Re: flexfax: AdaptiveAnswer with class 1 modem

[Robert Colquhoun <rjc@trump.net.au>]

Hi Noel,

At 09:47 PM 9/6/99 +0000, Noel Burton-Krahn wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Sys: Redhat-6.0 Linux 2.2.10 #4 SMP Tue Jun 15 23:08:13 PDT 1999 i586 unknown
>Modem: ActionTec Desktalk x2 firmware: ATI1="CD04.08 - 540G Parallel - SP 04"
>(http://www.actiontec.com/support/modems/dt56k.html)
>HylaFAX: hylafax-4.1beta1-1rh6.i386.rpm
>
>
>I have a dumb class 1 modem attached to ttyS0.  My modem does not
>report the connection type properly; it says "CONNECT" whether its
>received a fax or data connection.  So, I configured faxgetty to use
>AdaptiveAnswer.  I tested this by using 'faxanswer ttyS0', but I found
>that faxgetty only tried the first entry in AnswerRotary, and nothing
>after that.  I kept getting these 'ANSWER: Ring detected without
>successful handshake' errors after I defined AnswerRotary to be "data
>fax".

Unfortunately AnswerRotary is not very reliable, just because of the way it 
works.  Some of the modem manufacturers(ie 3com with the Sportster) 
introduced some non-standard parameters to enable adaptive answer in class 
1.  Unfortunately i don't think this made it to the generic rockwell 
chipset which most modems use.



>I dug throught the hylafax sources and found that
>faxGettyApp.c++:FIFOMessage() never calls answerPhoneCmd() with
>ClassModem::ANSTYPE_ANY.  That means that AdaptiveAnswer will never be
>triggered by the 'faxanswer' command.  I changed the source and now
>faxanswer works.  I have included a patch below.

I will look at this.

>Getting my cheapo modem to work has been quite a headache.  mgetty
>only handles class 2+ modems.  efax will do an adaptive-answer-like
>thing properly, but it only gets the first page of a fax.  HylaFax
>gets the fax correctly but doesn't do adaptive answer.  Ugh.  I know
>the answer is to get a better modem, but I was determined to make mine
>work.

Does efax do adaptive answer?...i had thought it just assumed it was a 
fax.  mgetty like faxgetty only does adaptive answer with class 2/2.0 
modems ie it is a function of the modem not the getty.

>My next project is to call 'mgetty -r %s' as the external getty to use
>its AutoPPP feature.  Has anyone got this to work?

For the above you might also need the '-s' option to hard set the port 
speed.  Also if you only want ppp, it might make more sense to call pppd 
directly as the getty.

>By the way, what's the deal with making GettyArgs a configurable
>variable, but leaving the PATH_GETTY a compiled constant?  Wouldn't it
>be nice to use a GettyPath run-time variable?

Hardcoding PATH_GETTY was supposedly done as a security measure to prevent 
people starting fake gettys that allowed machine access without a password 
or something.  But protecting the modem configuration file with tight 
privileges might be a better way to do this.

- Robert