Ubuntu Manpage: fax - make, send, receive, view or print a fax

NAME

       fax - make, send, receive, view or print a fax

SYNOPSIS

       fax help

       fax make [-l] file

       fax send [-l] [-v] { -m | number } filename...

       fax [ receive [-v] [ filename-prefix ] ]

       fax { print | view | rm } filename...

       fax { queue | status [t] |  start | stop }

       fax answer

OPTIONS

       -l       use low (96 line per inch) resolution

       -v       display verbose messages for debugging

       -m       the phone call has already been dialed manually

       The  commands  make,  send,  receive,  view  and  queue  may be abbreviated to their first
       characters (e.g. ``fax q'').

       Assignments of the form VARIABLE=value may appear before the command name  to  temporarily
       change the values of most fax script variables (e.g. ``fax PAGE=a4 print letter.001'')

DESCRIPTION

fax provides a simple user interface to the efax(1) and efix(1) programs. It allows you
to send text or Postscript files as faxes and receive, print or preview received faxes.
The fax help command prints a summary of the possible commands.

To send a fax, the original files need to be converted from ASCII or Postscript into a
particular bit-map format (TIFF with Group 3 encoding). This can be done automatically by
the fax send command or you can use the fax make command to do the conversion before
sending the fax. The conversion will create one file per page. These files will have the
name of the original file with the page number as an additional suffix. For example,
running fax make doc.ps on the two-page postscript file doc.ps would generate the files
doc.ps.001 and doc.ps.002.

When sending a fax with the fax send command you may dial the number manually and use the
-m option or you may give the phone number on the command line. The names of the files to
be sent are given on the command line, usually by using wildcards. For example, to send a
multi-page fax consisting of the files doc.ps.001, doc.ps.002, and so on, you could use
the command fax send 555-1212 doc.ps.0* (if you had already run the fax make command) or
simply fax send 555-1212 doc.ps. If the number is busy the script will wait and try
again.

Use the fax receive command to answer the phone and receive a fax. If a file name is
specified the received fax will be stored in files with the given file name plus an
extension equal to the page number. If no options are given, the received fax will be
stored in files having a name given by the date and time and an extension equal to the
page number. For example, a fax received beginning on July 4 at 3:05:20 pm will generate
files 0704150520.001, 0704150520.002, and so on.

The fax print, fax view, and fax rm commands are used to print, preview or remove received
fax files. As with the send command the file names are usually given using wildcards.

If efax has been installed for automatic fax reception you can use the fax queue command
to check for files in the incoming spool directory. The fax script can also be configured
to print received faxes or e-mail them as MIME attachments with type image/tiff-f. For
convenience the fax print, view and rm commands will first check for the named files in
this spool directory. The fax status command shows the status of the automatic receive
process once, or every t seconds. Privileged users can use the fax stop and fax start
commands to stop and restart the fax reception daemon.

The fax answer command is used for unattended reception of faxes. It is normally placed
in the inittab(5) or ttytab(5) file and is run automatically by init(8).

The -v option displays verbose messages.

Other features of the fax script are documented within the script:

- a directory that lets you specify recipients by name instead of number

- the fax new command to create a simple cover page and start up a text editor

- the fax makefont command converts a Postscript font to a bit-mapped font for use in
headers or text

RESOLUTION

       Faxes  can be created at low (98 lines per inch) or high (196 lpi) resolution.  Almost all
       fax machines will operate at either resolution.  By default  files  are  created  at  high
       resolution but you can use the optional -l argument to create files at low resolution.

SESSION LOGS

       The  modem  commands  and responses together with status and error messages are written to
       file.  If the fax is successfully sent or received the log file is removed.   Otherwise  a
       message  is  printed  showing  the  log  file  name.  Please send a copy of this file when
       reporting problems with efax.

FILES

       The fax script will `source' the optional shell  scripts  /etc/efax.rc,  ~/.efaxrc  and/or
       ./.efaxrc before processing command-line arguments.  These files can be used to set script
       variables to custom values for a particular system, user and/or directory.

       The following files are created in the FAXDIR spool directory when automatic fax reception
       is  enabled (see the fax script).  DEV represents the name of the fax modem device file in
       /dev (e.g. cua1 for /dev/cua1).

       DEV.n     the log file created by the fax answer daemon with process id n

       DEV.log   contains collected log files for device DEV.  Log files  showing  a  termination
                 status  of  1  (device busy) or 4 (no response from modem) are not added to this
                 file.

       DEV.stop  created by the fax stop command to prevent the fax daemon from starting up.

AUTHOR

       Fax was written by Ed Casas.  Please send comments or bug reports to edc@cce.com.   Please
       describe the type of modem used and include a copy of the log file.

COPYRIGHT

       Fax  is copyright 1993 -- 1999 by Ed Casas.  It may be used, copied and modified under the
       terms of the GNU Public License.

DISCLAIMER

       Although fax has been tested, it may  have  errors  that  will  prevent  it  from  working
       correctly  on your system.  Some of these errors may cause serious problems including loss
       of data and interruptions to telephone service.

BUGS

       See efax(1).