Re: [hylafax-users] device names

[Lee Howard <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2005.01.16 05:38 Steve Underwood wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I might be missing something, but it seems Hylafax doesn't like 
> device names below the top level in /dev. It seems device name like 
> /dev/pty/42, for example, can't be associated with a config file. Am 
> I missing something, or will this need fixing as the device heirarchy 
> becomes more convoluted.

HylaFAX creates FIFO files in the spool directory for the devices using 
the device name, for example /var/spool/hylafax/FIFO.ttyS0.  If you're 
using a device name that includes a subdirectory (i.e. doesn't reside 
directly in the /dev/ directory), then HylaFAX's naming convention for 
the FIFO files becomes slightly more complicated, because it's not 
capable of handling /var/spool/hylafax/FIFO.pty/42.  Some older 
platforms like to put standard devices (like serial ports) in 
subdirectories anyway, and so what HylaFAX does, is it translates an 
underscore ("_") into an ("/") when converting a FIFO name into a 
pathname.  Thus, the proper FIFO for your pty should be 
/var/spool/hylafax/FIFO.pty_42.  However, you should pretty much just 
ignore all of this because you should be able to just run:

  faxaddmodem pty/42
  faxgetty pty/42

And all will work as you expect, except that the config file will be 
/var/spool/hylafax/etc/config.pty_42 and the FIFO file will be 
/var/spool/hylafax/FIFO.pty_42.

As an aside... this "_" to "/" translation poses a problems for devices 
that use underscores in the device name like Digi and Patton devices 
which tend to create device nodes named /dev/ttyG0_00 and 
/dev/ttyG0_01.  For those devices the general recommendation has been 
to use symlinks: /dev/ttyG000 -> /dev/ttyG0_00, etc. and then to refer 
to the symlink instead.  In my opinion this is just a workaround for a 
bug, though.  HylaFAX *should* be able to know when to translate the 
underscore and when to not (based on how the user supplied the 
command), but for now that's just what we do.

Thanks.

Lee.

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