Basement Blog

For a while I used Internet based fax-services to send and receive faxes, but these solutions did not really work for me, because I don’t use faxes often enough to subscribe and pay for a monthly service. And if I ever use it, I don’t use it for just one or two pages, but often receive 48 pages or more. So paying the service by the page was not reasonable either. I was looking into fax/scanner/printer combos and modems, but none of those solutions seemed right for my case.

I knew I need my own fax-machine and I found the Sharp UXB800 fax-machine that was not only very cheap at $80, it can also receive faxes as TIFF and PDF and forward them to an email-address. Perfect for me: no paper and ink wasted.

The fax-machine has one problem, however: It doesn’t support any of the SMTP authentication methods needed to forward emails through my ISP. No big deal: I will just relay the faxes through a mail-server in my LAN. First I used the open-source hMailServer on a Windows workstation, which worked great as a service. Later I decided to switch to a Ubuntu Linux based server.

The following are a few notes, originally just to myself and not really meant as a tutorial. Maybe some of these notes can be useful if you own a UXB800 or comparable. In my recent configuration I decided to give the fax-machine a static IP, but it works just as easily with DHCP.

• Open network router admin interface:
  http://192.168.1.1
• Configuration/Advanced LAN/DNS:
  Domain Name: mydomain.lan
  Static Host Assignment, add
  Host Name: faxmachine
  IP Address: 192.168.1.80
• Open fax machine admin interface:
  http://uxb800-xxxxxxxx/
• Setup/Machine identification
  Name: Fax Machine
  Location: Office
• Setup/Network settings
  Use DHCP: No
  IP Address: 192.168.1.80
  Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
  Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1
  DNS (Primary): 192.168.1.1
  DNS (Secondary): 192.168.1.1
• Fax machine admin panel is now reachable through
  http://faxmachine/
• Setup/Email setup
  SMTP Server: myserver
  Port number: 25
  No POP before SMTP: No
  Sender name: Joe Example
  Email-address: joe@myserver.mydomain.lan
  Email-subject: Incoming Fax
  Message: [blank]
  File Format: PDF
• Need to set a forwarding address at the fax-machine’s menu.
  (This cannot be done with the web admin-interface.)
• Function/Rcv Fax to E-Mail:
  Act. Rcv Fax To Mail: 1 YES
  Print received fax: 2 NO
  Report Setting: 1 Print Error Only
  Forwarding Address: 2 CLEAR
  Forewarding Addr. Clr: 01 START
  Forewarding Addr. Clr: STOP
  Forwarding Address: 1 SET
  Forwarding Addr. Set: 01
  Forwarding Addr #01: START for all
  Email # Mode: joe@myserver.mydomain.lan START STOP STOP
• Back to the fax machine admin interface:
• Destination Management/E-mail
  Destination Name: Joe / Rapid 01
  E-mail Address: joe@myserver.mydomain.lan

Notes

• The following describes how I previously configured hMailServer on Windows:
• Installed hMailServer and chose external MySQL database to link to my local server instance.
• Database name: hmailserver
• Domain/General/Domain name:
  mydomain.lan & default-settings
• Domain/General/Add account:
  joe@mydomain.lan & default-settings
• Settings/Protocols: POP and SMTP
• Settings/Protocols/SMTP/Delivery of email:
  Hostname: myserver
  SMTP relayer: mail.myisp.domain
  Port: 25
  Server requires authentication
  Username/Password
• Settings/Advanced/IP Ranges/Add LAN:
  Priority: 25
192.168.1.15 - 192.168.1.47
  Allow connections: SMTP
  Allow deliveries from: Local to Local, Local to external, External to external
  Other: Forwarding relay
• Settings/Advanced/IP Ranges/Edit My Computer:
  Priority: 15
127.0.0.1 - 127.0.0.1
  Allow connections: SMTP, POP
  Allow deliveries from: all
  Other: Spam protection
• Settings/Advanced/IP Ranges/Edit Internet:
  Priority: 10
0.0.0.0 - 255.255.255.255
  Allow connections: none
  Allow deliveries from: none
  Require authentication: all
  Other: Spam protection