I’ve figured it out. The problem lies in tiff2pdf not being able to convert the huge temporary tiff file that fax_dispatch.php generates in the faxcache folder. The issue is specifically discussed in these two threads:
Scanned Documents Dispatch not working https://sourceforge.net/p/openemr/discussion/202505/thread/502c8806/
David Eschelbacher in the second thread breaks it down beautifully. I tried his fix for fax_dispatch.php, which is to bypass tiff2pdf altogether. It works, but the problem with the kludge is it creates huge pdf files (because its source is the huge temp.tif file). So my workaround is going to be to scan everything in tiff format, which skips step 1 in David Eschelbacher’s breakdown. I’m more used to pdfs in patients’ charts, but fax_dispatch will nicely convert the tiffs to pdfs on dispatch anyway. Hopefully without a hitch for all my scanned tiffs.
The document links from Faxes In are coming from the recvq directory, and the job ID links from Faxes Out are coming from the docq directory. I still can’t open documents from these links; the problem is the same - tiff2pdf. This line from fax_view.php is the issue:
passthru(“tiff2pdf ‘$ffname’”);
I tried to manipulate that line with my zero PHP knowledge but couldn’t get my rudimentary fixes to work. And I still don’t understand why the apache error log is saying “Maximum TIFF file size exceeded” when the tiff files to be converted and viewed are tiny. But if someone knows how to manipulate fax_view.php to be able to view the received and sent faxes, I’d be grateful.
This isn’t make or break, because you can still use Dispatch to see the documents (and it’s more efficient doing that too) and can use Faxes Out simply to verify that a fax was sent successfully. But it’s counterintuitive to staff (and me) to have blue hyperlinks that you just want to push, versus a drab non-hyperlink-looking Dispatch.
Also FYI, the files in the doneq directory were very instrumental to figure out what was going on (clearer than the apache error log).
–Venu