GNU Netfax 3.2 hang problem
reply. So I am sending an updated summary.
I have recieved 2 responses.
Response 1 was from antonson@umiacs.UMD.EDU. He suggested that I dump
gnu netfax and go for Flexfax instead.
Response 2 was from P.G.Griffiths@dl.ac.uk. He seems to have a fix that
he is testing at the moment. If it works he will share it with me and I
am sure with anyone else who needs it. (Thats right Paul?)
Thank you.
Gautam
----------------------------Original question-----------------------------
> We are using GNU netfax-3.2 for outgoing faxes for more than 6 months now.
> We have not tried to use it for incoming faxes. Anyway it works quite
> well, except almost everyday we need to kill and restart the faxspooler
> process several times, because it gets hung somehow. There are times
> when that doesn't work either and we have to reboot the machine to
> fix the faxspooler hang.
>
> We have setup an hourly cronjob to detect this hang condition by using
> the faxq command. If a hang is detected it automatically tries to
> kill and restart the spooler. If that fails then it sends mail to the
> administrators to reboot the machine running the fax server. This solution
> sort of works but I looking for a better cure.
> Are any of you using Gnu Netfax 3.2 and have you experienced similar
> situations? If so I will appreciate if you can share your experiences
> and offer any other solutions.
>
> Gautam
--------------------------------Response 1---------------------------------
>Fromantonson@umiacs.UMD.EDU Tue Feb 22 11:00:59 1994
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 1994 20:48:26 -0500 (EST)
From: "Todd S. Antonson" <antonson@umiacs.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: GNU Netfax 3.2 hang problem
>
> O ye wise ones!
Um. Don't speak too soon. :^)
>
> We are using GNU netfax-3.2 for outgoing faxes for more than 6 months now.
> We have not tried to use it for incoming faxes. Anyway it works quite
> well, except almost everyday we need to kill and restart the faxspooler
> process several times, because it gets hung somehow. There are times
> when that doesn't work either and we have to reboot the machine to
> fix the faxspooler hang.
A package that causes regular reboots of systems does not work (IMHO).
Anyway, I played with GNU fax for about a week quite some time ago and I
trashed it in favor of FlexFAX written by Sam Leffler. FlexFAX is free
and you can get it from sgi.com:sgi/fax.
There is an email mailing list set up for flexfax users as well so there
is some external support if you run into problems. FlexFAX is written in
C++ and can be compiled with GNU CC/C++.
Hope this helps!
--
- Todd S. Antonson (antonson@umiacs.umd.edu UUCP: uunet!umiacs!antonson)
- UMIACS, A.V. Williams Bldg., University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
------------------ Response 2 ---------------------------------------------
>FromP.G.Griffiths@dl.ac.uk Tue Feb 22 13:49:32 1994
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 1994 10:40:40 GMT
From: "P.Griffiths" <P.G.Griffiths@dl.ac.uk>
To:gautam@bwc.org
Cc:pg@dl.ac.uk,ge@dl.ac.uk
Subject: Re: GNU Netfax 3.2 hang problem
Hey, you live in a mirror world of ours, and you must be me,
cause I have an hourly job that runs the faxq command and
restarts the server on error... yup we see exactly the same
problem as you.
Solutions:
a) I split the spooler up into two parts, an incoming and an outgoing;
did'nt really solve anything.
b) ran a trace to find out where the hang was --- took some time
but narrowed it down to the select in read_internal(), I don't think
it times out!!! Haven't yet attempted fixing it (only found out last week
and not sure what effect fiddling with this bit of code will do) but I will
attempt a fix here. Are you interested in the result?
Have you spoken with the authors?
Yours,
Paul
P.G.Griffiths.
Daresbury Laboratory
Graphics/Workstation Development Group -
Info-Server Manager
JANET/Internet: P.G.Griffiths@dl.ac.uk
EARN/BITNET: P.G.Griffiths%dl.ac.uk@UKACRL
UUCP: P.G.Griffiths%dl.ac.uk@ukc.uucp
