How do I cancel faxes in the VSIFAX queue?

Many times it’s quicker to cancel faxes from the VSI-FAX queue in AIX, Linux or Windows instead of from the Eclipse outgoing fax status queue.

To cancel all faxes for a certain user (for example, johndoe):

vfxcancel -u johndoe "*"

To locate the job number and cancel a single fax (for example, job number 1234):

vfxstat
vfxcancel 1234
For more information on the many VSIFAX administration command functions, see the VSI-FAX Reference Addendum.

How to Purge the Outgoing Fax Queue

If the outgoing fax queue has old and/or stale information, it may be necessary to purge this queue.  To do this, open two separate sessions: one Eterm session logged into the Eclipse application, and an SSH root session. This is an advanced procedure, so proceed at your own risk or call Eclipse for assistance. This should be done after all valid faxes have gone out as it will clear EVERYTHING in the outgoing queue.

From Eterm’s main menu, press F2 -> T (TCL)
At the ; prompt, type in this command:

;clear.file.real fax.queue

After you hit ENTER, the session will most likely hang for a while, because there will be a lock on the file. Now, from the root session, find the Process ID for FAX.FEEDBACK3 with this command:

ps -ef | grep FAX

The Process ID (PID) will be the first set of number on the line with FAX.FEEDBACK3. For example:

[root@eclipse enp]# ps -ef | grep FAX
eclipseB  7248 29271  0 11:32 ?        00:00:01 phantom PHW FAX.FEEDBACK3
root     11469  7149  0 11:57 pts/2    00:00:00 grep FAX

Kill that process with this command:

kill -4 7248

The outgoing fax queue should now be clear and the fax feedback phantom should automatically start within 1 minute.

Type “exit” to close the root session and hit “ESC” to exit the TCL screen.

2 thoughts on “How do I cancel faxes in the VSIFAX queue?”

  1. Thanks for the info, but how do you find the job number??? (can’t cancel a job, if I DON’T KNOW THE JOB #!!!!)

    1. Kevin, you can use the vfxstat command to list all of the faxes currently in the VSIFAX queue. I’ve updated the article with this clarification.

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