Tips&Tricks Printing to Fax through CUPS

[aru]

 

delboy711

Senior user

Joined: 03 May 2002

Posts: 412

Location: Wokingham, UK

 

Post Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 2:16 pm Post subject: Printing to Fax through CUPS

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Here is the way I send faxes through Open/Star Office or any other application.

 

As described in my previous tip "Printing PDF files with Open/Star Office" a convenient way of printing in OpenOffice is to navigate to /usr/lib/openoffice/program and execute the script ./spadmin in a root terminal.

 

A dialogue box opens which allows you to add a printer.

 

If you define a new printer with the print command qtcups --stdin then Open/StarOffice will show a new printer which when selected allows you to print to any printer known to CUPS. (OR kprinter --stdin if you have KDE3)

 

KDE conveniently supplies three ready defined 'pseudo' printers which when invoked will print to PDF files, to Kmail, or to kdeprintfax.

 

Printing from qtcups to a fax is simply a matter of selecting the Fax pseudo printer. However before it will work you have to configure kdeprintfax

 

KDEprintfax Configuration

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kdeprintfax may be started from a console or from 'Kmenu>Applications>Communications>Send a Fax' (ignore K Fax and K Send a Fax) Select Settings>Configure KDEPrintFax

 

Configure your personal details, and telephone number.

 

Kdeprintfax works with two different fax backends efax or hylafax. efax is the easiest to configure, so select that and make sure the efax rpm is installed. The default command string is fine so leave that unaltered.

 

You should also check that the correct serial port is selected The default is /dev/modem which should be a symlink to whichever port your modem is on. Alternatively you can declare the port /dev/ttyS0 etc by selecting 'serial port 0' etc

 

You can test if your serial port is declared correctly by typing in a terminal window echo ath1 > /dev/modem (or /dev/ttyS0 etc )Your modem should click as it goes off Hook. It will go back on hook with the command echo ath0 > /dev/modem

 

Next it is necessary to change the directory used by efax to create a lockfile because users do not have write permission to the default /var/lock directory. Edit the file /etc/fax.config as root ( a convenient root editor is Kmenu>Application>FileTools>FileManager(superuserMode) right click on the target file and select OpenWith>Kedit )

 

Find the line

LOCK='-x /var/lock/LCK..$DEV'

 

and replace it with

LOCK='-x /tmp/LCK..$DEV'

 

You are now ready to send faxes Smile

 

You can either select the fax printer when printing from an application, or open kdeprintfax and then drag and drop files from konqueror into the 'File' box.

 

Things to remember

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1/ Do pay attention to the kdeprintfax log if a fax will not send.

 

2/ Do not use any font in a fax which ghostview is not aware of. This means that some Open/StarOffice fonts will cause problems. The symptom will be the print job apparently works, but the fax does not send.

 

 

 

Editor's note: This thread was originally posted at the old MUB (Mandrake User Board at club-nihil). This post is the result of a 99% automatic backup, so due to its nature some text may be lost (improbable but possible).

[Guest bjc]

Thanks eru for the tips on using efax. I had trouble unlocking until I saw your posting. Replacing with LOCK='-x /tmp/LCK..$DEV' in the fax.config did the trick, as you had written.

Have you used 'efax-gtk' at any time? I wonder if anyone has experience with this front end to the efax program.

Thanks in advance.