Bug#84755: hylafax: faxanswer FIFO path incorrect
Package: hylafax
Version: 4.0.2-14
Severity: normal
HylaFAX includes a program called faxanswer which can be used to
instruct the faxgetty to answer the phone immediately. It does this by
sending a message to the FIFO of the faxgetty telling it to "answer now".
In a Debian system, the faxgetty is compiled to create its FIFO in
/var/spool/fax/dev, eg, /var/spool/fax/dev/FIFO.ttyS1
When faxanswer is used, eg, "faxanswer -h fax ttyS1", it changes to the
directory /var/spool/fax, and then tries to open dev_FIFO.ttyS1, which
does not exist. This means that faxanswer does not work.
Looking at the compiled binary, it does contain the correct relative
path ("dev/FIFO") for the FIFO. However once it is actually used, this
has become "dev_FIFO" (and the relevant suffix), so it seems faxanswer
includes some code to turn directory separators into something else.
Because of this problem, faxanswer cannot be used to ask for a fax to be
received immediately, and hence setting "RingsBeforeAnswer" to 0 to
be able to manually control when faxes are received does not work.
As a work around I have created a symlink on my system in /var/spool/fax
from:
dev_FIFO.ttyS1 -> dev/FIFO.ttyS1
This allows this feature to work. It would be useful if either the
faxanswer code could be corrected to work with the specified FIFO path,
or the FIFO path could be changed to one that works "out of the box", or
at worst something could be added to README.Debian warning of the issue.
-- System Information
Debian Release: 2.2
Kernel Version: Linux pagoda 2.2.18 #1 Thu Feb 1 13:26:26 NZDT 2001 i686 unknown
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