email2fax 1.2 review
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email2fax is a bash script that allows you to send a fax through your Asterisk PBX.
email2fax accepts emails with a PDF or a TIFF attachment, and faxes them through Asterisk to a number specified in a subject field of the email.
Here are some key features of "email2fax":
it expects to find a fax number in a subject field,
it expects to find one PDF or one TIFF attachment,
if these conditions are met, it converts an attachment to the right format, and passes it to Asterisk, and instructs it to send it to a specified number.
As mail2fax wasn't really user friendly (it didn't support PDF attachments; TIFF attachments had to be in a special format), I decidet to write my own implementation.
Currently, email2fax depends on AstFax - that means, a processed attachment (which needs to have a right format) is passed to AstFax, which then passes it to Asterisk.
Usage:
- make sure your Asterisk box can receive faxes - Spandsp has to be set up correctly,
- download and extract email2fax package, don't forget about mpack and munpack, if you don't have them in the system (they are in the package)
- compose a sample message - attach a PDF file, and put a fax number in the subject field - save it on a disk as message.eml; copy it to your Asterisk box
- try to send your first fax from the command line:
cat message.eml | sudo -u asterisk email2fax --debug
- if it worked, congratulations, if not, make sure Spandsp is set up correctly (i.e., you are able to receive faxes), consult /var/log/asterisk/faxlog file, connect to asterisk console (sudo -u asterisk asterisk -crvvvvv), etc.
- if everything works, set up a .procmailrc for the asterisk user:
:0fw
| /var/lib/asterisk/m2f/email2fax
and try to send this same email directly to asterisk@yourasteriskbox
What's New in This Release:
Handling multi-page TIFF files was fixed.
All *.call files should now have random names.
email2fax 1.2 keywords