.\" $Id: faxq-helper.8in,v 4.1 2006/02/17 14:38:25 gert Exp $
.TH faxq-helper 1 "18 Feb 06" "greenie" "mgetty+sendfax manual"
.IX faxq-helper
.SH NAME
faxq-helper \- privileged helper process to access the fax queue 
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B faxq-helper <command> [<options>]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I faxq-helper
is part of the internal workings of faxspool(1).

Formerly, the /var/spool/fax/outgoing directory was world-writeable,
leading to all sort of funny symlink attacks against faxspool(1) and
faxrunq(8).

These days, it's owned by the user ``uucp'', and only this user
can write to it.  To be able to put jobs there, faxspool(1) calls 
.I faxq-helper
for very clearly defined purposes:

 - make a new queue directory

 - put a new fax G3 file into this queue directory

 - put a JOB file into this queue directory, and activate the fax job

and possibly:

 - remove a fax job from the queue (to be used by faxrm and in case of errors)

 - re-queue a job that has been suspended due to repeated failures (faxq -r)

To achieve this,
.I faxq-helper
is installed set-user-id uucp.  If you remove the suid bit, or
chown the fax queue directory to a different user, it will stop working.

.SH RETURN VALUES
.I faxq-helper
has the following exit() values:

.TP
.B 0
everything went fine

.TP
.B 1
invalid JOB ID specified on the command line

.TP
.B 2
some problem with the directory setup of the outgoing queue dir, 
/var/spool/fax/outgoing (it will print a detailed error message)

.TP
.B 3
some problems with the user ID setup of the ``uucp'' user (it will 
print a detailed error message)

.TP
.B 10
failure to process the specified command (it will print a detailed 
error message)

.SH "SEE ALSO"
faxspool(1), faxq(1), faxrm(1), faxqueue(5)
.SH AUTHOR
.I faxq-helper
is Copyright (C) 2004-2006 by Gert Doering, <gert@greenie.muc.de>.