asterisk users - Apr 2008 - Hangup conundrum with RxFAX

Heres something that's making me scratch my head... I'm using RxFAX on 
ISDN lines and in-general it's going well.

However, there seems to be a case when the fax doesn't get delivered, but 
looking through the CDRs it seems that the call happened, RxFAX was 
executed .. time passed (1-2+ minutes) then hangup.

I'm wondering if some FAX machines just hangup after the call rather than 
complete some sort of ending negotiation, or if the RxFAX part misses the 
end and just sees the hangup..

Now, in a "normal" fax machine, it's going to print the fax
regardless,
even if the last page is only half full because of a genuine line drop or 
hangup, but it seems that:

[Description]
   RxFAX(filename[|caller][|debug]): Receives a FAX from the channel into the
...
   Returns -1 when the user hangs up.
   Returns 0 otherwise.

So if it's returning -1, then the call/channel is hungup, and any dialplan 
instructions after it won't get executed, even though there might be some 
(or all) pages of the fax sitting in the receive file...

Does this make sense to anyone, or am I barking up the wrong tree!

My thoughts now are to actually do a hangup at the end of the RxFAX and 
rely on a 'h' extension to pick it up and carry on with the 2nd half 
(which is PDFing and emailling the fax), but I'm concerned I'm going to 
lose the channel variables as it suggests on the wiki, so I'll lose the 
REMOTESTATIONID string and caller ID...

Anyone with any experience of this, or suggestions otherwise?

Thanks,

Gordon

Gordon Henderson wrote:
> Heres something that's making me scratch my head... I'm using RxFAX
on
> ISDN lines and in-general it's going well.
>
> However, there seems to be a case when the fax doesn't get delivered,
but
> looking through the CDRs it seems that the call happened, RxFAX was 
> executed .. time passed (1-2+ minutes) then hangup.
>
> I'm wondering if some FAX machines just hangup after the call rather
than
> complete some sort of ending negotiation, or if the RxFAX part misses the 
> end and just sees the hangup..
>
> Now, in a "normal" fax machine, it's going to print the fax
regardless,
> even if the last page is only half full because of a genuine line drop or 
> hangup, but it seems that:
>
> [Description]
>    RxFAX(filename[|caller][|debug]): Receives a FAX from the channel into
the
> ...
>    Returns -1 when the user hangs up.
>    Returns 0 otherwise.
>
> So if it's returning -1, then the call/channel is hungup, and any
dialplan
> instructions after it won't get executed, even though there might be
some
> (or all) pages of the fax sitting in the receive file...
>
> Does this make sense to anyone, or am I barking up the wrong tree!
>
> My thoughts now are to actually do a hangup at the end of the RxFAX and 
> rely on a 'h' extension to pick it up and carry on with the 2nd
half
> (which is PDFing and emailling the fax), but I'm concerned I'm
going to
> lose the channel variables as it suggests on the wiki, so I'll lose the
> REMOTESTATIONID string and caller ID...
>
> Anyone with any experience of this, or suggestions otherwise?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Gordon
>
>
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Hi.

 Thats what I do and have not had a problem, we only do maybe 10-20 
faxes a week though.
I set my channel variables in a macro and then goto a context receivefax 
where I enter on s,1,Rx.Fax , on hangup I do the actual mailing and 
sending of the fax. Before the sending though I make sure the fax 
actually exists.

hth
Jeremy