FAQ Why is hylafax dialing the area code?

From Computer Evolution Knowledgebase

The fax program comes with a dialing rules file which tells it exactly what numbers to dial. Unfortunately, when dialing the area code, the fax program often doesn't know that it has to dial the country code in front. Therefore when dialing a number on certain phone companies, without dialing the country code in front of the number, a busy signal is thrown and the fax fails.

To correct this issue first you must log into the server.

Now modify the file /var/spool/fax/etc/dialrules. Now it says it's a read only file, but that won't matter.

/var/spool/fax/etc/dialrules

! $Id: dialrules,v 1.4 2003/05/16 02:15:45 darren Exp $
!
! HylaFAX (tm) Dialing String Processing Rules.
!
! This file describes how to process user-specified dialing strings
! to create two items:
!
! CanonicalNumber: a unique string that is derived from all dialing
! strings to the same destination phone number.  This string is used
! by the fax server for ``naming'' the destination. 
!
! DialString: the string passed to the modem for use in dialing the
! telephone.  This string should be void of any characters that might
! confuse the modem.
!
Area=${AreaCode}		! local area code
Country=${CountryCode}		! local country code
IDPrefix=${InternationalPrefix}	! prefix for placing an international call
LDPrefix=${LongDistancePrefix}	! prefix for placing a long distance call
!
WS=" 	"			! our notion of white space
!
! Convert a phone number to a canonical format:
!
!    +<country><areacode><rest>
!
! by (possibly) stripping off leading dialing prefixes for
! long distance and/or international dialing.
!
CanonicalNumber := [
%.*			=			! strip calling card stuff
[abcABC]		= 2			! these convert alpha to numbers
[defDEF]		= 3
[ghiGHI]		= 4
[jklJKL]		= 5
[mnoMNO]		= 6
[prsPRS]		= 7
[tuvTUV]		= 8
[wxyWXY]		= 9
[^+0-9]+		=			! strip white space etc.
^${IDPrefix}		= +			! replace int. dialing code
^${LDPrefix}		= +${Country}		! replace l.d. dialing code
^[^+]			= +${Country}${Area}&	! otherwise, insert canon form
]
!
! Process a dialing string according to local requirements.
! These rules do only one transformation: they convert in-country
! international calls to long-distance calls.
!
DialString := [
[-${WS}.]+		=			! strip syntactic sugar
[abcABC]		= 2			! these convert alpha to numbers
[defDEF]		= 3
[ghiGHI]		= 4
[jklJKL]		= 5
[mnoMNO]		= 6
[prsPRS]		= 7
[tuvTUV]		= 8
[wxyWXY]		= 9
^[+]${Country}		= ${LDPrefix}		! long distance call
^[+]			= ${IDPrefix}		! international call
^${Country}${Area}	= 
^${Area}		= 
]

Once you modify that then restart hylafax and you're done.