[CentOS] finding the right serial port, enabling & configuring it [was: Re: fax software]

Mon Mar 28 20:13:40 UTC 2011
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

On 3/28/2011 2:53 PM, ken wrote:
>
>>> It's been many years, but it seems that I have to receive a fax and
>>> might have to send one too.  Is there a way to do this on CentOS 5.5?
>>> (Hope so.)
>>
>> Hylafax;  has been quietly running at work, without incident, for years.
>> <http://www.hylafax.org/content/Main_Page>
>
> Thanks everyone for your suggestions.  I remember both of these packages
> from years ago-- the last time I set up a fax.  At that time I bought an
> internal modem-- not a Winmodem, one with jumpers on it to set the com
> port and I believe the interrupt also.  Now, however, I'm working on a
> laptop with a serial chip on the mainboard and it's a different story.
>
> I've been reading the Serial-HOWTO, but it's a huge doc and I hope I
> don't need to read this entire monograph to get the serial port set up
> for the modem so that the fax software can use it.
>
> I've run minicom to see if I can dial out with it-- to test if I have
> the modem's serial port enabled and configured properly.  So far, no
> joy.  Anyone have tips to set up the modem so that efax or (more likely)
> hylafax can use it?

I've forgotten most of what I knew about serial ports (and hope to keep 
it that way...) but chances are that the motherboard ports are 
/dev/ttyS0 or /dev/ttyS1 and hylafax should be able to do its own 
initialization.  I've always used ckermit to poke around and do manual 
things to serial ports because after the 'set line device_name' you can 
'set carrier off' to keep from locking up when the modem doesn't have 
carrier yet.  I think I had to rebuild a src rpm from somewhere for 
Centos5, though.  It has an odd license and isn't in the distro any more 
even though the license does explicitly permit that.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com