1.2 Features of mgetty and sendfax

This package contains two major programs, mgetty and sendfax.

This is what you can do with sendfax if you have a standard class 2 fax modem:

• send faxes directly or using shell scripts
• do “fax polling”, this means you can call the weather station and get them to send you a fax containing the current weather map. (Not all modem manufacturers implement this feature in their modems!)
• create a “fax queue”, outgoing faxes get sent automatically, the user is informed by mail about the result.

mgetty allows you to use your modem line for receiving fax and data calls, without hindering dial-out on the same line.

• mgetty knows about “smart” modems, and will make sure that the modem is always in a defined state (specific modem initialization possible)
• Incoming calls are answered manually (RING -> ATA -> CONNECT) instead of using auto-answer (‘ATS0=1’), this way the modem won’t pick up the phone when the machine is down or logins are not allowed.
• mgetty incorporates all features of uugetty: it honours LCK.* files created by uucico and other comm programs, this way it will prevent dial-outs while a caller is online and it won’t be confused if other programs use the modem.
• mgetty can receive faxes (if your modem supports fax class 2 or 2.0).
• mgetty knows about incoming FidoNet calls.
• mgetty has extensive logging / debugging features
• do “fax poll sending”, that is, you can setup your machine as fax poll server, to send some fax pages to “fax poll” callers. (Send informations about your system, the current wheather map, ...). Be warned, even less modems support this feature.
• mgetty can selectively refuse calls based upon CallerID, if your local Telco supports it and your modem knows how to decode and report it. CallerID is also logged.
• mgetty has facilities to allow you to refuse incoming FAXes when available disk space is low.

If you have any bug reports, suggestions, please report them to gert@greenie.muc.de (or, if [and only if!] that doesn’t work, to gert@space.net).

Also, I have created a mgetty mailing list, for discussion of problems and suggestions. You can subscribe by sending a request to mgetty-request@muc.de (forwarded to Crynwr.com for precessing) and you can send articles to the list by sending them to mgetty@muc.de. The list manager will write you back for verification of your address, so make sure it is correct.

The mailing list is currently gated bidirectionally into the newsgroup de.alt.comm.mgetty. In spite of being in the German language hierarchy, the language in the group is English. Posts in German should be ignored.

The mailing list is archived on a WWW site, look at http://www.elilabs.com/mgarc/index.html (many thanks to Robert J. Brown, rj@eli.elilabs.com). It’s also archived by Marc Schaefer, on http://search.alphanet.ch/ (NEW!). The latter search engine indexes somewhat more than only the mgetty list, so you might want to add ’mgetty’ to your query to restrict it.