Chapter 1. Getting Started

CapiSuite depends on some packages which must be installed before CapiSuite can be used.

I will list them here with a short information why this packages are needed and where to find further information on how to install them. It may be always a good idea to check the installation tool of your favourite distribution first and see if they're included with it before trying to download and install them from the net. Don't be afraid, because there are so many - most of them are included in nearly every distribution and perhaps are already installed on your system.

Python >= 2.2

CapiSuite uses an embedded Python interpreter to interpret the given scripts - so you'll need an installed and working version of Python. This should be included in mostly every up-to-date Linux distribution. For further infos on Python, a nice tutorial and much more, please go to http://www.python.org

sox >= 12.17.3

This is the swiss-knife for converting audio formats. It's not required by the CapiSuite core, but will be very helpful if you want to hear or record the voice files used for calls on your machine. It's also required if you want to use the default scripts of CapiSuite. I'll bet this is included in your distribution and most likely already installed on your system. Just try to start sox to get sure. As Helmut Gruber pointed out, you need at least version 12.17.3, as this version started to handle inverse A-Law files. You'll find more details on http://sox.sourceforge.net

sfftobmp

CapiSuite will save fax files in the CAPI specific format Structured Fax File (SFF). sfftobmp is a small but useful converter to convert this files to more common formats like JPEG, TIFF or BMP. Get it on http://sfftools.sourceforge.net/sfftobmp.html. It's again not needed by the CapiSuite core, but by the default scripts.

sffview

This tool is a simple but useful SFF viewer. It's not needed by any CapiSuite component, but very useful if you just want to see a fax file without the need to convert it first. You can get it from http://sfftools.sourceforge.net/sffview.html.

tiff2ps

A small utility to convert TIFF files to the Postscript format. It's needed by the default script to convert faxes to PDF files (SFF->TIFF->PS->PDF :-} ). It's often included in a package called tiff or tifftools. Details on http://www.libtiff.org

ps2pdf

Again a small utility for the SFF->PDF chain - this time for the conversion of Adobe PostScript to Adobe PDF. It's part of Ghostscript, so you most likely have it already. (http://www.gnu.org/software/ghostscript/ghostscript.html)

current Ghostscript with cfax patch

Current Ghostscript versions will include a device to create the above mentioned SFF files. If you have an older version, you'll need the patch from http://sfftools.sourceforge.net/ghostscript.html. To see if your GhostScript version already has this patch, please call gs --help and see if you can find the device cfax in the long list of supported devices.

jpeg2ps

The jpeg2ps command is used to convert color fax files to the PostScript format for mail delivery. It's not so important, unless you want to be able to receive color faxes. Unfortunately, there's currently no way to disable the reception of color faxes with AVM cards due to a bug in the AVM CAPI driver. So if someone sends you a color fax (which seems to be a very rare case), you'll need this package - unless you'll get a mail stating this error. If your distribution doesn't have this packages, you can download it from http://www.pdflib.com/jpeg2ps/.

As the color fax protocol uses concatenated JPEG files for transferring multiple pages, you should also download and apply my multipleJPEG patch from http://www.hillier.de/linux/jpeg2ps-multi.php3

First of all, I would suggest to check if your CAPI-driver is setup correctly. To do this, simply run capiinfo on a root shell.

If you get many lines of output, your CAPI driver works. If you just get an error message, you'll have to install CAPI-compatible drivers. Refer to the documentation of your ISDN card vendor, your Linux distribution and/or some ISDN mailing lists for this, please. If you really can't find anyone to support you in doing this, you may ask on the CapiSuite mailing lists for support as last resort.

The rest of the installation depends on wether you use binary or source packages for installing CapiSuite. If you don't want to change the CapiSuite sources, I would recommend you to use the binary packages when available for your distribution and platform.

You can download both binary packages and sources from the download section on http://www.capisuite.de/download. If you built up your own packages for other distributions, please send me them and I'll copy them there...

If you can get binary packages for your distribution and platform, I would advise to use them. I'm building RPM packages for SuSE Linux regularly, as this is the distribution I use (and BTW the company which paid and supported me to write CapiSuite as diploma thesis ;-) ). Debian packages are maintained by Achim Bohnet.

If you managed to install CapiSuite on a system not mentioned below, please tell me and I'll include the instructions here. If you have created binary packages for other distributions, I'll be also happy to point to your download section or make them available on my page.

Now everything should be setup ready to run. So please read on in the section called “How CapiSuite works, how it is configured and started”.