Hylafax - Open Source Fax Server

Hylafax is a great, reliable fax server.  It works with almost any fax modem.  The main web page is at www.hylafax.org 

Although a new version (v 6.) has just been released, I am working with one of the older versions (v4.4.4).

I've installed another Open Source program that does OCR.  It's called tesseract-ocr code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/

Now, once hylafax has saved the incoming fax as a .tif image, I generate a .pdf AND a .txt file containing the OCRed data.

Ubuntu notes:

/var/spool/hylafax/bin/faxrcvd processes incoming faxes.

/var/spool/hylafax/bin/tiff2pdf can convert .tif files to .pdf

/var/spool/hylafax/recvq is the folder that contains the incoming faxes (in .tif format).

/var/spool/hylafax/log contains the log of each call.

/var/log/hylafax contains the program logs

Configuration:

/etc/hylafax/config.ttyS0 - has parameters for the modem on COM1:

AreaCode: 514

FAXNumber: +1.514.555.1212

RecvFileMode: 0600 is the default for the received file mode.  I change it to 0644

LocalIdentifier: Oscar Fax Machine

Customization:

/var/spool/hylafax/etc/FaxDispatch is where you can add code to convert and/or redirect the incoming faxes.  It is called from the faxrcvd script.

The following can be added to FaxDispatch to automatically convert incoming faxes (.tif) to adobe (.pdf)

if [ -f $FILE ]; then
  /var/spool/hylafax/bin/tiff2pdf -o ${FILE}.pdf $FILE
  chmod 644 ${FILE}.pdf
fi

Client software:

If you want to view the incoming faxes or use Hylafax to send faxes, there are a number of Hylafax compatible clients that you can use.  On my Windows Vista PC, I am currently using YajHFC (Yet another java Hylafax Fax Client).  Since this is a Java client, it should also work on Linux and Mac.

Another simpler option is to make the incoming fax folder shared (using Samba) and allow access to the folder.

Links:

edoceo.com/liber/network-hylafax-samba