TUTORIAL Install Incredible Fax 11

wardmundy

Nerd Uno
Joined
Oct 12, 2007
Messages
19,170
Reaction score
5,199
Tom can give you the authoritative answer, but he's out this evening. I think CentOS 6.2 is required. If you have used yum to upgrade your system to CentOS 6.2, it should work. The 6.1 kernel shouldn't matter. Make a backup first. :wink5:
 

yajrendrag

Member
Joined
Sep 17, 2010
Messages
83
Reaction score
8
Fax How To...

Really? No one wants to share the steps how they got incredible fax 2.0 running, past the initial install, so I can generate a set of docs and share them out?

Come on guys......

I'll bite...

after install - i did only a few steps:

-open http://server_ip/avantfax
-click "settings" in upper right
-i overwrote the admin name with my name
-entered a Fax ID and TSID - probably optional steps
-can't even remember if i set a password
-set an email address (different than the email address that you entered during fax setup)
-clicked "update" button
-reboot
-set an inbound route for your Fax DID with a custom destination of hylafax.

this is from memory and i didn't do it in this order originally because i had some trouble
HTML:
http://pbxinaflash.com/community/threads/piaf2-incredfax2-outbound-problem.12075/?t=12075
, which i am guessing was related to the email address i used initially or lack of a reboot.

-Jay
 
Last edited by a moderator:

atsak

Guru
Joined
Sep 7, 2009
Messages
2,381
Reaction score
436
OK so what seems to have been the problem is that Hylafax didn't start for some reason. Pressed the button in Webmin and my first test fax appeared.

Also I have the same bug I've seen elsewhere in Firefox 3.6.25 I can not log in (just keeps saying invalid password). Other versions are fine, IE is fine. Haven't had time to fiddle with Chrome yet so . . .

Will do some more testing. If that works I'll do a fresh install on a spare computer and take some screenshots etc then document; I won't get to that until next week though so if someone else can do it sooner maybe they should?????
 

darmock

PIAF Developer
Joined
Oct 18, 2007
Messages
2,892
Reaction score
98
I was just about to install lncredible fax, but saw this. The original posting talks about running on PIAF 2.0.6.2.1 but later postings talk about 2.0.6.x. I am running 2.0.6.1 - does this work, or is 2.0.6.2.1 a minimum...

Peter

The Centos 6.2 is a minimum I am afraid. There are a number of things different between 6.1 and 6.2 so the decision was made to only support 6.2 and above. There are some other things coming out that will only work with Centos 6.2 and above so you will need to upgrade Centos. I dont have a Centos 6.1 based system around any more to check if upgrading centos thru update-source is good enough or not. Give it a try and let me know. We dont actually check the kernel but there are about 8 other things we do check to ensure that the system actually meets compatibility. As we progress down path of future development Closer integration with our specific version of Centos will occur.

Centos 6 is a DIFFERENT beast from all of the previous ones and the upgrade to it has been a nightmare. That being said now that it works it actually seems to be more stable. Once ported over the PIAF build system to run under centos 6.2 it actually became way more stable.

Tom
 

darmock

PIAF Developer
Joined
Oct 18, 2007
Messages
2,892
Reaction score
98
Thanks will give that a try.... I have been meaning to put up a long term fax server using a gmail phone number. I will use this as a model for the docs.


Tom
 

darmock

PIAF Developer
Joined
Oct 18, 2007
Messages
2,892
Reaction score
98
There has been an update to the install-incredfax2 which corrects an error in the file /etc/cron.d/avantfax. It seems this file is created by avantfax and it does not include a user name thus it errors under cron.

New installs have this corrected

current installs need to run update-fixes to patch this file. The revised update-fxes should be available tomorrow if you really need it now then

update-programs -d
update-fixes -d


There was also an issue with the install not writing the install version correctly. This is not anything that requires a fix. You will notice this after you run update-fixes and then run statusfax which has also been updated to show both installed version and install date.

Thus if run on an existing install it will show install-incredpbx2 instead of the version 2.0.9. Please ignore this!


Tom
 

kenn10

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 16, 2007
Messages
3,764
Reaction score
2,173
Re-Install Incredfax2

Joe - I was messing around on my test system trying to convert FPBX files from my production system and lost the Incredfax2 hooks in FreePBX. The fax server is still running and accessible from the browser but can no longer point calls to it.

Is there an easy script to recreate the FreePBX hooks since the rest of the fax stuff is there? How about a way to completely remove it all and re-install?
 

darmock

PIAF Developer
Joined
Oct 18, 2007
Messages
2,892
Reaction score
98
Which joe are you asking? I cant find a joe in this thread.

Beyond that Ward and I wrote this version so I assume you meant the question for us.

Which files were you trying to convert? The fpbx backup files?


