RE: flexfax: Q: How HylaFax Handles Re-Queing & Fax Status?

["Bernd Proissl" <news@proissl.de>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-flexfax@celestial.com [mailto:owner-flexfax@celestial.com]On
> Behalf Of Peter Lakanen
> Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2000 12:57 AM
> To: flexfax@sgi.com; Lakanen, Peter [PLAT]
> Subject: flexfax: Q: How HylaFax Handles Re-Queing & Fax Status?
>
>
>
> I AM NOT A SUBSCRIBER TO THE HYLAFAX LIST AT THIS TIME SO PLEASE
> COPY ME DIRECTLY ON YOUR RESPONSE.  THANKS!
>
> Looking to replace an existing NT fax solution (which shall rename
> nameless :) with an open source Linux solution.  So far HylaFax
> looks like the best bet.
>
> This will be part of a web-based fax solution that does international
> faxing.  There are a number of web-based administration tools that
> will have to be ported over to the new system and I am unclear about
> some of the capabilities of HylaFax.
>
> I've gone through the web site briefly but have not been able
> to determine the answers to these questions:
>
>  - How does HylaFax re-queue faxes when the number is busy or
>    unavailable?  I'm hoping for a way to see a list of faxes
>    that have not been sent after say 3 times so I can either
>    re-queue, delete or change phone number.  I will be writing
>    the code for this (probably in PERL) so I need to know if I
>    can hook into HylaFax to provide this functionality.
afaik: yes
you have to open a telnet connection to port 4559 to communicate with hfaxd
(the client communication process of hxlafax)
try sendfax -vv -n -d telnumber file
to have a first idea how the protocoll works
man hfad shoul give you the commands
you can try it interactively with telnet first.
requeue cannot be done directly, i duplicate an existing job to requeue it.
jobs can be killed automtically after a certain amout of time (there is bug
in 4.0pl12
which display large killtimes (>24h hours) falsely, look under patches or
use 4.1beta2)

>  - How versatile is the receipt/confirmation mechanism of HylaFax?
>    I'd like to be able to have a script poll the system to send
>    e-mail notifications regarding the success/failure of fax
>    messages.
there is a script beeing called to send confirmation emails to the client.
it is call notify(?)
client can control notification (man faxsend(?))

>  - How does HylaFax log faxes (db, unique identifiers, etc) so
>    I can write code to interact with it.
ascii-file
xferlog in 4.0pl12 (xferfaxlog nin 4.1beta2, only namechange)

> The problem we've been having with our NT fax system is that we
> can't really track faxes well.  We have to "fire-and-forget",
> but if something goes wrong, we don't have an easy to know and/or
> fix it.  Because of our international dialing, at times we have
> lots of faxes going awry.
should be possible with hylafax.

take care in selecting the correct modem, only some brands work
flawlessly. for me this is elsa microlink 56k basic, for others
it is multitech. you sgould probably not use usr robotics.
watch out that some problems ony arise with certain fax machines.
(do a search fpr "RTN" or "multiple page"

Bernd

> Sorry for the long message - please feel free to send me URL's
> with my answers that I may have overlooked at the HylaFax site
> (I've been going thru a lot of fax servers today and everything's
> starting to blur together).
>
> Please copy me directly on your response because I do not
> subscribe to this list at this time.
>
> Thanks!
>
> -peter
>
> --
>   Peter Lakanen   lakanen@platinumweb.com
>   Platinum Web Development  http://www.platinumweb.com
>   1320 Terrace Street  Tallahassee, FL 32303
>   850.508.4518   FAX: 850.681.6639
>