Previous Section Next Section

fax

Deliver with a fax-sending program V8.8 and above

The fax delivery agent is used to deliver mail to a fax-sending program. If you define this delivery agent with:

MAILER(`fax')

any address that ends in .fax is automatically sent to that delivery agent. Thus, to fax mail to a user on the local machine, you might do the following:

To: joe@5554321.fax

This will cause the message to be sent to the faxmail program for delivery to the number 555-4321.[5] The faxmail program will parse the message for a recipient, and for fax-tuning parameters passed in header lines that begin with x-fax-. It will format and send the result to the hfaxd daemon, which actually communicates with fax modems.

[5] Note that in the United States, numbers that begin with 555 (other than 555-1212) are guaranteed to be non-existent or benign. That is why 555 numbers are often used in U.S.-produced movies and television programs (and in examples in books such as this).

Note that hfaxd and the modems need not exist on the local machine. If you have a central fax server, you can set up all the client machines by defining the FAX_RELAY mc configuration macro to point at that machine:

define(`FAX_RELAY', `fax.your.domain')

With this definition, any mail addressed to an address ending in .fax will be forwarded to fax.your.domain for sending as a fax. Obviously, you will need to have fax-sending software and fax modems installed on that machine.

Note that you should use either MAILER('fax') or FAX_RELAY—not both. If you declare both, the MAILER('fax') will supersede the FAX_RELAY, and all fax mail will be delivered locally.

Another way to handle faxes is to set up aliases for each user that can receive faxes:

userA+fax: "|/usr/local/bin/faxmail -d userA@5551234"
userB+fax: "|/usr/local/bin/faxmail -d userB@5556789"

The defaults for the fax delivery agent are listed in Table 20-6. The mc configuration macros at the left can be used to modify or replace those defaults.

Table 20-6. Macros to modify the fax delivery agent

Macro

§

Default

FAX_MAILER_ARGS

See this section

A=faxmail -d $u@$h $f

none

See this section

F=DFMhu

FAX_MAILER_PATH

See this section

P=/usr/local/bin/faxmail

FAX_MAILER_MAX

See this section

M=100000

none

R=

R=24

none

S=

S=14

none

T=

T=X-Phone/X-FAX/X-Unix

FAX_MAILER_QGRP

Q=

no Q= default

The faxmail program, the hfaxd daemon, and all the other supporting software you need to email faxes is available from ftp://ftp.hylafax.org/.

Also, a number of commercial products are available that allow users to email faxes. They are easily found by searching on the Web.

Previous Section Next Section