sendfax cannot send several faxes in a row (ELSA Mikrolink 56k)

• Messages sorted by:[ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]

Hi,

I use an ELSA Mikrolink 56k with mgetty+sendfax 1.00 or 1.1.8 on
Intel Linux 2.0.33. NO special setup in policy.h or sendfax.config
besides ignore-carrier yes.

I notice the following problem with both of the above versions:

If I send or poll *one* fax, everything works nice. If I send another
fax, without "touching" (see below) the modem-line otherwise, the second
time sendfax starts dialing and immediately hangs up again. On the third
try, sendfax locks up and you cannot "revive" the modem even with
another terminal program (minicom) and you have to switch it off and on
again.

I could trace the problem down to the following: When sendfax ends, it
calls fax_close in sendfax.c. This subroutine sends "AT+FCLASS=0"
to the modem, but does *never* read in the response. Why ???
It seems that the "OK" the modem will send remains in the input queue,
even if sendfax close the device file.

Indeed, when you start minicom in between each fax sending, you see that
there are up to *TWO* instances of "OK" still in the input buffer.
When you start sendfax now, after using minicom to "flush" the line,
you can send another fax without problems. And so on....

Also, by studying the log-file in the second erroneous sendfax attempt
(without minicom), you can see that the surplus OK response(s) cause(s)
chaos in the send-reply sequences sendfax expects, because it gets
the response to the command sent one or 2 lines earlier.

Unfortunatelly, sendfax does not allow the use of an init-chat (as
mgetty) to flush anything that might be lurking in the input.

I also tried patching the software a bit, and used
mdm_command("AT+FCLASS=0", fd) instead of fax_send in fax_close, but it
did not help, probably because it only removes one "OK", I did not yet
find where the other unacknowledged "OK" is caused. 
Using clear_line failed, because it requires more changes in the header
files and I do not yet understand enough of the program stucture.

What can I do ???


Greetings,

Joachim