[WXC/VFX] Faxing with Asterisk (rxfax/txfax) and VFX

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willnz

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#20925 10-Apr-2008 07:57

Has anyone managed to get Asterisk to receive faxes using rxfax over VFX? If I try to send a fax to my VFX number, all I get is "communications error" and no tif file is saved on the Asterisk box.

Asterisk gives no errors to say anything went wrong, rxfax seems to run fine.

coffeebaron

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#122565 10-Apr-2008 16:16

Is there a T.38 fax codec in Asterisk? Not that I have much Asterisk knowledge (yet), but just a thought anyways.

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willnz

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#122567 10-Apr-2008 16:18

It's very broken, and I think it's only pass-thru support. But surely there is a way! :)

richms

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#122576 10-Apr-2008 16:25

I know someone that gave up trying and just uses an ATA and a PC faxmodem with some windows based software on another PC to revceive faxes. It seems that its a really weak area (one of many) in asterisk that noone wants to solve.

Richard rich.ms

willnz

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#122616 10-Apr-2008 17:47

Cool, thanks for that richms - I figured that was the case based on the searching I've done myself, and that's pretty much where I'm heading too it seems - but it seems so stupid though!

richms

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#122623 10-Apr-2008 17:55

Yes it does, and this is the one big failing of open source stuff is when it doesnt do what its supposed to because they havent finished it there is noone to yell at to get things done.

I would love to have my asterisk box taking fax and emailing it, but for now the 2talk fax2email and me getting them in my email is good enough.

Richard rich.ms

willnz

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#122625 10-Apr-2008 17:58

I have been using fax2mail from 2talk but recently it's started to go like italk - "your call cannot proceed at this time because of overloading". I'm giving up on dealing with CallPlus related entities. It's not worth the hassle :)

jedney

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#122699 10-Apr-2008 21:59

Faxing to/through Asterisk does work. Ive got a hardware fax on an Grandstream ATA for outbound, and inbound is automatically detected by Asterisk on the trunk and then picked up, converted to PDF and emailed to me. I'm afraid I can't be of too much help though - I use FreePBX to manage all the complicated Asterisk config files and then spent a day playing with different combinations of Debian packages. I got all the help from the Internet though, so keep trying, the answer is out there.

It seems to work ok, but I don't get many faxes so its not battle-tested. It works on my 200MHz PowerPC with 128MB RAM and 6 Extensions, so it doesn't seem to be that resource heavy.

Sorry that's not much use, but at least you know your not trying to achieve the impossible.

willnz

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#122701 10-Apr-2008 22:04

jedney: Faxing to/through Asterisk does work. Ive got a hardware fax on an Grandstream ATA for outbound, and inbound is automatically detected by Asterisk on the trunk and then picked up, converted to PDF and emailed to me. I'm afraid I can't be of too much help though - I use FreePBX to manage all the complicated Asterisk config files and then spent a day playing with different combinations of Debian packages. I got all the help from the Internet though, so keep trying, the answer is out there.

It seems to work ok, but I don't get many faxes so its not battle-tested. It works on my 200MHz PowerPC with 128MB RAM and 6 Extensions, so it doesn't seem to be that resource heavy.

Sorry that's not much use, but at least you know your not trying to achieve the impossible.

Is that incoming faxing over VFX? I *did* get it to work once, but then it seemed to have stopped again. Are you able to show me the relevant bits of your extensions.conf and sip.conf (minus the sensitive stuff, of course!)? Thanks :)

richms

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#122702 10-Apr-2008 22:04

willnz: I have been using fax2mail from 2talk but recently it's started to go like italk - "your call cannot proceed at this time because of overloading". I'm giving up on dealing with CallPlus related entities. It's not worth the hassle :)

Italk tells people that the number they have called doesnt exist sometimes, other times it puts them to someone else. Real awesome service.

2talks being all good for me other then that it doesnt have 2 way audio unless I put the external IP in the asterisk config. which means a static IP, whereas italk was happy with nothing or even a wrong IP in here.

Richard rich.ms

willnz

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#122704 10-Apr-2008 22:06

richms: 2talks being all good for me other then that it doesnt have 2 way audio unless I put the external IP in the asterisk config. which means a static IP, whereas italk was happy with nothing or even a wrong IP in here.

Agreed, 2talk has been good, but I feel they're starting to get down into iTalk style again... shame really, because they have some awesome features, if only they had implemented them properly. Perhaps maverick can give us some idea of when VFX Fax-to-Email is coming?!

maverick

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WorldxChange

#122729 11-Apr-2008 06:05

Fax to EMail is actaully working fine in our test enviroment , however it does require a hardware and software upgrade to the production system's to implement, hopefully it won't be to far away...this si the delay in releasing this product

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willnz

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#122747 11-Apr-2008 08:18

maverick: Fax to EMail is actaully working fine in our test enviroment , however it does require a hardware and software upgrade to the production system's to implement, hopefully it won't be to far away...this si the delay in releasing this product

Know if it's likely to be a matter of months or weeks? If weeks, I'll stick with 2Talk for now and move over to VFX when it's ready :)

maverick

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#122749 11-Apr-2008 08:27

more likely a few months

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jedney

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#122764 11-Apr-2008 08:53

>> Is that incoming faxing over VFX?

Yep, when a call comes in on my VFX trunk, it plays a ringing to the caller for 5 seconds whilst listenening for a fax tone on the line. If it finds one it picks up, receives the fax as a TIF, converts it to PDF and then emails it to me. If no tone is detected it hands over to my auto attendant.

As you can see from my sip.conf below, its not quite as simple as just giving you the conf file. FreePBX takes over everything and I suspect there are settings all over the place (I know I can set fax preferences globally and on a per trunk basis). Leave it with me for a bit and I will see if I can find anything meaningful.

Most of the reason I use FreePBX is to avoid having to get my head around the config files, so no guarantees I will be able to find/identify anything!

Jon.

----------- sip.conf ------------
; do not edit this file, this is an auto-generated file by freepbx
; all modifications must be done from the web gui

[general]
;
; enable and force the sip jitterbuffer. If these settings are desired
; they should be set in the sip_general_custom.conf file as this file
; will get overwritten during reloads and upgrades.
;
; jbenable=yes
; jbforce=yes

; These will all be included in the [general] context
;
#include sip_general_additional.conf
#include sip_general_custom.conf
#include sip_nat.conf
#include sip_registrations_custom.conf
#include sip_registrations.conf

; These should all be expected to come after the [general] context
;
#include sip_custom.conf
#include sip_additional.conf
#include sip_custom_post.conf

---------------------------------