There is no UNINSTALL for either Incredible PBX or Incredible FAX. This is why they will only run once on any given system.

I suppose you will have to wait to the new Incredible Backup/Restore 2.0 comes out. This program should take care of restoring from one to the other as long as the server restoring to is uninitialized and has the same base install of programs. Of course this wont fix your hosed test machine.

Unfortunately the freepbx backup system is not specifically designed to support incredible pbx or incredible fax so your experience may be somewhat variable.

Tom
 

kenn10

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 16, 2007
Messages
3,764
Reaction score
2,173
Sorry Tom, that was for you and I appreciate the response. Since its just a development system, I'll blow it away and try again.

What I was trying to get restored was the custom destination of the fax which was accessed in FreePBX.
 

The Deacon

Guru
Joined
Jan 29, 2008
Messages
296
Reaction score
14
I got Incredible Fax 2 installed and am able to reliably send faxes out, but the inbound faxes don't show up.

I can watch the http://<IPADDRESS>/avantfax/inbox.php page, and see that ttyIAX0 shows me that it's receiving a fax (and then show me the inbound fax number), but that's it.

No notification, no fax, nothing.

If I poke around, I see that the faxes are in the /var/spool/hylafax/recvq directory, but that's as far as they get. Here is a quick snapshot of the directory
Code:
root@fax1:/var/spool/hylafax/recvq $ ls -la
total 32
drwxr-xr-x  2 uucp uucp 4096 Feb  8 17:16 .
drwxr-xr-x 17 uucp uucp 4096 Feb  8 16:10 ..
-rw-------  1 uucp uucp 3720 Feb  8 16:22 fax000000002.tif
-rw-------  1 uucp uucp 3696 Feb  8 16:32 fax000000003.tif
-rw-------  1 uucp uucp 3564 Feb  8 16:35 fax000000004.tif
-rw-------  1 uucp uucp 3556 Feb  8 16:44 fax000000005.tif
-rw-------  1 uucp uucp 3670 Feb  8 17:16 fax000000006.tif
-rw-------  1 uucp uucp    1 Feb  8 17:16 seqf
root@fax1:/var/spool/hylafax/recvq $
and here is the statusfax page:

Code:
                                             ┌───────────────────────Incredible Fax 2 Information─────────────────────────┐
                                             │ Hylafax Running         = OK     | FaxQueue Running        = OK            │  
                                             │ Iaxmodem Running        = OK     | Faxgetty Running        = OK            │  
                                             │ Lepton Installed        = N/A    | Tesseract Installed     = N/A           │  
                                             │                                                                            │  
                                             │ Hylafax Version           =  6.0.5                                         │  
                                             │ Iaxmodem Version          =  1.2.0                                         │  
                                             │ Avantfax Version          =  3.3.3                                         │  
                                             │ Tesseract Version         =  3.0.1                                         │  
                                             │ Lepton Version            =  1.68                                          │  
                                             │ Total Iaxmodems running   =  4                                             │  
                                             │ Total Faxgetty running    =  4                                             │  
                                             │ Hylafax Queue 0 Status    =  Running and idle                              │  
                                             │ Hylafax Queue 1 Status    =  Running and idle                              │  
                                             │ Hylafax Queue 2 Status    =  Running and idle                              │  
                                             │ Hylafax Queue 3 Status    =  Running and idle                              │  
                                             │ Incredible Fax Version    =  2.1.1                                         │  
                                             │ Install Date IFAX2        =  Wed Feb 8 16:10:30 PST 2012                   │  
                                             └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Any ideas?
 

jeffmac

Guru
Joined
Jan 16, 2008
Messages
230
Reaction score
9
I was just working through this today, with the same symptoms. I finally fou d a message in the Avantfax system log that said that copying the fax file failed a 'mkdir' command failed. The direcfory was
/var/www/html/avantfax/faxes - it needed to be 'world writable' - that is, permissions of 777. Once I issued a chmod against that directory it all started working.

I found this command in a script for Avantfax on anoyther site.

Tom/Ward, is this a miss in the Incredible Fax 2?

Jeff
 

The Deacon

Guru
Joined
Jan 29, 2008
Messages
296
Reaction score
14
...The directory was
/var/www/html/avantfax/faxes - it needed to be 'world writable' - that is, permissions of 777. Once I issued a chmod against that directory it all started working...

I didn't see anything like that in the error logs, but for fun, I changed permissions on that directory to no avail.

I've reviewed the logs in /var/spool/hylafax/log show what looks like to be faxes being received OK, it's just that they're not being displayed in the GUI (or being emailed)
 

jeffmac

Guru
Joined
Jan 16, 2008
Messages
230
Reaction score
9
The log I found was in Avantfax. There's a dashboard with a pull-down that includes "system logs". I did not find this error anywhere else - and I looked in a lot of places.

