax/etc/FaxDispatch) so that it contains the following lines:

FILETYPE=tif;
SENDTO=FaxMaster;

Substitute pdf or ps for tif as you desire.

Note that because TIFF and PDF are binary file types, metamail, uuencode, or some other encoding program must be installed. In HylaFAX versions prior to 4.2.0 (HylaFAX 4.2.0 and later natively supports both uuencode and mimencode) if you do not use metamail's mimencode, also include a line like

MIMENCODE=bin/uuencode_it;

in your etc/FaxDispatch file where bin/uuencode_it is an executable shell script of the form

#!/bin/sh
uuencode -m $1 $1 | grep -E -v "^begin|^====$" 2>/dev/null

HylaFAX versions prior to 4.1.1 do not support the FILETYPE option in FaxDispatch, and so the attachments will always be Postscript. Users of HylaFAX versions prior to 4.1.1 (shame on you) may be interested in using the old faxrcvd-mail scripts by Noel Burton-Krahn. They can be found here. Note that these WILL NOT WORK as-is on HylaFAX versions 4.1.1 and newer.

Viewing Received Faxes

Common Windows Viewers

For TIFF images, most versions of Windows 95 and Windows 98 come bundled with Wang/Kodak/Eastman/Microsoft Imaging. Usually it is installed under Programs/Accessories in the Start Menu, but if not, it can be (re)installed from the Windows CD under Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs/Windows Setup. If you still have trouble with this, the program is downloadable from Microsoft at: http://download.microsoft.com/download/win95upg/tool/1.0/W95/EN-US/imginst.exe For Microsoft's installation instructions, click here.
For PDF images, Adobe Acrobat Reader works well. This can be obtained from Adobe at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/alternate.html
For PostScript images, GSview is good (and free). Get it at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/index.html.

Note that in order to set a default program to "Open" a file by double-clicking it, appropriate file type configuration must be entered into Explorer/View/Folder Options.../File Types for that file extension.

Common Mac Viewers

Mac OS X' Preview application displays TIFF faxes, PDF, and PostScript documents.
For TIFF images, there is Tiff-Sight found at http://www.blueglobe.com/~cliffmcc/products.html and GraphicConverter found at http://www.lemkesoft.com/us_gcabout.html.
For PDF images, Adobe Acrobat Reader works well. This can be obtained from Adobe at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/alternate.html
For PostScript images try MacGhostView found at http://www.kiffe.com/macghostview.html.

Common *NIX Viewers

For TIFF images, GNU HaliFAX is available at http://www.ultim.net/~wolfgang/gnu_halifax/ghfv.html.
Also there is QFaxReader. See: http://qfaxreader.sourceforge.net/.
Also for TIFF images, Frank D. Cringle's viewfax is a good program. It is available at: ftp://ftp.sgi.com/sgi/fax/contrib/viewfax/viewfax-2.4.tar.gz. Make sure to read the README file for compiling information. RedHat users can get this as an RPM from ftp://ftp.redhat.com/redhat/powertools/6.0/i386/viewfax-2.4-3.i386.rpm. Note: viewfax does not have a print option and will segfault when processing a corrupted fax page.
For PDF images, Adobe Acrobat Reader works well. This can be obtained from Adobe at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/alternate.html
For PostScript images, GhostScript works very well. You installed this for HylaFAX server, so you surely already know all about it.

Personal tools