QRUN(1)

NAME
qrun - Qfax fax spool processor for efax

SYNOPSIS
qrun

DESCRIPTION
qrun checks the fax spool directory for any faxes waiting to be sent, and tries to send any faxes it finds, otherwise it exits without doing anything. If a "long distance period" was defined at compile time, qrun checks the phone number of the outgoing fax before sending it, to make sure it has permission to dial out at this time. Faxes are sent out one at a time, with a 15 second pause between them. If a fax transmission is successful, the fax files in the spool directory are deleted and the sender is notified by email, telling him the time of the transmission and its result. If a fax transmission fails for any reason, qrun writes a "try file" to the spool directory, making a note of the time of the attempt and its result. The fax files remain in the spool directory until the next time qrun is invoked, when it will try again to send them. This process continues until either the fax gets sent successfully or MAXTRIES (as defined in config.h ) is met. If this maximum number of failed attempts is achieved, the fax is moved to the storage directory, and the sender is notified by email.

RUNNING QRUN WITH CRON
qrun is intended to be run from a crontab entry periodically. Ideally this should be fax's (or uucp's) crontab entry, but it will work properly from root's crontab as well. An entry such as: 0,15,30,45 * * * * /usr/local/bin/qrun will process the fax spool once every 15 minutes, for instance.

ANSWER PROCESSES AND INIT
qrun presently makes the assumption that you will be using fax answer from your /etc/inittab to answer incoming calls. qrun disables any fax answer process that might be running when it is invoked, so that it won't be interrupted by incoming calls prior to dialing out. When the last fax is sent, qrun enables fax answer once again by removing the stop file that was preventing init from spawning a new one. This should allow qrun to seamlessly coexist with your answer process.

FILES

    /usr/local/bin/qrun     Qrun binary
    /usr/local/bin/fax      efax fax script
    /usr/local/bin/efax     efax binary
    /etc/inittab            init configuration file
    /etc/crontab            crontab manager
    config.h                Qfax compile-time configuration file

AUTHOR
Qrun was written by Robert LeBlanc <rjl@renaissoft.com>. Comments, feedback, and suggestions are welcome.

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS
efax was written by Ed Casas <edc@ee.ubc.ca>. Without this wonderful fax program of his, many of us would still be living in a faxless world. Thanks Ed.

COPYRIGHT
The Qfax utilities ( qfax, qrun, qsend, qstat, qdel ) are copyright 1994 by Robert LeBlanc and Renaissoft. These files may be used, copied, and modified under the terms of the GNU Public License.

SEE ALSO
fax(1), efax(1), init(1), crontab(1), crontab(5)

BUGS
I'm only human. Please send in bug reports to me at the address given above. Ideally, the compile time configuration options defined in config.h should be moved to fax.rc in the next version.