TUTORIAL Install Incredible Fax 11

[darmock]

So here it is.

Announcing the Incredible Fax 2.0 Beta Program

Because of problems with earlier versions of the incredible fax and Centos 6.2 we have rewritten, from the ground up, a new install program along with updating a number of things. The new install program works and does not cause any problems with PIAF 2.0. Here are some of the features.

1. Installs hylafax 6.0.5/iaxmodem 1.2.0/Avantfax 3.3.3/tesseract 3.0.1
2. Modifies the way these programs start to work with centos 6.2
3. Automatically installs the latest hylafax webmin module.
4. Generates MOST of the asterisk configs
5. extensively logs the install process
6. Most of the support libraries required by the various programs have been added to the PIAF repo (Along with the source for the types that actually care about this)
7. Added an inordinate amount of pre checking to ensure that Incredible Fax 2 can be installed on a BASE install of PBX in a Flash 2.0.6.2
8. You no longer need to have incredible pbx installed to use incredible fax.


What is not done

1. Extensive testing of every possible configuration. This is not going to happen. It works over here on a virgin PBX in a Flash install based on the 2.0.6.2.1 ISO.

2. Have not tested it on existing installs that have been extensively customized. Thus it may break existing stuff.

3. Only works on 32 bit installs at the moment. The 64 bit will be worked on only after the 32 bit is stable. If you try to install it on a 64 bit based os it will exit. Currently there is a bug in iaxmodem and centos 6.2-64bit which we are working on.

4. Only works with Centos 6.2 and above. If you try to install it on Centos 6.0 or Centos 6.1 it will fail. We will not be supporting previous versions of Centos prior to 6.2 at all. (There are extensive reasons for this leave it at that please)

5. Freepbx extension for fax is not pre-setup. This will change in the next version of our payloads until then you are on your own to set it up.

6. This should be independent of the version of fpbx you use however all development was done using fpbx 2.10beta 3

7. The automation between hylafax and tesseract has not been developed as of yet. Tesseract is a free OCR program that avantfax is supposed to support directly BUT I have not had the time to work on it. It was a major thing just getting it installed and reliable under Centos 6.2

8. I have not done any documentation with screen captures yet. Not sure it is needed but......I am sure Ward will do a write up on it when he gets back from vacation.

9. I have not finished the statusfax program yet which is similar in nature to the status and status2 programs.

Caveats

1. This is a work in progress. Currently it installs everything and it seems to work. There are a number of little things we are still cleaning up. Unfortunately I have problems with my sip lines as faxes so it down need more testing on lines that actually support sip.

2. We welcome bug reports.... really..; however, providing us with a report that says "program broke".. "fix" may expose you to excessive sarcasm from the dev team. Really YOU NEED TO LOOK IN THE LOG FILE Before posting anything! Relevant snippets from the log file are appreciated. Long runs of log files is the same as saying "program broke".. "fix". just look in /var/log/install-incredfax2 and see what jumps out at you.

3. The install program will force your system to reboot. Yep it is required.

4. This has been developed and tested with the following. Vmware Workstation 8/Proxmox 1.8/Hardware During the beta period this is the only stuff we can answer questions about. If it works on esxi/xen/virtualbox great news but we dont support it.

5. It installs with success on these systems 100% of the time with no problems. My count is well over 100 installs in the test cycle. It is ONLY tested on PBX in a Flash using the 2.0.6.2.1 ISO Which uses Centos 6.2. The Incredible Fax 2.0 is installed immediately after the second reboot which is just after asterisk is installed. No modifications AT ALL are done prior to the installation of the incredible fax 2.0. It will not install on any other distro or version of PIAF. We will not be backporting this AT ALL.

6. Good luck


update-programs -d
pbx-menu
scroll down to the bottom and select install-incredfax2





Tom

 

[darmock]

There seemed to be some permission errors on the beta folder for downloading this program We have managed to fix the problem and the install-incredfax2 is again available.

Sorry for the problems sticky fingers.

Tom

 

[jvangent100]

test

Incredible indeed !

Installed this on PIAF 2.0.6.1 which runs on Hyper-v. Installed this system last week, fully configured and also patched 1.8.8.0 to include some fixes that make MWI work with Exchange 2010 UM. The installation went without a glitch, even though Hylafax was already installed (non working version, I did deinstall avantfax though).

I can now easily send faxes and receive them, even with the Freepbx sip fax detection, that seems to be working correctly.

Nice one, thanks.

 

[VaHam]

Very nice work!!!!!

I too had installed the early non working version. I did modify the rh-install.sh and rh-uninstall.sh script to add the . and it almost but not quite worked.

I did run rh-uninstall.sh and then ran the new script from the OP. It not only installed but corrected my earlier botch up.

It worked like a champ and Hylafax/Avantfax works great both incoming and outgoing using just a GV trunk.

I have only tested with one page faxes thus far however.

Thanks for your hard work!

