flashinthepan

The HylaFAX fax server is an open source, enterprise-class system for sending and receiving facsimiles. It’s one I have been using and setting up for clients on Linux boxes with great success for a number of years.

My Linux distribution of choice is Gentoo Linux. I really like to be able to customize things and set them up the way I like them: Gentoo is after-all, all about choice. One choice I always make when setting up a new Gentoo box is to use the Paludis package manager for software management.

Paludis is great. It does have a tendency to expose broken or carelessly written ebuilds however. One such program I haven’t been able to install with Paludis is HylaFAX (thus the reason for this article).

If you try to install HylaFAX using Paludis from the Gentoo Portage tree, you will end up with an error like this toward the end of the build:

!!! Cannot write ‘/var/tmp/paludis/net-misc-hylafax-4.4.4/image/var/spool/fax/FIFO’ to ‘/var/spool/fax’ because it is not a recognised file type

When the package builds, it makes a FIFO which Paludis doesn’t support. My previous solution to this problem, which wasn’t a very good one, was to use Portage to install this one problem ebuild. With the 4.4.4 version of HylaFAX hitting the tree, I finally got fed up with this method. I did a lot of searching and finally came across a patch which I have now incorporated into the ebuild. The HylaFAX 4.4.4 ebuild patched for installation with Paludis can be found on my overlay here:

Stormfront Overlay

Instructions for adding the overlay can be found here:

Adding the Stormfront Overlay using Layman

There was really very little information out there on this issue. Hopefully this will be helpful to someone else who is experiencing this problem.