Fax to email script

you would have to build faxing into asterisk and use the asterisk fax script.

it is not part of thid lane by default.

Check into NVFax. If it is already installed you will see the option in your DID settings as well. Works really good even on SIP based configs!

Do you have this working on Asterisk and TL ..?

we have been getting more and more requests for this script..

We are just about to add the "standard" support for this in our ISO (Thirdlane Advanced PBX) distribution. I hope we will not run into any major problems and we can do thsi very soon. That is Asterisk 1.4 and a patch.

It would be pretty hard to cleanly add fax management the webmin module as too many things/external programs/scripts are involved.

Just curious - would people be happy with just receiving/converting/emailing faxes or sending faxes is something you care about? The later may require a fax server - again this can be included with the ISO but not the Webmin module.

Alex,

what about us not using the ISO, please detail the packages needed to make it working and who wrote them so we can all get this feature working..

George

I too would be interested in this functionality. Any update on getting it without the need for the ISO?

I loaded the ISO on a server just to see what it was using for the fax to email and it seems its not working on the ISO either.. I get the following error..

== Channel 'SIP/###.###.###.###-b76027b8' jumping out of macro 'tl-stdexten-fax'

[Dec 10 03:02:35] WARNING[30243]: pbx.c:2470 __ast_pbx_run: Channel 'SIP/###.###.###.###-b76027b8' sent into invalid extension 's' in context 'tl-faxreceive', but no invalid handler

I looked and the tl-faxreceive is not on the system

George

Has anyone tried the fax to email with the newest upgrade of TL MTE ..?

I just did and am getting a different error

[Jul 17 23:16:04] WARNING[3534]: pbx.c:1832 pbx_extension_helper: No application 'RxFAX' for extension (tl-faxreceive, s, 7)

== Spawn extension (tl-faxreceive, s, 7) exited non-zero on

I looked around the net and not finding what I think I need in the way of this app..? anyone have better luck..?

Thanks

George

If you are trying it with a recent version of 1.4 don't bother. Its part of an addon package written for 1.2. Someone wrote a 1.4 port of the application but it wont compile with 'make'. It requires a completely different build tool called Cmake. You have a few options here for fax to email. The one most like the one you are investigating is written by a group in europe called Attractel. It is part of their T38 solution but they have the T30 modules in that bundle as well that allow for RXFAX_T30. Additionally there is IAXmodem+Hylafax. In 1.6-trunk there is an app_fax that handles T30 and T38 endpoints (wont gateway between the two though); however, 1.6 has significant changes that require some changes to PBXManager (changes that need confirmation they dont break a 1.2 or 1.4 system), so don't try to use that solution for some time.

Just an FYI, if you are doing a T30 fax over SIP, the codec must be ulaw (g711u). For ATA type devices we usually state that the codec must always be ulaw, the jitter buffers get turned off on the ATA, and the echo cancellation on the ATA get disabled.

Hey Erik,

We are running Asterisk 1.4.21.1 and with some finagling we got email fax to email working. We have about 5 customers using it right now and so far haven't received and problems reports.

Sending Fax's All our ATA's (linksys) are know being provisioned, we are currently setting jitter to low and echo canceling to yes. I'll check with my guys and see if we have any reports of problems sending fax's and if so make the changes you listed above and see if that make a difference..

Thanks

George

linksys ATA's have settings that disable all of the above during a fax

Fax Disable ECAN

Fax Passthru Codec

and a bunch of others. Not all ATA's have a 'bypass' or 'passthru' feature which essentially does exactly what I mentioned (disaling echo cancelling etc).

We actually run a Hylafax server for our fax-to-email via IAXModem. That thing is nearly bulletproof. We found a bug in the T38 for adtran devices where they could receive T38 faxes without issue but experienced 100% failure sending a T38 negotiated fax with one exception. They could always fax our Iaxmodem's connected to Hylafax even when every other destination failed.

I am trying to use two AudioCodes MP 114 FXS as analog gateways to use as FAX.

I have enabled T.38 Relay on both AudioCodes but when the FAX tone is detected and the AudioCodes do a re-Invite with the SD set for t38 the call fails because TL sends SIP 488 not acceptable here message.

I suspect it is because I don't have the t38 codec in the codec list and TL is blocking the request.

What I would like to do is pass through the T38 codec request like we do with video codec pass through.

Where do I add the t38 codec to the list of codecs I can enable or disable on the user extensions.

Thanks for your help

Denis

your question has nothing to do with thirdlane, it is a setting within asterisk to do t38 passthrough.

have you set

t38pt_udptl=yes in sip.conf?

both in [general] and in the extension section?

Erik, did you ever find a resolution to that Adtran issue you mentioned? I have in our lab a total access 916 and can receive faxing perfect using T38, but not a single outbound fax will go through. We are already on the latest firmware.

I have the exact same problem, though I havent tried with any 1.6.1.x code that had t38 enhancement. There are some bugs in 1.6.x.x that were deal killers for us (such as a 'reload' wiping out the sip subscriptions till the phone does its periodic resubscribe which breaks all the sidecar BLFs)

you should read this recent article..

http://www.venturevoip.com/news.php?rssid=2302

We are working our way through fax to email with Third Lane's current Asterisk Build an having real problems. We tried Digium FFA and here's what they said:

> will the latest FFA work for Asterisk 1.6.0.6? That is the latest
> asterisk 1.6.0 that comes with Thirdlane.
>

According to the Fax for Asterisk README, available here:

http://downloads.digium.com/pub/telephony/fax/README

Fax for Asterisk requires 1.6.0.14 or later in the 1.6.0 branch. Thirdlane is not a supported distribution, we highly recommend that you choose a more up to date Asterisk distribution if you intend to use FAX.

Trey Blancher
Digium, Inc. | Technician II, Technical Support

If anyone has fax to email working with the current version of ThirdLane, we would sure like to know how you did it.

compile and install asterisk yourself.. thirdlane is a gui. stop relying on gui's to do the compiling for you. You get a better product if you maintain compiling the source code. Too many examples of Digium refusing to support you because of pre-compiled ubuntu or other 3rd party patches rolled into asterisk. By compiling from source, you are ensuring that when you need digium support, you have the resources available to get such support.