flexfax: Fax administration from Windows 95 and RE:

["Evan Kehayias" <ekehayia@movingcomfort.com>]

This email consists of a couple of questions I had that I received help on
and added some additional information that occurred to me.  Special thank to
Mr. Nico Kadel-Garcia.

Let me give you a little background on my system:

I am running hylafax 4.1 beta 1 "RPM" on a RedHat 6.0 box using Kernel
2.2.13.  I have installed two USR external modems, one is 33.6 and the other
56.  Everything appears to be working fine.

The questions I have are:
I somewhat understand the concept of using the /var/spool/fax/etc/hosts file
to allow access to the fax server.  What I am not sure about is how to set
up users with limited access.  I would like it so that users log in using
WHFC and can only access their faxes for viewing and/or deletion purposes.
Hylafax may have that functionality built in.  I have not been able to
figure out whether or not it works right out of the box though because I am
not sure how to really set up the users.  When creating a user in the hosts
file do I just copy and paste the encrypted password from passwd or shadow
or is there some type of utility to use like useradd to modify the files
automatically?

Answer: First of all to set up users you would copy and paste the encrypted
password from passwd to your hosts file.  From what I have been told there
is no utility to create fax users.  Secondly, unfortunately it appears that
you have to have someone administering the faxes.  I have heard about direct
inward dial but have not read up on it yet.  I am not sure but I do not
believe hylafax does optical character resolution.  So, you can set up samba
to share the pertinent directories.  I have a couple of fax admins, so I
have placed them in the uucp group and shared the sendq and recvq using
directory permissions of 2770 and incoming faxes at 650.  By doing the
previous, the admins have the ability to perform their duties.   I may
consider reducing the rights further depending on how much I need the admin
users to accomplish.  For now they can copy, move, delete and email faxes.
The admins do not have a shell so they could not cause any damage anywhere
but those two directories.  Additionally I set up a tiff plugin to work
directly from whfc so that the admins and only the admins can view the fax
to be routed properly.

Hope this helps someone.



____________

Evan Kehayias, CNA, CNE4, MCP
IT Specialist at Moving Comfort, Inc.
email: ekehayia@movingcomfort.com
phone: 703.631.1000 x130