qtfaxstate 

qtfaxstate, an HylaFAX tool

As we are using HylaFAX for our backend, we started developing tools to handle different aspect of the fax server.

Here is an extension called qtfaxstate. It is a graphical version of the faxstate command line tool which helps you manage the current status of your fax modem.

The tool is used to setup the state of the modems used by HylaFAX to one of the following values:

• ready (this is the default)
• busy
• down

The qtfaxstate Interface

The graphical tool helps in providing the list of modems currently installed and usable by HylaFAX; showing the state of the modem you select; and making sure that the modem is set back to ready when exiting.

List of Modems

The window will automatically read the list of available modems from the HylaFAX status folder (/var/spool/hylafax/status/*). Those appear in the drop-down at the top of the window.

IMPORTANT NOTE

If you do not have any modems available to HylaFAX then the dropdown will be empty and it will be disabled along with the 3 buttons below it. Of course, no current status will be displayed.

Select the modem you want to tweak with qtfaxstate.

Current Status

The interface shows you the current status for that modem. The window automatically refreshes the status once every 10 seconds. If you want to know what the status is right now, then click on the Refresh Status Now. When necessary, a click on a button will refresh the status before taking action.

Change Status

Once the modem you want to tweak is selected, the status should say Running and idle. If not, then you should not change the status.

The status is changed by clicking on one of the three buttons:

Down

Turn off that modem. This means the modem cannot be used at all by HylaFAX. Use this if you need to use the line for a long time.

Note that if you have only one line (or that's the last line) then you probably don't want to use Down because it will make HylaFAX fail sending any additional faxes, instead of stacking them in the send queue (as it would when marked Busy.)

Busy

Mark the modem as busy. This is used to let you use the phone line for any other purpose than HylaFAX. It could be, for example, to use that same line to make a phone call.

In this state, faxes sent via HylaFAX are blocked in the send queue or sent via another modem when available.

This is what you are expected to use in most cases.

Ready

Return the modem back to HylaFAX. This restore the default status which is to let HylaFAX make use of the phone line to send faxes.

When you quit the application after changing the status of a fax to Busy or Down, then the Close button will ask you whether you want to restore the status back to Ready before quitting. In other words, hand the modem back to HylaFAX as expected.

Help

The Help button shows you this very web page.

Feel free to comment below or contact us if you have any question about this application that are not answered in this documentation.

Close

The Close button is used to quit the application.

If the status of one or more modems was changed to Busy or Down, then the application asks you whether you want to restore those back to Ready. You will get one message asking per modem. Remember that when you restart the application it cannot know whether you changed the state or not because this Down, Busy, and Ready state is not returned by HylaFAX (maybe it's available directly on the device? TBD...)

Of course, you can always restart the application and mark all the modems as ready at a later time.

Requirements

To run the application:

• HylaFAX environment (client & server)
• Gnome with Qt4 or a compatible environment

To build the application:

• g++
• Qt4
• cmake (2.8+)

License

Copyright (c) 2012 Made to Order Software Corp.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Downloads

Following are the files you can download. We offer the source files (.tar.gz) and binary versions that run under Ubuntu 11.04 and should work on newer versions of Ubuntu.

Note 1: The website system adds an underscore in the tarball filename. You'll want to remove it before saving so the tar utility works as expected (although under Unix it shouldn't matter.)

Note 2: The binaries are compiled for 64 bit only. If you need a 32 bit version, you'll have to compile your own.

Attachment	Size
qtfaxstate-1.0.0.tar_.gz	7.88 KB
qtfaxstate-1.0.0-Linux.tar_.gz	36.85 KB
qtfaxstate-1.0.0-Linux.deb	37.46 KB