I would like to set up faxing via ISDN on Debian/Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger.

I have a HFC-PCI ISDN Card that's been used for the same purpose - fax over an ISDN line - under Windows, on the same machine. The windows fax software used a CAPI 2.0 driver to do this. (I know that the card is CAPI-capable.)

After reading up on the topic in various places, hylafax and capi2hylafax (plus some frontend) seem to be what I should be looking at.


Being a recent switcher, I'm not sure about the config procedure. Can someone help?

First of all, I need to get a little clearer about what files I need.



* hylafax-server and dependencies
* capiutils
* libcapi20-3
* capi4hylafax and dependencies


How about the avm-fritz-firmware and avm-fritz-firmware-2.6.12-9 kernel modules? Most installation instructions I have found say I need to get these too when installing an AVM Fritz ISDN Card, but I have a HFC ISDN Card (Sitecom DC 105). There's no alternative setups listed. So what should I do?


Next, I believe I have to configure both CAPI and hylafax.

I'm told I need to check /etc/capi.conf or /etc/isdn/capi.conf and comment in/out the correct card (?).


Then I need to disable hisax support (which is enabled by default on Breezy) by adding it to a blacklist file which is either at

/etc/hotplug/blacklist

or

/etc/hotplug/backlist.d/isdn

(the latter apparently applies specifically to Ubuntu versions 5.04 and 5.10, see the bottom half of the ISDNHowTo page at the Ubuntu Wiki)

Reboot after that, and I should be able to finish config via the Networking GUI.


My problem is that this comes from a variety of sources, some of which refer to different ISDN cards, some of which refer to different distros, some of which are 6 years old. How do I determine what exactly needs to be done to set things up?

Did you post this at ubuntu's forums? There are also guys there who are very helpful. I'm sorry, I am also new and can't help you other than to mention that forum. If they help, please come back and post the resolution.

I've checked with the (gmane.linux.isdn.i4l.user) ISDN4Linux community where the developers of mISDN hang out. At this point, mISDN doesn't provide fax capability. Their development focus appears to be on internet access via ISDN and support for the rapidly growing VoIP services such as Asterisk.

They advised me to set up an Asterisk PBX and use it with spandsp and app_rxfax/app_txfax to get the fax capability, but I have to say that a is not a reasonable approach when all you want is a simple 'Fax...' button on your application's GUI that Just Works with a humble ISDN card.

At the heart of the problem seems to be the decision to drop the older ISDN4Linux standard in favour of mISDN for the 2.6 kernel when mISDN was -- and apparently still is -- in development and missing some key features. Let's hope they will implement fax in mISDN soon.