Fax and Faxing in Linux

You will obviously need a modem, in most cases you laptop’s internal software modem will not work, so get an external one.

Become root:

su -

Install the necessary fax software:

yum install efax

Prepare:

chmod 0666 /dev/ttyS0
chmod 777 /var/spool/fax
touch /var/spool/fax/lock
chmod 644 /var/spool/fax/lock

You do need to be root past this point.

Print a file to fax from openoffice (should be installed) to postscript > send.ps

Convert to tiff:

gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=tiffg3 -sOutputFile=somefile.tiff send.ps

Send a fax:

efax -t [number] somefile.tiff

Create a file with a very basic fax receiving daemon script, fax.sh, with just two lines below, and place it in your ~/bin/ dir. (The formatter garbles the second line, so use one of the text formatter buttons to get the real code.)

#!/bin/sh
sudo efax -d /dev/ttyS0 -kZ -w -iS0=1 2>&1 >> faxlog

Confirmed for Fedora 6, not confirmed for Fedora 10, Fedora 9, Fedora 8, Fedora 7.