MULTIMON(1)

📦 version 1.0, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 MULTIMON(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the gen glow-up. this is a page from the General Commands Manual and it's giving ✨ "tiny tool, huge slay" ✨ — it lives in the Debian world and it makes the test files that multimon snacks on. let's get into it 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

gen — a program to generate test files of radio transmission modulation 🎀

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

gen [options] output_file

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so real talk, this manual page documents the gen command, but only briefly — like, it's the cliffnotes version, not the full novel. it was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution specifically because the original program just... doesn't have a manual page. no cap. so Debian said fine, we'll do it ourselves 💁♀️

here's the vibe: multimon is the program that decodes radio transmissions, and gen is its little sibling that generates modulated files — files that are suitable for decoding with multimon. so you make the fake radio noise with gen, then you feed it to multimon and see if it can read it. it's a whole duo, main character energy from both of them 👑

🦋 OPTIONS 🦋

  • -t <type> — sets the output file type. important tea: any type other than raw requires sox to be installed, so if you skip that dependency you're gonna have a bad time 😭 the allowed types are: raw aiff au hcom sf voc cdr dat smp wav maud vwe
  • -a <ampl> — the amplitude. like, how loud/how big the signal is. turn it up 💥
  • -d <str> — encode a DTMF string. yes, the touch-tone phone beeps. iconic 📞
  • -z <str> — encode a ZVEI string. (iykyk, German fire-brigade signalling tones, she's niche but she's valid 🚒)
  • -s <freq> — encode a sine wave at the given frequency. pure tones, very meditative 🧘♀️
  • -p <text> — encode an HDLC packet using the text you specify. packet radio time 📦

🌈 EXAMPLE 🌈

want a file at /tmp/message.wav stuffed with sound samples of a packet radio message? say less:

gen -p "This is a message." -t raw /tmp/message.wav

and if you wanna dial a number directly to the sound card output — no file, just vibes straight to the speakers:

gen -d 8675309

🎀 SEE ALSO 🎀

multimon(1) — go read that one too bestie, they're a package deal 💖

👑 AUTHOR 👑

this manual page was written by A. Maitland Bottoms <bottoms@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). thank you for your service, legend 🫡

and that's the whole page, babe! this little number is dated June 19, 2000 and it comes to you straight from MULTIMON(1) in the General Commands Manual. periodt. 💅✨

📦 where this page comes from