Asterisk faxing - Setup a complete faxing solution!

Faxing within Asterisk

Faxing with Asterisk can be problematic.  Right now all (Oct-2005) most Asterisk hardware doesn't support faxing directly.  So, you have to actually implement a soft fax modem.  Asterisk uses spandsp for implementing the actual modem.

I'm not writing to document how to actually use the fax applications within Asterisk.  For that look at Faxing With Asterisk I think it does a pretty good job of detailing how to use it.

However, I would like to comment on how to preprocess the tiffs that you want to send.  Many times you've got tiffs that aren't fax compliant.  I created a quick perl script that concats multiple tiff files together and makes sure they are fax compliant.  In fact, much of this code was developed by looking at how HylaFax preprocessed their tiffs.

Of course you'll want to modify this script for your own purposes it.  It requires perl, tiffcp, ghostscript, tiff2ps, and the Asterisk::Outgoing module for perl. 

Again, this script is used to insure that the tiffs you want to send are fax compliant.  It creates a temporary tiff for sending and creates a call file for Asterisk to process the fax file.

#!/usr/bin/perl
 
# Author: David A horner (DAH) http://dave.thehorners.com
# License: Public Domain
 
use Getopt::Std;
use Asterisk::Outgoing;
require File::Temp;
use File::Temp ();
use strict;
 
# handle args
my %opts;
getopts('a:l:p:r:u:', \%opts );
 
my $faxnumber=shift(@ARGV);
usage('Missing faxnumber') unless $faxnumber;
print "Fax number: $faxnumber\n";
 
#my $tmpp=pop(@ARGV);
#push(@ARGV, "/tmp/fax.tif");
#push(@ARGV, $tmpp);
usage('You must have at least one tiff file to send') unless $ARGV[0];
print "Sending fax files:\n";
foreach (@ARGV) {
   print "$_\n";
}
my $tmpfile = new File::Temp(UNLINK => 0, SUFFIX => ".tfax");
my $faxfile = new File::Temp(UNLINK => 0, SUFFIX => ".fax");
print "Filename is $tmpfile\n";
#-c g3:2d:fill
print "Running: tiffcp -i -c g3:1d:fill -f lsb2msb -r 9999 @ARGV $tmpfile\n";
###system("tiffcp -c g3:2d:fill -f lsb2msb -s @ARGV $tmpfile");
system("tiffcp -i -c g3:1d:fill -f lsb2msb -r 9999 @ARGV $tmpfile");
print "DONE WITH TIFFCP!\n";
my $vres=98;
my $hres=203.29;
my $paper='letter';
print "RUNNING: /usr/bin/tiff2ps -a $tmpfile | /usr/bin/gs -q -sDEVICE=tiffg3 -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER=true -sPAPERSIZE=$paper -dFIXEDMEDIA -r".$hres."x".$vres." \"-sOutputFile=$faxfile\"  -\n";
system("/usr/bin/tiff2ps -a  $tmpfile | /usr/bin/gs -q -sDEVICE=tiffg3 -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER=true -sPAPERSIZE=$paper -dFIXEDMEDIA -r".$hres."x".$vres." \"-sOutputFile=$faxfile\"  -") ;
print "DONE WITH GS!\n";
#usage('Missing faxnumber') unless $opts{'r'};
#usage('pages of the tiff file')  unless $opts{'l'};
 
my $out = new Asterisk::Outgoing;
$out->setvariable("Channel","ZAP/G1/$faxnumber");
$out->setvariable("MaxRetries","30");
$out->setvariable("WaitTime","100");
$out->setvariable("Application","txfax");
$out->setvariable("Data","$tmpfile|caller");
foreach my $var (keys %{$out->{OUTVARS}}) {
   print "$var: " . $out->{OUTVARS}{$var} . "\n";
}
 
$out->create_outgoing;
print "DONE WITH OUTGOING!\n";
exit;
 
sub usage {
    print "\n!! ", @_, " !!\n";
    print <<USAGE;
Usage: $0 [options] <fax-number> <page(s) in g3-format>
USAGE
    exit 1;
}

