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faxq-helper(1) mgetty+sendfax manual faxq-helper(1)

NAME

faxq-helper - privileged helper process to access the fax queue

SYNOPSIS

faxq-helper <command> [<options>]

DESCRIPTION

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 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, 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.
 

RETURN VALUES

faxq-helper has the following exit() values:
 
0
everything went fine
 
1
invalid JOB ID specified on the command line
 
2
some problem with the directory setup of the outgoing queue dir, /var/spool/fax/outgoing (it will print a detailed error message)
 
3
some problems with the user ID setup of the ``uucp'' user (it will print a detailed error message)
 
10
failure to process the specified command (it will print a detailed error message)
 

SEE ALSO

faxspool(1), faxq(1), faxrm(1), faxqueue(5)

AUTHOR

faxq-helper is Copyright (C) 2004-2006 by Gert Doering, <gert@greenie.muc.de>.
18 Feb 06 greenie