I've been running HylaFax as a receive-only server for nearly 14 years without any major issues. However, since switching to a newer supported distribution (Debian 12), I've encountered a ton of problems. We're using serial modems with Prolific RS232 adapters, and everything worked fine previously. When I tried setting up the modems on Debian 12, the `faxaddmodem` process just hangs during the modem speed test. It did the same on my Linux Mint 22 workstation, which is based on Ubuntu 24.04.
I started thinking that maybe the transition to systemd hasn't been smooth for HylaFax or the packaging in the distro. So, I gave Devuan a shot, which uses SysV instead, and at least the modems communicated with HylaFax successfully. But there's still an issue: it won't answer incoming calls. The `faxstat` command shows 'receiving facsimile', but it never actually picks up the line.
Frustratingly, I went back to my old Debian 7 setup, and everything worked perfectly with the same modems and adapters. The configurations look similar, so I'm puzzled about what's gone wrong. I'm pondering whether to reach out to the HylaFax developers or if this is more of a distro issue. I'm even thinking about trying a RHEL-based system like Rocky, but I would prefer to stick with my current setup, especially since I rely on Tesseract and other utilities that aren't usually available on RHEL. Any advice would be super helpful!
2 Answers
HylaFax's last significant release was back in 2009, and the last patch was in 2018. It seems like that whole stack is pretty much abandoned now. You might want to consider looking into alternatives if you're running into consistent issues, especially with newer distributions.
I hear you. It's worrying that neither the Debian nor Ubuntu packagers caught these issues. I guess as long as it compiles, it gets shipped, right?
If you're relying on receiving faxes and it's a critical process for you, maybe it's worth considering a hosted fax service. We've been using WestFax, and it takes a ton of stress off handling it ourselves.
Thanks for the heads up! What are some alternatives out there that could work similarly? I mean, worst-case scenario, I might just keep an old setup without internet access and sync files over when needed.