[Nottingham] Linux FAX a complete mess!

[Martin]

Phew!

Rant and test request...

After quite a fight with something that should just simply work and...

Anyone with a fax machine that I can send a test page to for a quick
test ASAP please?



The story goes:

Well, I thought I knew Linux distros well enough but... What a waste of
time!

For anyone else caught out...

I've been wasting a lot of time trying to get a laptop to be able to
send and receive faxes. Should be easy enough but...

Mandriva 2008 and this old laptop requires a "smartlink" driver for the
modem hardware which loads up the slamr and slusb kernel modules. These
had been loaded up via the kernel wizardry called dkms. Fine, except
that an update updated the kernel but NOT the smartlink modules. The
modem just didn't work and no useful error messages.

The fix was to simply uninstall the old version of the kernel and the
old smartlink modules and then install the kernel modules for the
_current_ kernel. Easy enough when found and when known.

Next... There is no /dev/modem created. Obscurely, a magical /dev/ttySL0
appears instead. ...Just to confuse further from the expected
/dev/ttys0. The fix there is to do (as root):

ln -s /dev/ttySL0 /dev/modem

or go into whatever fax program settings to instead explicitly set to
use /dev/ttySL0

And then, the magical final detail to understand is that you must
communicate with that device using "HP JetDirect" and "RAW"
formatting/protocol.

Further details are given on:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=320534

####
here's what you need to do:

   1. Install and configure your modem using the wiki
(https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DialupModemHowto).
   2. Use Synaptic to install eFax-gtk.
   3. Go to Administration -> Printing
   4. Double-click New Printer.
   5. Select network printer, HP JetDirect
   6. Type 'localhost' in the Host box.
   7. Set the port to 9900.
   8. Click Forward.
   9. Select 'Raw' as the printer manufacturer.
  10. Click on 'queue' to select it and then click Forward.
  11. Type 'eFax' in for the Name instead of queue.
  12. Click Apply.
  13. Go to Applications -> Office -> eFax-gtk.
  14. Select 'Socket' as the fax entry method, then close eFax.
####

A further useful snippet:

####
the process using the CUPS printer utility at localhost:631. Setting up
a CUPS printer using raw, port 9900, queue and localhost were the clues
I needed. In the CUPS printer utility, that works out to:

lpd://localhost:9900/queue

That was the 'magic incantation' that I needed to get it to work.

Leaving efax-gtk open when printing was also a big help. I wouldn't have
known what to do otherwise.
####

I actually set to use:

socket://localhost:9900

And yes, I'm also using efax-gtk to listen on socket 9900. You should
also be ale to use any other fax utility such as kfax however you choose.


Meanwhile, the Mandriva 2008 hylafax setup appears broken or at best
incomplete. Again, no useful error messages offered...

And I thought this was meant to be better than a certain other OS!


Hope that helps for any other fax setup victims!


Cheers,
Martin

ps: Anyone with a fax machine that I can send a test page to for a quick
test ASAP pretty please?


-- 
----------------
Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
----------------