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>.

greenie 							     18 Feb 06							    faxq-helper(1)