Hylafax Installation on Debian 5

HylaFAX is an FREE enterprise-class system for sending and receiving facsimiles as well as for sending alpha-numeric pages. The software is designed around a client-server architecture. Fax modems may reside on a single machine on a network and clients can submit an outbound job from any other machine on the network. Client software is designed to be lightweight and easy to port. HylaFAX is designed to be very robust and reliable. The fax server is designed to guard against unexpected failures in the software, in the configuration, in the hardware and in general use. HylaFAX can support multiple modems and a heavy traffic load. If you expect to send more than a few facsimiles a day, then HylaFAX is the fax package for you!

 

The server that I am going to use for this demo has a x32 CPU architecture and I will be using Debian 5 LENNY i386 version of DEBIAN. First download and install Debian OS which matches your CPU architecture. I will not show how to setup Debian because of its straight forward installation. In case someone might need a tutorial about it, here is a good tutorial about debian installation.

 

If you installed Debian, we can start. There is a file named sources.list on debian. This file specifies from where the package will be installed. This is optional, you can edit this file if you want to add an additional download mirror. Use the command below to open sources.list

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

By default, it installs the packages from the DVDs. I will not edit sources.list

 


# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.10 _Lenny_ - Official i386 DVD Binary-1 20120310-12:44]/ lenny contrib main

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.10 _Lenny_ - Official i386 DVD Binary-1 20120310-12:44]/ lenny contrib main

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.10 _Lenny_ - Official i386 DVD Binary-2 20120310-12:44]/ lenny contrib main

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.10 _Lenny_ - Official i386 DVD Binary-3 20120310-12:44]/ lenny contrib main

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.10 _Lenny_ - Official i386 DVD Binary-4 20120310-12:44]/ lenny contrib main

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.10 _Lenny_ - Official i386 DVD Binary-5 20120310-12:44]/ lenny contrib main

# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
#deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib
# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
#deb-src http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib

# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
#deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main contrib
# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
#deb-src http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main contrib

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ hamm contrib main non-free
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian lenny main
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-security lenny/updates main
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main
deb http://archive.debian.org/backports.org lenny-backports main

 Close sources.list, If you already modified something, hit Ctrl-O to save or Ctrl-X to close the file.

And if you modified sources.list, you also need to update your package list. Run the below command.

# apt-get update

Make sure you assigned a static IP address to your server.

You need to run below command to start the installation. Installation might ask you the Debian Installaion DVDs. 

#apt-get install hylafax-server

 Make sure you plugged in your modem to the server's port.Then run the command below.

#faxsetup

 

You will be prompted with the question below. Bold and Underlined questions will be answered according to your needs.

 

Country code [1]? 90
Area code [415]? 216
Phone number of fax modem [+1.999.555.1212]? +90.216.474.5353
Local identification string (for TSI/CIG) ["NothingSetup"]? Company Name
Long distance dialing prefix [1]? 0
International dialing prefix [011]? 00
Dial string rules file (relative to /var/spool/hylafax) [etc/dialrules]?
Tracing during normal server operation [1]?
Tracing during send and receive sessions [11]?
Protection mode for received facsimile [0600]? 0644
Protection mode for session logs [0600]? 0644
Protection mode for ttyS0 [0600]? 0666
Rings to wait before answering [1]?
Modem speaker volume [off]? LOW
ommand line arguments to getty program ["-h %l dx_%s"]?
Pathname of TSI access control list file (relative to /var/spool/hylafax) [""]?
Pathname of Caller-ID access control list file (relative to /var/spool/hylafax) [""]?
Tag line font file (relative to /var/spool/hylafax) [etc/lutRS18.pcf]?
Tag line format string ["From %%l|%c|Page %%P of %%T"]?
Time before purging a stale UUCP lock file (secs) [30]?
Hold UUCP lockfile during inbound data calls [Yes]?
Hold UUCP lockfile during inbound voice calls [Yes]?
Percent good lines to accept during copy quality checking [95]?
Max consecutive bad lines to accept during copy quality checking [5]?
Max number of pages to accept in a received facsimile [25]?
Syslog facility name for ServerTracing messages [daemon]?
Set UID to 0 to manipulate CLOCAL [""]?
Use available priority job scheduling mechanism [""]

 

Installation will ask you whether your modem is Class1 or Class2. Choose Class1.

You will also prompted some questions about modem configuration. Just click OK, Next and finish the installation.

You can also specify from which network fax may be sent. Run the command below and open hosts.hfaxd file.

nano /etc/hylafax/hosts.hfaxd


 I will only allow ip ranges from 10.20 and 10.21. The others will not be able to send fax.

10\.20\.:::

10\.21\.:::

Some more examples about the ip ranges can be found below.

For 192.168.10.0 network, you need to add 192\.168\.10\.:::

For 172.16.0.0  network, you need to add 172\.16\.:::

 

Run faxstat command to see if your Fax Server is running and healthy.

faxstat

The status message should be something like this.

HylaFAX scheduler on faxserver.domain.local: Running

Modem ttyS0 (+90.216.474.5353): Running and idle

 

WARNING: There are files that belong to hylafax under /var/spool. DO NOT change anything on these files. For configuration, you are supposed to edit files under /etc

Lets create a user. 

# adduser selimatmaca

 Adding user `selimatmaca' ...

Adding new group `selimatmaca' (1003) ...

Adding new user `selimatmaca' (1003) with group `selimatmaca' ...

Creating home directory `/home/selimatmaca' ...

Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...

Enter new UNIX password:

Retype new UNIX password:

passwd: password updated successfully Changing the user information for selimatmaca

Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default

Full Name []: Selim Atmaca

Room Number []:

Work Phone []:

Home Phone []:

Other []:

Is the information correct? [Y/n] y

 

Add the newly created user to the HylaFAX  UID:1003

# faxadduser -p Mypass12345 -u 1003 selimatmaca

Add also an admin account to HylaFAX:


# adduser admin
# faxadduser -a MYpassword -p MYpassword -u 1004 admin

 

When sending a text file, I recieved the error message below.

"No font metric information"

Test if you can send a text file (issue.net is a text file). 

# sendfax -n -d  /etc/issue.net

 

Solution: 

nano /etc/hylafax/hyla.conf

Change FontMap variable as below.

FontMap:  /usr/share/ghostscript/8.64/Resource/Init:/usr/share/ghostscript/8.64/Resource/Init:/var/lib/defoma/gs.d/dirs/fonts

FontPath: /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts

Restart HylaFAX.

/etc/init.d/hylafax restart

Test if you can recieve fax. Incoming faxes will be placed under /var/spool/hylafax/recvq/ folder. If there is no problem with receiving fax, go ahead and read Avantfax Installation article to have a nice looking web interface for HylaFAX.

 

Keep in mind that, by default Hylafax can send 50 faxes at a time. To check which faxes successfully sent and which are not, you need to see /var/spool/hylafax/log