AsterFax provides an Email to Fax gateway for the transmission of faxes
using Asterisk.
Beta 6 continues to add additional functionality as per the roadmap
laid out on the
AsterFax home page (http://asterfax.sourceforge.net).
Beta 6 includes a number of new features as well as numerous bug fixes.
The main new features are:
* Self Diagnostics
AsterFax now contains a number of self diagnostics which will be run on
startup to
check that the configuration details result in an operational system.
The Self Diagnostics include checkes for
Existants and permissions on each required directory.
Ability to connect to Asterisk.
SMTP IPAddress/port is not already in use.
A number of other checks.
The set of check will be expanded over time.
The Self Diagnosis can be disabled via the config/AsterFax.xml file.
* Subject line now included on fax header
The fax header (where the phone number etc are displayed) now also
includes the subject
line from the original email.
* Archiving of faxes
Each fax sent can now be sent to a designated mail box for archival.
Expansion
of supported file formats - the list of standard converters will be
expanded to support all file formats supported by OpenOffice.
Documentation of procmail receipes for integration with
sendmail/postfix etc.
*Return Receipt
Support of Return Receipt email option where by a confirmation email is
sent to the users inbox
when the fax is successfully delivered.
*Converters extensions
Converters now support an Extensions element. It was found that a
number of email clients and
email servers do not always correctly categorize the mime type of an
attachment.
The result is that AsterFax doesn't recognise supported attachments.
Converters now support a new element called <Extensions>.
The Extensions element may contain a semicolon separated list of file
extensions (without the dot).
If AsterFax cannot find a valid attachment based on an exact match of
the mimeType then the extension will
be used to match the file.
*Type Quit to shutdown
AsterFax now requires the user to type 'quit' at the command prompt to
exit asterfax. This was introduced to
over come an issue where asterfax would shutdown immediately on startup.
*Outbound SMTP configuration
Beta 6 allows the outbound SMTP host and port to be configured. In
previous releases AsterFax
relied soley on doing a DNS lookup of the senders email address domain
to determine what
SMTP server to used when sending emails back to the originator.
With the release of Beta 6 the outbound SMTP host and port may be
explicityl defined in the
config/AsterFax.xml file. If not specified AsterFax will fall back to
using the DNS lookup.
Bug fixes
*Fixed shutdown
When AsterFax was shutting down it would sometimes throw an
IllegalMonitorException and/or somethread
would not terminate and AsterFax may or may not hang.
The shutdown logic as been cleaned up and AsterFax now shutsdown
correct.
*AsterTest ignoring port settings
The AsterTest application was ignoring the port commandline parameter
when sending the second test message.
*HTML attachments with <br> elements render on a single line
HTML attachment or a mail body which uses html where not being
converted correctly.
The <br> tag was being treated as a linefeed with out a new line.
The result was that all lines
where being displayed in the fax on a single line each over-righting
the other.
**Upgrade Instructions
Note: The AsterFax.xml configuration file has changed considerably and
you will need to
replace your existing file.
Remember to copy across any edits from your prior version.
1. Shutdown the AsterFax daemon.
2. Backup your existing AsterFax install directory.
3. Unzip the release files into /usr/lib/asterfax.
4. Reapply any changes you made to config/AsterFax.xml.
5. Restart the AsterFax daemon.
6. Run the test suite as per the standard installation instructions.