+1 It would be great to have an updated version of this ..

Beta 8 is another major milestone in AsterFax’s development. All significant features slated for the version 1.0 release have now been implemented. The remaining working centres around improving the installation process, adding additional converters and adding a header to the fax.

I’ve been reading in the web and i found this:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+and+faxes

Update ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù If the above changes do not fix your mime-construct file, verify the version by going to the unix cli (use keyboard or PuTTY) and type “mime-construct –version”. I found that even if I updated the script above, It made it to where the attachment wouldn’t come through at all. I checked my version and I had v1.8. I searched and found that there was a slightly newer version 1.9, so I tried it and it seemed to solve my problems.

Procedure:
1. Goto /usr/bin/
2. Rename “mime-construct” to “mime-construct.old”
3. Copy the 1.9 code from http://search.cpan.org/src/ROSCH/mime-construct-1.9/mime-construct
4. Re-create mime-construct and paste the code. Be sure not to get the comments at the bottom, stop before _END_
5. “chmod 555 mime-construct”

And In fact i finally got Fax to Email working just Perfect.
By the Way i’ve change the name of file attachment for ${TIMESTAMP} to avoid files with empty name (sometimes who sends you faxes doesn’t provide caller ID)

I hope this helps!

Marco Mouta

[WM: Be sure you got rid of the 8.5 x 11 dimensions in the tiff conversion routine.]

Anyone have any thoughts on this? In the call llog asterisk does recognize the call as a fax call.

I’m stumped.

[WM: If Asterisk doesn’t recognize it as a fax call, then experiment with changing the time parameter in the NVfaxdetect command. We have found that some fax machines work almost every time. Others rarely can connect. No idea why. We tell people to listen for the AutoAttendant and, if they hear it kick in, hang up and try the fax call again. 8 out of 10 times with most fax machines, that solves it at least using a TelaSIP IP trunk.]

Im using an X100P. Same card in a windows machine will send/rec faxes no problem. Somehow, I think this is some kind of configuration problem, just cant put my finger on it. IM changing the script to not delete the files after emailing, that way I can get a closer look at what is happening. Ill let you know if I find anything interesting.

[WM: My non-scientific answer is that some fax machines work great with this, and others have real problems communicating. I’ll keep scratching, but if you need 100% reliability, IP faxing just isn’t quite soup yet.]

It was the down and dirty script to update 2.3 to 2.4 that was either part of your Soup to Nust write-up when A@H did the overnight version 2.3->2.4->2.5 update. The script updated Asterisk from 1.2.2 to 1.2.3. I later modified it to update Asterisk to 1.2.4.

I will reinstall. Thanks for the information.

from sip.conf, I defined alaw & ulaw & gsm codec, so it’s not a codec problem. The problem is also found calling extension 666, so the problem not depends on the VOIP provider.
Any suggestion? Thanks

[WM: If this is AAH 2.5, there apparently are some issues. Check the SourceForge and Voxilla forums for details.]

So.. I did some digging and came upon information that kinda clicked. In the code “Macro(faxreceive)” it calls rxfax. At the CLI I did a “show applications” and found that rxfax was not listed.

So.. Down that road I went and ended up downloading the source for spandps. I compiled it and it created the rxfax.c and o files. I followed all directions to rebuild Asterisk. It created the app_rxfax.so file. I rebooted and wham bam.. I now have this app listed in the CLI and my system now sends fax tones and syncs with a fax machine.

My issue now is that I am receiving “poor line condition” issues on the remote fax machines. I do not know where to go from here. I have checked to make sure ztdummy is loaded for timing and I removed the “allow=alaw” command from the sip.conf to force ulaw (I read somewhere to do so).

I am running Telasip as my Voip provider. I will keep trudging and looking around. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[WM: Not sure where you found the update script that was used to move from 2.3 to 2.5, but it really doesn’t matter. I’m pretty sure it probably (permanently) broke reliable faxing. The whole faxing technology was changed in version 2.4 and remains in 2.5 if my memory serves me correctly. Therefore, doing an in place upgrade probably broke something. That’s a very good reason why we always recommend doing screen captures of AMP data and then a fresh ISO install.]

Thanks!

This is a nice site but there is also some wrong information unfortunatly. SpanDSP does NOT require a digium board to work, this is wrong. I notice that any questions about sending faxes are being ignored, so, Asterfax is is the best solution right now & works with AAH – although you should know that sending and reciving faxes via VoIP is hit and miss, this is what T.37 & T.38 is for (FoIP). VoIP has issues with frames slips which are not noticable with Voice calls but can really screw up faxes.

[WM: You’re absolutely right. There is some wrong information on our site. Never claimed to be anything but human. But when smart folks come along and correct us, we’ll be the first to publish our mistakes for all the world to read. As for SpanDSP, I read an awful lot, and I can’t recall anyone ever mentioning that they got SpanDSP to work reliably without a Digium board but, as you say, VoIP has other issues with faxes. We use NVfaxdetect with TelaSIP IP connections, and it works reliably for us 95% of the time. And we’re batting 100% with junk faxes. That’s good enough for us (Ma Bell wasn’t any better!) but, as they say, YMMV.]

Followed your instructions for getting incoming faxes to be handled by AAH. I’m using an auto attendant for my incoming SIP trunk from Axvoice and have set up the fax handling in the aa_1 context which I created using AMP. To do this, I only had to add the following lines to the aa_1 context in extensions_additional.conf using phpconfig.php page in AMP as the fax extension line ( exten => fax,1,Goto(ext-fax,in_fax,1) ) is already in the aa_1 context

exten => s,4,Playtones(ring) ; play fake ring so caller doesn’t wonder whats going on
exten => s,5,NVFaxDetect(10) ; while playing ring sound, detect faxes for 2 rings (goes to “fax” extension if detected)

Receiving incoming faxes and the resulting e-mails with pdf file attached is working fine. However, I am having a problem which I think is related to AMP. Whenever, I create a new extension in AMP, or make any other change which requires the extensions_additional.conf file to be written to, the above additions which I have made to aa_1 context in extensions_additional.conf are removed. It appears that the aa_1 context is being overwritten by AMP. Are you aware of any bug in AMP which might be causing this or is this normal? I would expect that any changes which I make to a config file should not be arbitrarily removed.

Thanks,
Dave

[WM: AMP rewrites extensions_additional.conf every time you save any additions using AMP. If you need to protect stuff, put it in extensions_custom.conf which does not get tampered with by AMP.]

[WM: Your issue has been reported. Keep an eye on this link for updates. In the meantime, I would try reinstalling from scratch using our tutorial and see what happens.]

So does this mean that the built in support for AAH 2.2 doesnt work?

I am just trying to have an adapter which is connected to a fax machine be able to pick up and receieve faxes.

[WM: You need a Digium board for SpanDSP to work.]

Jan 20 07:49:42 VERBOSE[3575] logger.c: — Executing RxFAX(“SIP/anonymous.invalid-08ea98e0”, “/var/spool/asterisk/fax/1137714579.5.tif”) in new stack
Jan 20 07:49:42 NOTICE[3575] channel.c: Dropping incompatible voice frame on SIP/anonymous.invalid-08ea98e0 of format slin since our native format has changed to ulaw

any ideas?

[WM: Either your transmission protocol isn’t set to ulaw or your provider’s network isn’t configured to support faxing.]