AsterFax the Email to Fax Gateway for Asterisk.
---------------   We have moved -----------------


AsterFax and Asterisk IT have both been renamed.

Asterfax is now known as Noojee Fax

Asterisk IT is now known as Noojee Telephony Solutions.

Noojee Fax documentation and support can now be obtained via:
http://www.noojee.com.au/Page/NoojeeFax
https://wiki.noojee.com.au/Noojee_Fax
http://forums.noojee.com.au

---------------   We have moved -----------------

Asterisk IT is the primary developer and sponsor of AsterFax the Open Source Email to Fax Gateway for Asterisk.
Asterisk I.T. offer a range of support options for AsterFax as well as general Asterisk consulting services.  Contact sales@asteriskit.com.au for more information.
You can also receive support from the Asterfax and Asterisk communities by by posting at the relevant forum.		 Asterisk
trixbox

AsterFax™ - Asterisk Fax

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Ghostscript

Tiff files are the only type of file which can be faxed therefore all other files formats must first be converted to a Tiff file before it can be faxed.

AsterFax uses Adobe's PDF file format as an intermediated file format. The reason for this is that PDF is very popular and many file formats can easily be converted into a PDF. AsterFax uses OpenOffice to convert many file formats (including MS-Word) into PDF files.
Once we have a PDF file AsterFax needs to convert it into a Tiff file.
The default installation of AsterFax relies heavily on Ghostscript for converting PDF files into tiff files.

Note: Ghostscript can be replaced by any other program that converts PDF file to tiff files by modifying a ooconvert.sh and AsterFax.xml.
If you want to do this please consult the section on creating Converters, you should only need to modify the PDF Converter.

This document concentrates on using Ghostscript as the primary means of converting PDF files to tiff files.

If you are using trixbox and have installed it directly from CD then you will be running the Linux distribution Centos.

The easiest way to download ghostscript is via Apt-Get.
Note: as of this writing only versions 7.70 was available for Centos.

Using Yum
yum -y install ghostscript

Using Apt-Get
apt-get update && apt-get install ghostscript

rpm
rpm -U ghostscript-N.NN-1.i386.rpm
rpm -U ghostscript-fonts-N.NN-1.noarch.rpm

If you install a version of ghostscript other than 7.70 you may have to update the AsterFax configuration so that it uses the latest version. Refer to the next section on Upgrading Ghostscript for details.

Upgrading Ghostscript

Some users have reported problems with Ghostscript 7.70 not correctly rendering all PDF files. Ghostscript 8.53 or later appear to resolve these problems. Unfortunately you will need to manually download the Ghostscript RPM's and build them.

Start by downloading:
ghostscript-8.53-gpl.tar.gz  from prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ghostscript (or a later version).

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ghostscript/ghostscript-8.53-gpl.tar.gz

Next uncompress the files into a temp directory by running

gzip -d ghostscript-8.53-gpl.tar.gz
tar -xf ghostscript-8.53-gpl.tar

Next build ghostscript
cd ghostscript
./configure
make
make install

You need to download the RPM as well as both of the zipped font files for the same version.

These can be obtained from:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghostscript-rpm

Don't worry about the version the 8.15 fonts are correct (the ghostscript developers have not updated the font files).


Again unzip each of the font files.
mkdir /gstmp
cp ghostscript-font-std-8.50.zip /gstmp (or download the file to this directory)
cp ghostscript-font-other-8.50.zip /gstmp (or download the file to this directory)
unzip ghostscript-font-std-8.50.zip
unzip ghostscript-font-other-8.50.zip
mv fonts /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts 


You now need to make changes to the AsterFax configuration files so that it uses the new version of Ghostscript.

Firstly at the top of /usr/lib/asterfax/config/AsterFax.xml change the line
<!ENTITY ghostscript "/usr/bin/gs">
to
<!ENTITY ghostscript "/usr/local/bin/gs">

Then edit the file /usr/lib/asterfax/bin/ooconvert.sh
change the line that starts with:
/usr/bin/gs -q -sDEVICE=tiffg3

so that it starts with

/usr/local/bin/gs -q -sDEVICE=tiffg3

Restart AsterFax and email a test PDF to AsterFax.
Check the AsterFax log files to ensure that the correct version of Ghostscript is running.



You can get Ghostscript RPM's suitable for Centos 4.2 from:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghostscript-rpm

You need to download the RPM as well as both of the zipped font files for the same version.

Instructions:
Download the RPM and associated zipped font files for Centos.
Note: the RPM's are likely to work on any redhat compatiable version of Linux.
Note: the following instructions leave the default install of ghostscript (version 7.7 on Centos) intact and runnable at /usr/bin/gs.



Install the RPM using:
rpm -U ghostscript-8.15.1-3.1.i386.rpm

Install each of the font files by unzipping them to a temporary directory and them moving them to the correct location:
e.g.
mkdir /gstmp
cd /gstmp

(download the zips to the gstmp directory).

unzip ghostscript-font-std-8.15.zip
unzip ghostscript-font-other-8.15.zip
mv fonts /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts

Ghostscript is now installed.
Note: ghostscript installs to /usr/local/bin
If you have a prior version of ghostscript it is likely to be located at /usr/bin, as such you may need to update your paths.
That's it for installing ghostscript 8.15.

Problems:
Some people have experienced problems intalling ghostscript 8.15 as it depends on the floowing files:


Building Ghostscript

If you are really keen or you are running on a version of Linux which the above RPM doesn't support then you can Build Ghostscript from source.

Note: at the time of writting (Jan 06) the following instructions did not work due to a build problem with the 8.50 source.
Hopefully by the time you try it the Ghostscript developers will have resolved the report.
I have reported the bug to the Ghostscript bug mailing list.
The following describes how to build and install ghostscript.

Note: the following instructions leave the default install of ghostscript (version 7.7 on Centos) intact and runnable at /usr/bin/gs.

Download a ghostscript zip file from the asterfax downloads page:
ghostscript-8.50.zip
ghostscript-fonts-std-8.50.zip
ghostscript-fonts-other-8.50.zip


Unzip the  ghostscript-8.50.zip file into a temporary directory.
Once unzipped change directories into the top level directory where you unzipped the file to.
e.g.
mkdir /gstmp
cp ghostscript-8.50-gpl.zip /gstmp
cd /gstmp
unzip ghostscript-8.50-gpl.zip
cd ghostscript-8.50-gpl
chmod a+x configure
chmod a+x jasper/configure
./configure
make
make install

Now you need to install the fonts:
Again unzip each of the font files.
cd /gstmp
cp ghostscript-font-std-8.50.zip /gstmp (or download the file to this directory)
cp ghostscript-font-other-8.50.zip /gstmp (or download the file to this directory)
unzip ghostscript-font-std-8.50.zip
unzip ghostscript-font-other-8.50.zip
mv fonts /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts 


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