Tonight, I used 10.3's built-in fax receipt services for the first time -- I was expecting a seven page fax, so I set the machine to answer and waited for the call1. I heard the phone ring and the modem connect, so I was pretty sure it was working right. I have the print/fax preferences set to save faxes to the Shared Faxes folder, but after 10 minutes or so, there was still nothing to be seen there.
I saw an error in the Console program about "fax notify" failing, so that sent me to the Terminal to do some digging. I cded to /var -> spool -> fax, where I found a series of files named something like:
0212220312.001 0212220312.002 0211220312.003 etcEach of these had varying lengths, so I guessed that each was a page from my missing fax. I then used:
% sudo cp 0211220312.001 ~/Desktop/fax1.tiff % sudo cp 0211220312.002 ~/Desktop/fax2.tiff etc.to copy each fax file to the desktop and make it a TIFF file (the default fax image format). The final step was to open the Get Info window on each file, and change the Permissions so that I was the owner with read/write privileges (the files were owned by root with limited permissions). Once I'd done that, I selected all seven pages and opened them in Preview, and found my missing fax.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20040213020653916