The
JOB files in the subdirectories of the outgoing fax spool directory,
/var/spool/fax/outgoing build up a queue of faxes to be sent by faxrunq(1) . They are created by
faxspool(1) , can be viewed with faxq(1) , and be deleted by faxrm(1) .
FORMAT
The format of the JOB file is as follows:
Each line consists of a leading keyword and associated data (rest of the
line). Some are required, some others are optional. The currently
implemented keywords are:
phone <number>
The telephone number to send the fax to. Required.
user <user>
The originating user name (on the local machine). If no "mail" field is
present, this user will get the status mail about the fax. Required.
mail <email>
If this field is present, faxrunq(1) will send its status mail to the
address given here. If not, faxrunq(1) will use the "user" field.
Optional.
The file names, relative to the directory where the JOB file is found,
that are to be sent with sendfax(8) . The files have to exist, and be
readable by the user that runs faxrunq(1) . Required, except if "poll" is
used, then it's optional.
priority <0-9>
This can be used to set the priority for this job in the fax queue (higher
priority jobs get sent before all lower-pri jobs). So far, only
faxrunqd uses this field,
faxrunq does NOT. 9 is the highest, 0 the lowest priority. 5 is the default.
Status <message>
Automatically appended by faxrunq(1) after each run, tells the reader
about successful and unsuccessful tries to send this job. If more than
five "FATAL" errors are listed, the fax job is removed from the queue.
verbose_to <blurb>
A plain-text description of the receiver of the fax. Is returned, if
present, in the mail messages "your fax to <blurb>". Optional.
time <hhmm>
If present,
faxrunq
won't send this job before the given time. The format must be exactly
"hhmm", in 24-hr-format, otherwise faxrunq won't understand it. Optional.
poll
Flag token. If present, faxrunq will try to poll the given phone
number for documents (see "sendfax -p").
normal_res
Flag token. If present, faxrunq will transmit all pages using normal
resolution (see "sendfax -n").
acct_handle <arbitrary string>
This is a pure comment field, but sendfax(8) will log it into
its transaction log file. So this can be used as a customer handle,
a job number, whatever you need to get the phone bills charged to the
customer (the programs won't look at it, just pass it through). Optional.
subject <arbitrary string>
This is also a pure comment field, used only for informational purposes.
faxrunq
will return it in the sucess/failure mail. If you use
faxspool -s <subj>,
it will put this string on the cover page and in the JOB file.
PERMISSIONS
Starting with mgetty 1.1.29, the fax spool directory /var/spool/fax/outgoing
is no longer world-writeable. It should be owned by the
user 'fax' and be mode 755. The faxrunq(1) and faxrunqd(1)
programs should also be run under that user ID if possible.
If the fax spool directory is world- or group-writeable, there are a
number of denial of service or file overwrite / file access attacks
possible that it's very hard to guard against. So don't do this!
If the fax spool directory has the proper permissions, there are currently
no known attacks against faxrunq/faxrunqd, even if they run as "root", but
it's always more safe to run as untrusted user.
PROCESSING
While a given JOB file is processed by faxrunq(1) , it's locked against
sending it multiple times by temporarily renaming it to
JOB.locked, thus it may happen that a faxq(1) command doesn't show this job. (
faxrunqd(8) is a bit smarter and does the locking by creating a hard link).
When a job is successfully sent, it's not deleted but the JOB file is
renamed to
JOB.done. Because of this, you can still see old jobs with "faxq -o". You should
regularly clean up the outgoing fax directory, removing old faxes. If you
don't want this behaviour, edit the faxrunq(1) config file and enable
the option
delete-sent-jobs yes
When a job cannot be sent after several tries (excluding normal
difficulties like the called number being busy or the modem being in
use), the JOB file is renamed to
JOB.suspended. To re-queue this job, call
faxq -r -- this renames the JOB file back.
