One of the next steps in my setup… I have a dedicated fax number set up with sipgate, but no analogue hardware. The absolute ideal would be for Asterisk to receive the fax and email it to a given address. I guess emailing is the easy bit!
The usual book and Google resources are fairly mute on this topic. Is there some intrinsic limitation that prevents this from working? Or have I just missed the right how-to?
Depends on what version of asterisk you are running. With 1.2-1.4 your best bet is iaxmodem and hylafax. For 1.6 use the built in app_fax commands, with some scripting to fax to email them. So far, i am super happy with 1.6 fax capabilities, it is much more stable than the previous versions. And i have been doing it for several years.
Currently running 1.4.21, but only because that’s what Ubuntu’s apt-get installed for me. Would you recommend upgrading to 1.6 first?
Well that depends on your level of linux/asterisk expertise. It took me a long time to get the 1.4/IAXmodem/Hylafax solution to compile and work correctly.
The 1.6 install was cake. Its super easy to compile from source and get it going. As long as your dial plan is fairly simple, you should have no problems with the change over.
im on 1.6.0.10 currently, just about to upgrade to 1.6.0.14. everything has been stable, and i run dahdi with a pri as well, receiving faxes from both sip/iax/dahdi without incident most of the time.
let me know if you would like some samples for the dial plan and the fax2email script i use.
Have you tried FforA: http://www.digium.com/en/products/software/faxforasterisk.php ?
Ian
stuck at the moment with a dead Asterisk after upgrading (see other thread about this), I’ll get back to you once I’ve got that resolved.
Not expecting any config problems as a result of the upgrade, my setup is really simple and I haven’t set up anything but the most basic of rules yet.
Dial plans & scripts would be much appreciated.
[quote=“pmlco”]Have you tried FforA: http://www.digium.com/en/products/software/faxforasterisk.php ?
I did in fact “buy” one of the free licenses, got a receipt for it but never actually got the license key, and not a clue what to do with it when I get it. Documentation is a little sparse and seems to assume expert-level knowledge of Asterisk. Perhaps I’m being a bit over-optimistic as a neophyte?
You can try app_fax and recv_fax from the agx addons.
It is available at:
sourceforge.net/projects/agx-ast-addons/
It says it requires zaptel, but that is for the conferencing app that is also included in the addons, so if you just install the fax stuff you can use dahdi still.
You can get spandsp at:
soft-switch.org/downloads.html
We have used this with asterisk 1.4.23 with pretty good success.
[quote][quote=“pmlco”]Have you tried FforA: digium.com/en/products/softw … terisk.php ?
I did in fact “buy” one of the free licenses, got a receipt for it but never actually got the license key, and not a clue what to do with it when I get it. Documentation is a little sparse and seems to assume expert-level knowledge of Asterisk. Perhaps I’m being a bit over-optimistic as a neophyte?[/quote][/quote]
Did you read this: https://www.digium.com/en/login/login.php?page=/en/supportcenter/documentation/viewdocs/FAX ? (You have to login to get the pdf, must you must have an account since you ‘bought’ Free FforA.)