; Author: David A horner (DAH) http://dave.thehorners.com
; License: Public Domain
;
; (#include <extensions/fax>)
; Recieve faxes and email em!
; Make sure that /usr/local/sbin/mailfax exists and works!
;
 
; If you want fax detection(asterisk to put faxes into the fax ext)
; Edit zapata.conf and add faxdetect=incoming,outgoing,or both
 
; Used for debuging
; exten => s,1,rxfax(/path_to_test_tiff/incoming.tif)
 
; To define email address, use following in asterisk console
; *CLI> database put extensionemail companyname 
  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 
; Check if the email is correct by using
; *CLI> database show
 
; Macro for recieving faxes
[macro-faxreceive]
exten => s,1,SetVar(FAXFILE=/var/spool/asterisk/faxes/${UNIQUEID}.tif)
exten => s,2,DBGet(EMAILADDR=extensionemail/${ARG1})
exten => s,3,rxfax(${FAXFILE})
exten => s,103,SetVar(EMAILADDR=
  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 )
exten => s,104,Goto(3)
 
[faxsend]
exten => h,1,System(/usr/local/sbin/mailfax ${FAXFILE} ${EMAILADDR} "${CALLERIDNUM} ${CALLERIDNAME}")
exten => h,2,Hangup
exten => i,1,Hangup     ;invalid event
exten => t,1,Hangup     ;timeout event
 
[incomingfax]
exten => s,1,Macro(faxreceive,pbxsolutions)
include => faxsend

#!/bin/sh
 
# Author: David A horner (DAH) http://dave.thehorners.com
# License: Public Domain
 
FAXFILE=$1
FILENAME=${FAXFILE:0:${#FAXFILE}-4}
PDFFILE=${FILENAME}".pdf"
RECIPIENT=$2
FAXSENDER=$3
 
FROMADDR=
  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 
FROMNAME="FAXSERVERNAME Faxserver"
BODY="Attached is your fax.  Thank you for using FAXSERVERNAME!"
 
if [ "${#@}" -ne "3" ]; then
  echo "$0 tifpath emailaddress faxsentfrom"
  echo "  tifpath - path of tif to send"
  echo "  emailaddress - email address's of recipients"
  echo "  faxsentfrom - fax sender, put in subject line"
  exit
fi
 
if [ -f $FAXFILE ]; then
  # Send file as plain tiff
  mime-construct --to $RECIPIENT --subject "Fax from $FAXSENDER" \
    --header "From: \"$FROMNAME\" <$FROMADDR>$nl" \
    --string "$BODY"\
    --attachment fax.tif --type application/tiff --file $FAXFILE
 
  # Send file as a pdf
#  tiff2ps -2eaz -w 8.5 -h 11 $FAXFILE | ps2pdf - | \
#  tiff2ps -2eaz $FAXFILE | ps2pdf - | \
  tiff2ps -2eaz -w 8.5 -h 11 $FAXFILE | ps2pdf - $PDFFILE
  mime-construct --to $RECIPIENT --subject "Fax from $FAXSENDER" \
    --header "From: \"$FROMNAME\" <$FROMADDR>$nl" \
    --string "$BODY"\
    --attachment fax.pdf --type application/pdf --file $PDFFILE
else
  mime-construct --to $RECIPIENT --subject "Fax error from $FAXSENDER" \
    --header "From: \"$FROMNAME\" <$FROMADDR>$nl" \
    --string "Fax not recieved correctly!"
fi

#include <faxextensions>
 
;Faxline
exten => XXXXXXX,1,Goto(faxlinecontext,100,1)
exten => XXXXXXX,2,Congestion
 
[faxlinecontext]
exten => 100,1,Macro(faxreceive,companyname)
include => faxsend

Channel: Zap/g1/XXXXXXXXXX
Callerid: "faxing" <XXXXXXXXXX>
MaxRetries: 0
Application: txfax
Data: /var/spool/asterisk/faxes/sometiff.tif|caller
Context: default
Extension: s
RetryTime: 60
WaitTime: 60