[asterisk-users] res_fax_digium.so crashing

[Steve Totaro]

On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 9:02 AM, Kevin P. Fleming <kpfleming at digium.com> wrote:
> On 01/16/2011 09:18 PM, Jeremy Kister wrote:
>>
>> On 1/16/2011 4:13 PM, Paul Belanger wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't believe Digium is blind to its users: Users of Free Fax For
>>> Asterisk are not entitled to any Digium technical support [1].
>>
>> I'm not looking for technical support; I'm just looking for a way to
>> report a bug and possibly help debug/resolve it. But as you know,
>> Digium's website gives FFA users no clear to contact them - even to
>> report problems. issues.asterisk.org has no selection for res_fax_digium
>> since it is not bundled with Asterisk. I call that willful blindness.
>>
>> Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for FFA and Asterisk in general - I
>> have several running 1.8.2 working correctly.
>>
>>> Alternatively, you can generating an unoptimized backtrace [2] and
>>> posting the results to the mailing list, seeing if any member of the
>>> community has also had an issue.
>>
>> I didnt expect anyone on this list to be interested, but I suppose
>> you're right.
>>
>> This weekend, i set up a new system running Asterisk 1.8.2 on Debian
>> 5.0.7 where the benchmark told me to use
>> res_fax_digium-1.8.0_1.2.1-core2_32 (i also tried generic_32 but that
>> crashed as well).
>>
>> Asterisk correctly detects the fax and transfers to the fax context. But
>> moments after ReceiveFax is called, asterisk crashes, with no tif
>> written where I've directed it to.
>>
>> I have several files including backtraces and config files at
>> http://jeremy.kister.net/tmp/fax/
>
> We have determined the cause of this problem; I'm sorry to say it's an
> incompatibility between releases that wasn't caught before the releases were
> made.
>
> res_fax.c in Asterisk 1.8.2 contains some changes that make it incompatible
> with res_fax_digium modules compiled for Asterisk 1.8.0 and 1.8.1, which is
> what is causing this problem. For now, the res_fax_digium 1.2.x modules are
> only usable with Asterisk 1.8.0 and 1.8.1; there is a res_fax_digium 1.3.0
> release currently being tested for release that is compatible with Asterisk
> 1.8.2 and later. We'll try to get it out as quickly as we can, and also
> update the download selector on the Digium website to indicate that the
> 1.2.x modules should not be used with Asterisk 1.8.2.
>
> --
> Kevin P. Fleming
> Digium, Inc. | Director of Software Technologies
> 445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA
> skype: kpfleming | jabber: kfleming at digium.com
> Check us out at www.digium.com & www.asterisk.org
>

If you are swapping out systems in really busy offices that rely on
faxing to keep the doors open, do a whole bunch of testing.  FFA (I
purchased 3 licenses plus the free one) never worked well and Digium
could not support it and the one of the guys on the phone should be
unemployed or working in a capacity that does not involve interfacing
with customers.

Until someone can post there fax show stats and the numbers jive, and
I mean hundreds of faxes, not just a dozen, and can also say that FFA
works reliably in a fax intensive environment, then I wouldn't even
consider it.

My experience is based on my Asterisk server with a direct cross
connect to Level3's cage in Equinix, VA.using T.38.

The problem was not apparent until a few days later when people were
complaining about not getting faxes.  In my testing, I sent a few
dozen, sometimes four at a time with no issues.  When you have
hundreds of people getting hundreds of faxes, a few dozen test faxes
is not really a good real world test in that kind of environment.

Obviously, everyone was freaking out because their expected faxes were
the most important thing in the world, not to downplay it, many were
military documentation and contracts for guys deploying to Iraq and
elsewhere.

I got it fixed with an all nighter, but I took a beating for the
problems for not fully testing and monitoring.  After that, nobody had
faith in the fax solution.

Can anyone that is not affiliated with Digium post their stats and
reports from users using T.38?

Thanks,
Steve T