 

[darmock]

Glad to actually get some feedback finally. Course it was the holidays. This has now been moved into the pbx-menu program that comes with every new install of PIAF 2.0.6.x Purple or Red. I just have a couple more minor changes to do.

I have been thinking of including a java based fax sending client with the install as it seems to "just work" and runs on win/mac/linux



Tom

 

[jvangent100]

Glad to actually get some feedback finally. Course it was the holidays. This has now been moved into the pbx-menu program that comes with every new install of PIAF 2.0.6.x Purple or Red. I just have a couple more minor changes to do.

I have been thinking of including a java based fax sending client with the install as it seems to "just work" and runs on win/mac/linux



Tom

Funny you should mention that, I actually found a "native" client that runs on recent versions of windows and also on x64. It also is capable of using passive mode, which makes it possible to restrict the number of open ports for printing to work to just one (the default listening port 4559). You do need to allow traffic from the server to the active port on the client.

I guess this doesn't offer multi platform, but the client does work correctly.

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/pr...ndows7.7z?r=&ts=1325458549&use_mirror=freefrA

 

[VaHam]

Glad to actually get some feedback finally. Course it was the holidays. This has now been moved into the pbx-menu program that comes with every new install of PIAF 2.0.6.x Purple or Red. I just have a couple more minor changes to do.

I have been thinking of including a java based fax sending client with the install as it seems to "just work" and runs on win/mac/linux



Tom

I have had great success with the YajHFC (Yet another Java HylaFAX client) client.

 

[darmock]

I have had great success with the YajHFC (Yet another Java HylaFAX client) client.

That was what I was going to add to the package. I also need to get someone to look at the tesseract integration to allow for OCR in avantfax.... It seems you just need a couple of scripts to make ocr work within avantfax. We did the heavy lifting of getting it installed correctly any takers out there?


Just finishing up statusfax which will give you a bunch of info about what is going on with incredible fax 2.0 from the command line. While avantfax and the new webmin module have a lot of it sometimes admin types favour a simple cli based summary.


Tom

 

[darmock]

Statusfax is now part of the PIAF 2.0.6.X family.

statusfax provides the admin of a piaf 206x box with a quick indication of the status of incredible fax 2.0 from the CLI. This is an adjunct program to both the avantfax and webmin-hylafax web based modules. It is handy if you are tweaking various conf files in the cli and want to know what is going on with the incredible fax 2.0 system.

It wont run on a system that does not have the incredible fax 2.0 installed.

How do I get it?

update-program -d (eventually this will be pushed out to our other mirrors and you wont have to use the -d flag)

statusfax

 

[darmock]

Yah there was a problem with a bit error in the install-incredfax2 program. Fixed/uploaded/tested/ @1154 Eastern. If you got an error unexpected token try

update-programs -d again
then

pbx-menu


select install-incredfax2 near the bottom.


Tom

 

[darmock]

While we are doing some changes you all might want to do the following instead

log into the cli

update-programs -d

then

install-incredfax2 -d

This forces the latest incrediblefax 2.0 payload to be downloaded from the developer site. The other mirrors wont be in sync till tomorrow.

-d stands for developer. There is usually a 24 hour time between the developer site getting new stuff and it making it thru piaf space.

Just noticed while I was adding some code to mod iptables to allow remote hylafax clients to connect to the server "ON THE LOCAL LAN". Seems to work fine also connecting via hamachi!

Tom

 

[jvangent100]

Nice status screen, works on my machine. Did I mention that this incredible fax system seems to be running very very stable. I tested it for the last two days, and it didn't miss a single incoming or outgoing fax. Didn't know IP faxing could be so reliable.

 

[darmock]

It is all in how you season the code and stir the bytes. I find counter clockwise works best


Thanks we have been burning the midnight oil on this. There are any number of small things left to do. We have just finished updating the install with the ability to open iptables for the various hylafax print drivers. It is based on what the program senses on your system, For the moment it only works with class C networks; any others you will have to hand configure in iptables. We also put in a choice to allow connectivity via hamachi if it is installed prior to installing the fax server

Also just added an optional download that puts various hylafax print clients onto your machine, for mac/windows/linux. We have had a chance to BRIEFLY test for connectivity except for the MAC stuff as I don't have one..... (anyone got an old one they want to send me?)

Still left to do


1. Get tesseract integrated with avantfax....
2. Pre add the stuff in freepbx so it is a turnkey operation and the user does not have to know how to do this step.... Course how will people learn?
3. Write some docs (ughhh any takers? I am tired of doing it) Generally we would like someone to do step by step for the install with screen captures etc.... I have gotten too busy lately as I am back in school full time for another degree.... sigh... less time for PIAF
4. I was just thinking that a validation routine that shows email is working would be a good thing.
5. I am sure there is more......


Tom

 

[jvangent100]

Right,

I tested the java client on OSX 10.7.2 (Lion), and it does work correctly.

