[Samba] Fax modems and Samba

[Stephen Borrill]

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005, Tomasz Chmielewski wrote:
>>>> If not Samba, is there another Linux program that would make server 
>>>> modems available to WinXP workstations?
>
> IMHO you won't do it like that (i.e., "a printer which is really a fax").
>
> One thing missing is the fact that each fax need a telephone number 
> associated with it, which would be hard to extract from the document.

It's not that difficult. Set up a shared printer and print to it with a 
generic Postscript driver (e.g. some form of Laserjet PS). Script an input 
filter (this is using lpd not CUPS). Then use ps2ascii to look for a 
number prefixed by something like FAXTO:

faxto=`ps2ascii $TMP | sed -ne '/FAXTO:/s/[() ]//g' \
         -e 's/FAXTO://g' \
         -e 's/[[:cntrl:]]//gp' 2>> $OUT`

You can then pass the job to efax or faxspool (from mgetty+sendfax). 
I've been using this for years. You can get the user name from the -n 
option passed to the script to, for example, email the user if they've 
forgotten to specify a number.

-- 
Stephen