Same symptom - I could see the faxes in the recvq directory, but they are supposed to be copied to /var/www/html/avantfax/faxes/ (+ several directory levels under this). The error message I found was:

faxrcvd> Failed to copy recvq/fax000000006.tif to /var/www/html/avantfax/faxes/recvd/2012/02/08/4796577000/000000006/fax.tif
mkdirs> Error creating directory /var/www/html/avantfax/faxes/recvd/2012

That's when I found the "faxes" subdirectory did not have write permission for "others". I found the command:
chmod -R 777 /var/www/html/avantfax/faxes
in the installation script for Avantfax on another site...

The System Logs option I only found by clicking on the "diamond" on the avantfax screen accessible from the Kennonsoft panel. (The url is http://(your server ip/avantfax/admin)

That's what I finally found that showed the issue, and what I found that finally fixed.

Jeff
 

darmock

PIAF Developer
Joined
Oct 18, 2007
Messages
2,892
Reaction score
98
I just posed the fix to all new installs. You might want to try to do the patch onto your existing system. This brings up an interesting new problem which is with the tighter integration of the Incredible line into the base install of PIAF there now is a need to modify the update-fixes program to accommodate this.

The PIAF dev team has to do some brainstorming to figure out the best way to accomplish this so patches can be sent out for incredible-pbx, incredible-fax, incredible-backup (RSN), Automated Incredible-backup (design stage)

Give us a while and once we have tested the crap out of whatever we come up with we will push it out via update-programs.

Tom
 

The Deacon

Guru
Joined
Jan 29, 2008
Messages
296
Reaction score
14
The log I found was in Avantfax. There's a dashboard with a pull-down that includes "system logs". I did not find this error anywhere else - and I looked in a lot of places.

Same symptom - I could see the faxes in the recvq directory, but they are supposed to be copied to /var/www/html/avantfax/faxes/ (+ several directory levels under this). The error message I found was:

faxrcvd> Failed to copy recvq/fax000000006.tif to /var/www/html/avantfax/faxes/recvd/2012/02/08/4796577000/000000006/fax.tif
mkdirs> Error creating directory /var/www/html/avantfax/faxes/recvd/2012

That's when I found the "faxes" subdirectory did not have write permission for "others". I found the command:
chmod -R 777 /var/www/html/avantfax/faxes
in the installation script for Avantfax on another site...

The System Logs option I only found by clicking on the "diamond" on the avantfax screen accessible from the Kennonsoft panel. (The url is http://(your server ip/avantfax/admin)

That's what I finally found that showed the issue, and what I found that finally fixed.

Jeff

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! That worked!

-Rick
 

jeffmac

Guru
Joined
Jan 16, 2008
Messages
230
Reaction score
9
Ok, now I'm on to some clean-up. With Incredible-Fax2 installed I see the following in the log every 5 minutes:

NOTICE[27351] chan_iax2.c: Peer 'iax-fax1' is not dynamic (from 127.0.0.1)
NOTICE[27349] chan_iax2.c: Peer 'iax-fax2' is not dynamic (from 127.0.0.1)
NOTICE[27345] chan_iax2.c: Peer 'iax-fax0' is not dynamic (from 127.0.0.1)
NOTICE[27350] chan_iax2.c: Peer 'iax-fax3' is not dynamic (from 127.0.0.1)

(I see that this has been brought up in this forum before, but the only response has been "it works fine, just ignore the messages" - but I'm just not that type....)

Now, from Asterisk's point of view this complaint seems quite valid - the iaxmodems are not defined as "host=dynamic", they should not need to register. So why are they?

On to the iaxmodem definition files... in /etc/iaxmodem the files are named iaxmodem-cfg.ttyIAX0 (and 1,2, and 3). The config reads:

device /dev/ttyIAX0
owner uucp:uucp
mode 660
port 4570
refresh 300
server 127.0.0.1
peername iax-fax0
cidname Incredible Fax2
cidnumber +00000000000
codec ulaw

Now according to sourceforge doc:
The "refresh" entry indicates the preference on how frequently to refresh
the registration with the Asterisk server. (However, the actual refresh
value that is used will be negotiated between IAXmodem and the Asterisk
server.) By setting this to a value of "0" (zero), IAXmodem will not
register with the server, and thus the server should be configured to
communicate with IAXmodem on a static address.

Ah-hah! refresh the (unneeded) registration every 300 secs (5 mins) - sounds like the culprit!

I have changed my "refresh" value to 0 and restarted my server (wasn't sure how to restart iaxmodem, but now I see I might have been able to user "service iaxmodem restart" - duh!)

No messages!

