NAME

       courierfax - Send faxes via E-mail

SYNOPSIS

       sendmail [5558888@fax]

       sendmail [5558888@fax-lowres]

       sendmail [5558888@fax-ignore]

       sendmail [5558888@fax-cover]

DESCRIPTION

       The courierfax module (if enabled by the system administrator) sends E-mail messages by
       fax. Addressing an E-mail message to the address 5558888@fax faxes a printed copy of the
       message to the specified phone number.

       The ability to send faxes may be restricted, or not available. The E-mail message may be a
       MIME-formatted message. All attachments are concatenated and sent together in a single fax
       transmission.  courierfax only knows how to handle certain kinds of attached. Obviously,
       trying to fax a voice .mp3 attaching is not going to work.  courierfax knows how to handle
       plain text, Postscript, and PDF MIME attachments.  courierfax might also know what to do
       with other kinds of attachment, depending on some optional software installed by the
       system administrator.  courierfax may also be able to read GIF, PNG, and JPEG images.

           Note
           Color images are converted to black-and-white.

       Images are faxed with one image per fax page (limiting image sizes to about 1600x2200).

       The message will be returned as undeliverable if courierfax doesn´t know how to handle a
       MIME attachment. If the first MIME section in the E-mail message is plain text, the text
       appears on the fax cover page. The sender/recipient information for the cover page is
       taken from the message´s headers.

       The default courierfax configuration tries to resend the fax for up to eight hours, after
       which the message is returned as undeliverable. The message will also be returned as
       undeliverable if the fax transmission is interrupted. The return bounce will state how
       many pages were successfully transmitted.

       "@fax" may also be followed by additional keywords that specify extra options:

       -lowres
           Send a low-resolution fax.

       -ignore
           Ignore any attachment types that courierfax doesn´t understand.

       -cover
           Send a cover page only. This is useful in limited situations, with something like this
           in a dot-courier(5)[1] file:

                ./Maildir
                ! 5552222@fax-cover
           This .courier file faxes the contents of a message, sans any attachments, immediately
           upon receipt in addition to saving the message in the mailbox.

FAX TRANSMISSION RECEIPT

       The sender will receive a fax transmission receipt if the sender requests an ESMTP
       delivery status notification. This is the -N option to sendmail(8)[2]:

           sendmail -Nsuccess 5556666@fax <messagefile

       When using other mail software, consult the mail software´s documentation for instructions
       on requesting ESMTP delivery status notifications.

ADDITIONAL DIALING OPTIONS

       courierfax configurations that are generated by the webadmin tool for North American
       environments usually restrict phone numbers to a standardized ten-digit telephone number,
       so that the fax address is always <aaabbbcccc@fax>, and courierfax silently performs any
       needed conversion to dial the number (such as adding “1” or dropping the local areacode).

       It is also possible to reconfigure courierfax so that it accepts any telephone string and
       dials it without any preprocessing. If so, the address may contain any combination of
       digits, letters “A”, “B”, “C”, and “D”, representing the four extra dialing tones not
       normally accessible from most telephone keypads, the symbols “*” and “#”, or the following
       characters:

       W
           Most faxmodems pause and wait for a secondary dialtone, before dialing the rest of the
           number.

       -
           The dash is replaced by a comma in the dialing string. A comma results in most
           faxmodems pausing for two or three seconds before dialing the rest of the number. It
           is not possible to enter a comma directly, because commas are used to separate
           multiple E-mail addresses. Use dashes instead of commas in the dialing string.
           courierfax replaces all dashes with commas before dialing the faxmodem.

       +
           Similarly, courierfax replaces all pluses with “@” characters before dialing. An “@”
           characters results in most faxmodems waiting for the line to be silent for five
           seconds before dialing the rest of the number. It is not possible to enter a “@”
           directly as part of the telephone number itself, for the obvious reasons. Use pluses
           instead of “@”s in the dialing string.  courierfax replaces all pluses with “@” before
           dialing the faxmodem.

CONFIGURATION

       The slightly arcane configuration file, /etc/courier/faxrc, sets up which dialing strings
       are valid. The default configuration file contains judicious comments that explain all the
       parameters, and what they do. The default configuration file disables courierfax by
       rejecting all telephone numbers. The file must be edited in accordance with the embedded
       instructions, in order to enable faxing.

       Using webadmin is highly recommended. Upon demand, webadmin will install a suitable
       configuration file for the North American numbering plan, that receives all telephone
       numbers as ten-digit numbers, and adds any required long distance prefix, or removes the
       local area code, as appropriate. Or, webadmin will install a bare-bones configuration file
       that dials any requested phone number, without any editing or transformation.

BUGS

       There is no good way to sleep until a modem lock is released, so we poll every minute.

SEE ALSO

       courier(8)[3].

AUTHOR

       Sam Varshavchik
           Author

NOTES

        1. dot-courier(5)
           [set $man.base.url.for.relative.links]/dot-courier.html

        2. sendmail(8)
           [set $man.base.url.for.relative.links]/sendmail.html

        3. courier(8)
           [set $man.base.url.for.relative.links]/courier.html