I was able to use the client, but there seems to be some firewall issues, so I briefly disabled iptables. Then I was able to signon to the server and send out faxes. The mac version doesn't seem to have a print driver option, which makes faxing a bit of a hassle on these systems.

I also tried the java client linked earlier on Windows, basically with the same result, but in this case it did come with a print driver option. Again, I seem to be missing some ports to be opened on the firewall. I have just port 4559 open and I also tried to tell the ip_conntrack_ftp to treat 4559 as an ftp port. But to date I did not manage to get the active connection working with just this port opened.

The print driver I linked to previously, which IMHO is the better option, as it uses stock windows printing api as opposed to the java client, has an option to use passive mode, and to specify the port which needs to be opened on the client. This way, I can easily open that port on all clients by using group policy firewall rules. That way, I still only have to open one port on the PBX, and one port on each client.

I am kind of curious what ports you actually open on the pbx side to make the java client work ?

I didn't test the client on a linux box, as the two linux boxes I have running both don't have a gui

 

[darmock]

At the moment we open up all the ports from the local lan only in IPtables. Not the best solution but all of the info out there seems to indicate that there are multiple ports but no one has a complete list! It was rumoured that it used 4559/4557/21 but not that does not work!

I used the

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp -s iprange/netmask -j ACCEPT

Which allows the client to all work. Not the best solution but hopefully someone will come along with a complete list. Of course this is an optional step so people do not have to use it.

I will add your suggested client to the hylafax-client package


Thanks for the testing

Tom

 

[jvangent100]

I have played around with the firewall a bit more. The thing is that on Windows and OSX active mode works correctly, even with just one port open on the firewall on the PBX (4559).

In short port 4559 should be open to clients at all times. This is the control port, similar as port 21 for FTP. This can be easily checked on Windows by using ftp and issuing a "open 192.168.0.8 4559" I get presented with username and password, which after entered opens the connection on the ftp server on port 4559. The minute I enter ls, I get a windows firewall prompt, asking me to allow traffic for ftp.exe. If I accept it, the ls command will be successfull the second time I enter it, and each and every time subsequently entered.

This is because Windows made a program exception in the firewall, hence any reply from the hylafax server on it's data port will be accepted by the client (at least if using the ftp program). The exact same thing happens with the java%2

 

[jvangent100]

Mulitple edits to post seem to be going horribly wrong here ?

In any case, disregard the previous post.

I figured out how it works in relation to firewalls.

For both the native print driver and the java print client there are two possible modes: active and passive.

Active mode works like this: The client side connects to the control port on the PBX (4559), and then tells the PBX to send data on a port on the client side, hence the client opens up a port (listens) and the PBX sends data to that port. So in this mode, the only port that needs to be opened on the PBX is 4559, on the client side, the firewall needs to be configured to allow incomming connections to the data port.

Now using the native print driver, this one allows to actually set that port (default is 32001), so you can restrict the Windows firewall to allow incomming connections on port 32001 for the PBX IP address only for c:\windows\system32\spoolsv.exe.

For the java client, there is no apparant way to actually set that port, however a program exception for java and javaw is enough, as this way in active mode, the firewall will allow incomming traffic that is directed to either of these two applications.

The same is possible on OSX. Not sure about linux, but of course opening up TCP ports for just the PBX would certainly do the trick.

Passive mode, on the other hand works directly opposite. The client still connects to 4559 but now the server chooses a port to listen to, In my tests however, this is never the same port, so it will be hard to make a firewall rule, except to open up all tcp ports for your local lan.

I personally prefer the active mode, certainly on Windows where I can restrict it to just one port and one source IP address and further restricting it to just one process name.

 

[darmock]

Great research! It comes down to a great big pain in the ass. I know I was testing this on my local lan with all of the firewalls disabled on all the machines just to level the playing field. For production environments I guess we will have to leave it up to the admins to see if they will want to add the hole in iptables or not.

I agree with your observations about active versus passive. The problems with the various clients were one reason we gave our head a shake when we decided to include them as an optional download. We were concerned that if they were included that some people would demand support for everything in all circumstances. Our concept has always been give people the tools in a central location and let them loose.

My little test bed using hamachi to connect the java clients together works just fine and it is somewhat secure also.


Tom

 

[darmock]

Early results for running incredible fax 2.0 on 64 bit machines are promising. The errors with 64 bit OS's and iaxmodem seems to be fixed now after a little tweaking. One or 2 minor problems have cropped up which we are fixing now. Will let you all know.


Tom

 

[darmock]

64bit version needs testing

I have pushed out the 64 bit version of install-incredfax2. After some "minor" changes everything seems to work. We have removed the restriction about it installing on 64 bit os's. Please give it a try and report back


1. Log into the CLI
2. update-programs -d
3. install-incredfax2 -d


We will be syncing the PIAF mirrors later today so the need for the -d flag should go away by tomorrow

Tom