Jeff
 

darmock

PIAF Developer
Joined
Oct 18, 2007
Messages
2,892
Reaction score
98
Excellent debugging

HOWEVER

does everything still work? While I cant speak as to why that was in there I seem to remember something in ages past where it had to be there.


Let me know how things go if everything still works and no mysterious things occur and I will modify the base install.


Tom
 

jeffmac

Guru
Joined
Jan 16, 2008
Messages
230
Reaction score
9
I made those changes on Friday, and tested this morning.... fax received without any issue.

Jeff
 

Geo(Recovered)

New Member
Joined
May 24, 2013
Messages
13
Reaction score
4
Greetings,

I installed from PiaF 2.0.6.4.2 32-bit ISO (2013-03-31) and ran into a couple of minuscule issues during the process.

First, for those who stumbled across this post, _always_ perform a backup prior to the installation of Incredible PBX, then perform _another_ backup prior to the installation of IncredFax.


Code:
install-incredfax2 - 2.2.0 released on 082612
CentOS release 6.4 (Final) - 32 Bit
**********************************************************************
* Your system appears to meet the requirements!                      *
**********************************************************************
* REQUIRED                     DETECTED
*----------------------------- ------------------------
* Asterisk Version 1.8/10      | 10         <----- 10.12.2
* Freepbx Version 2.8/2.9/2.10 | 2.9.0.11   <----- 2.9.0.12 per GUI
* PIAF Family Version 206X     | 20641      <----- 20642
* CentOS Version 6.2 or higher | 6.4
* CentOS Type 32 or 64 bit     | 32 Bit
**********************************************************************
* Now continuing with the installation                               *
**********************************************************************


I installed PiaF RED, backed up system, installed Incredible PBX 3.x, backed up the system, then ran:

Code:
install-incredpbx3
update-programs
update-fixes

Backed up the system, then ran:

Code:
install-incredfax2

I experienced the following error:

Code:
No package hylafax+-server available.

To work around this minuscule issue, I recovered from backup and ran:

Code:
yum install hylafax*

Which installed both hylaFAX+ server and client.

Next, I ran:

Code:
install-incredfax2

I followed the prompts and the installation completed successfully. :)

After rebooting, I ran the following:
Code:
update-programs
update-fixes
yum install perl-CGI
chkconfig --level 345 hylafax+ on
chkconfig --level 345 iaxmodem on
service hylafax+ restart
service iaxmodem restart

I configured via the <a href="http://www.pbxinaflash.com/community/index.php?threads/hylafax-avantfax-for-piaf-parts-1-4.3645/">Tutorial: HylaFAX / AvantFax for PIAF! - Parts 1-4</a>.

I was able to receive a fax, but had trouble sending one.

The following entry (sanitized and extra spaces removed) was in /var/spool/hylafax/etc/xferfaxlog
Code:
04/09/13 13:19 UNSENT 6 "" user@localhost "1xxxxxxxxxx" "" 0 0 0:00:00 0:00:00 "**** Page has no /MediaBox attribute. Using the current page size.\
   Error: /stackunderflow in --run--\

I updated to ghostscript-9.07 to work around this issue (I recommend CUPS users download/compile/install CUPS first).

Code:
cd /usr/src
w-g-e-t http://downloads.ghostscript.com/public/ghostscript-9.07.tar.gz
tar -xvf ghostscript-9.07.tar.gz
cd ghostscript-9.07
./configure
make
make install
ldconfig

Next, I updated HylaFAX+ to use the newer version of ghostscript.

Using your favorite editor (nano, vi, emacs) or script, edit /var/spool/hylafax/etc/setup.cache.

Change the following line:
Code:
GSRIP='/usr/bin/gs'

to

Code:
GSRIP='/usr/local/bin/gs'

Restart hylaFAX+.

Code:
service hylafax+ restart

I successfully faxed a 100,965,810 byte tiff file (outbound via CallCentric), to my Panasonic Fax unit (inbound Google Voice connected to Obi100).

I should note that hylaFAX+'s automatic resend function works very well... the first two attempts overflowed the receive buffer in the Panasonic Fax unit (it's 10+ years old), and the third attempt switched to line by line mode. :p


(original post date: Apr 10, 2013)
 

centoasa

Member
Joined
May 31, 2009
Messages
118
Reaction score
1
I have done everything, outbound faxing ok, but I get the following message:

Fax: OK
Failed to create PDF for Archive:-(
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
25,782
Messages
167,512
Members
19,203
Latest member
frapu
Get 3CX - Absolutely Free!

Link up your team and customers Phone System Live Chat Video Conferencing

Hosted or Self-managed. Up to 10 users free forever. No credit card. Try risk free.

3CX
A 3CX Account with that email already exists. You will be redirected to the Customer Portal to sign in or reset your password if you've forgotten it.
Top