The HylaFAX "How-To" Guide

Lee Howard, faxguy@howardsilvan.com

v4.2.2, 19 Oct 2005

This is a detailed guide to HylaFAX installation, configuration, and troubleshooting.

5. Submitting Faxes From Clients

One of the many reasons for using HylaFAX is for the ability to submit faxes from any networked computer, in any order, and in any quantity. HylaFAX will work away at them without anyone ever walking to a fax machine, and better yet, nobody will be wasting their time watching paper pass through it... page after page after boring page. If there's a busy signal or no answer, HylaFAX will try later, no need to remember in a few minutes. HylaFAX remembers its job well.

HylaFAX server must interact with a client program of some kind to receive its faxing instructions. These client programs may reside on another computer, on the same system as HylaFAX server, or (as in most cases) a combination of client programs both on the HylaFAX system and off work together for proper fax sending.

This section deals with several different approaches to this task. However, it is advisable to at least understand the basics of the HylaFAX client programs themselves, as sent-fax problem debugging and troubleshooting is best done at that level first. The essential HylaFAX client programs with which to be familiar are: faxcover(1), faxmail(1), faxrm(1), faxstat(1), and especially sendfax(1). A good reading would also include hylafax-client(1).

For another HylaFAX client list, see Links.

5.1 *NIX Clients

5.2 Windows Clients

5.3 Mac Clients

5.4 Email-To-Fax Configuration

There are numerous ways to implement an email-to-fax configuration, and they will vary noticeably depending on the MTA/MDA (what sendmail package) that is used, the "To" addressing, and the manner by which the sender communicates the destination number. Some common ways to communicate the destination number are: faxmail is a HylaFAX client program which takes an electronic mail message on standard input and converts it to PostScript in a form that is suitable for transmission as a facsimile. Read the man page: faxmail(1). faxmail only supports PostScript attachments by default. In order to support other attachment types a MIME converter script must be used. Recent versions of HylaFAX come with default MIMEConverters for PDF and TIFF file types. To handle other types of files please read faxmail(1) and examine the default MIMEConverters.

5.5 Cross-Platform Clients

5.6 Faxing From Samba

It is possible to send a (Hyla)FAX by printing to a Samba-defined fax-printer using a Windows client. This is the recipe:

If there are any difficulties or questions, do not hesitate to contact Ignace Suy ignace.suy@purpel3.nl He has provided a sambafax web-site at: http://www.purpel3.nl/sambafax/ please refer to it for the most up-to-date information. If you (re team) are working with it, drop him a line.

Sambafax is now suited to run under the printing systems lpd, LPRng and CUPS. For CUPS the installation is somewhat different. Refer to the website above.

5.7 Faxing via IBM AS/400

Although a true HylaFAX client for AS/400 is not available (more tests with the gnu-hylafax java client are scheduled), you can send facsimiles as print jobs to the HylaFAX server. To do this, some things have to be done but for now a little note.
I tested this with Red Hat Linux but using a different distros will not present to much difficulties. The feedback that I received from earlier version of this howto is that most of the people are not AS/400 experts wich is not a problem but some language that I use in the steps for AS/400 setup make sense in that plattaform. Ask if you needed any explanation.

This section was contributed by Pedro Roçadas procadas@yahoo.com
Pedro thanks Giulio Orsero for his assistance on this task.