[hylafax-users] cu , access , usr 5686e , suse 9.1 AMD64

[GigaPyxl <gigapyxl@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

Just went through the process of getting a US Robotics ( USR ) 5686e
external faxmodem set up, both as a modem device and then through
hylafax.

The slightly stilted writing style is because I'm trying to include
keywords in this email that google will pick up so others can find
this email easily.

System details:
Suse 9.1 Pro AMD64 dist
# rpm -q uucp
uucp-1.07-196
# rpm -q hylafax
hylafax-4.1.8-24.2


Ok, various experiences with this:

First, I used command cu -l ttyS0 to do the basic accessibility
testing.  I was able to access the modem just fine if I ran it as my
local non-root account, BUT if I ran it as root, I got the following
output:

nexus:~ # cu -l /dev/modem
cu: creat (/var/lock/TMP0000002c91): Permission denied
cu: /dev/modem: Line in use

Note that /dev/modem is an alias to /dev/ttyS0 - the same behavior is
evinced if /dev/ttyS0 is directly used.

Muuuuch searching told me essentially nothing, other than possible
massive permissions weirdness: strace cu -l /dev/modem as my local
user and as root showed EXACTLY the same attempt to open a lockfile in
/var/lock, with success as local user and failure as root....and this
is coming from the kernel refusing to allow the file creation.

What was the fix / solution ?  Noting that on my system, which cu emits:

/usr/bin/cu

I ran:

chown uucp:uucp /usr/bin/cu
chmod ug+s /usr/bin/cu

and voila!  It started working for root as well.  Hopefully someone
having this problem will find this email, 'cuz it'll save you 4 hours+
of searching futily.

Next problem I ran into:  faxaddmodem was crapping out about halfway
through, as probemodem was running its way through the list of speeds,
then finally giving me a message (sorry, unable to reproduce message
text, didn't capture it at the time, and I *can't* reproduce it
anymore) that it was unable to communicate with the modem.  strace
told me nothing, other than, well, it was having problems talking to
the device - writes string, reads echo back....and nothing else.

Eventually, I got the brainwave that perhaps it's because I hadn't
rebooted my system when I hooked up the external modem I was working
with ( usr 5686e noted above, nice device ) and the serial port was
choking on not having been powered up connected properly.  So, after
banging my head on this one for a couple hours, shutting down my
system, turning off then back on the modem, then booting my system
worked JUST FINE for fixing it.  After that, hylafax setup was a
breeze.  Argh.

Final sort-of-problem, but not really:
Since my various past efforts at getting hylafax to recognize my
distinctive ring have been complete failures ( the distinctive ring I
have is two short rings, and the modem reports each ring segment as
RING no matter what the hell I do, and I've tried it with several
different modems ), and as I have a second distinctive ring phone
number to receive faxes to, and I have voicemail that picks up after 4
regular rings (8 distinctive rings), I just have hylafax answer on 5
rings.  Works like a charm.  ymmv.

Anyways, loving hylafax, wanted to make someone else's life easier if
they're experiencing these weird problems.  Now if I can only get a
print-to-fax spool set up in the KDE print manager so I can print to a
fax spool, have a little "gimme fax info" window pop up, then send it
on its way...aaah, I can dream. :)  Suse 9.1 has this annoying thing
about not wanting to allow you to let X listen on any network
interfaces - YaST has a setting that alleges to allow this, but it
doesn't actually do squat.  I've done some tromping around in the
various shell scripts and config files that hold it all together, and
succeeded in finding a headache and quite a bit of frustration, and
not much else.  So, non-X-logged-in-user command-line tools can't open
an X window 'cuz X isn't listening, in a really thorough way.

Oh, for what it's worth for a datapoint for benchmarking hylafax
usage:  I admin a multiserver hylafax solution at work using digi
acceleport RAS cards.  I've been VERY happy with the solution.  Digi's
tech support is hands-down fantastic, and the platform is rock-solid. 
Several thousand faxes a month, inbound and outbound.  We did a bit of
hylafax h4x0ring to do automatic inbound fax assignment/direction by
using a great little command-line software package that writes
barcodes to pdfs and reads 'em from pdfs/tiffs/etc.  Overall, saved us
about $100k on costs over a Biscom solution.  Bosses happy about that,
customers too.

Anyways, thanks folks.

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