FAXSTATE(8C)

💅 FAXSTATE(8C) — the manual page, but make it cute

okay bestie, welcome to faxstate (section 8C of the manual, HylaFAX edition) ✨ — the little command that tells your modem how to feel about itself.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

faxstate — control the "modem state" of a device used by HylaFAX 🎀

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

/usr/bin/faxstate [ -q queue-dir ] [ -s state ] [ -n ] modem

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So basically 💖 faxstate slides a message over to the HylaFAX faxgetty(8C) process that's servicing your modem, and it tells that process which state to use when it notifies the HylaFAX scheduler that a modem is ready and available for use. It's giving messenger. It's giving middleman with main character energy.

Why do you care? Because it's lowkey the way to control outbound use of a modem 🔥. If you mark a modem's state as busy, down, or exempt, the HylaFAX scheduler simply will not assign any outbound jobs to that modem. She's off duty. She said "not today." 💅

Want the deets on how those states actually differ from each other? Go read hylafax-config(5F), specifically under ModemReadyState. That's where the lore lives. 📖

The modem you specify can be either of these two things:

• the name (typically the last component of the terminal port the modem is attached to), or
• the full name of the associated FIFO named pipe file, like FIFO.ttym2 👑

And now the fun one — if you pass the -n option, faxstate emulates what faxgetty would do: it sends a message directly to the faxq process, marking the specified modem down, busy, or ready. This interface is genuinely so useful for send-only environments where no faxgetty processes are running at all 🫶.

⚠️ Not me forgetting the important part: modems manipulated this way must previously have been configured with the faxmodem(8C) program. Like, that's a requirement, not a suggestion, fr fr.

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💖 OPTIONS 💖

The following options are supported:

• -n — Contact faxq directly instead of faxgetty. (The direct line. No middleman. 📞)
• -q dir — Use a spooling area other than /var/spool/hylafax. Your files, your rules. 🗂️
• -s state — Specify the state to send the faxq process each time the modem becomes ready for use; it's one of busy, down, and ready. The default state to use is ready. 🌈

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🎀 FILES 🎀

Consult hylafax-server(5F) for a complete discussion of the structure and content of the spooling area. (Yes, the whole thing. It's a whole vibe check on the spool. 💀)

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• hylafax-server(5F)
• faxgetty(8C)

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💜 this manual page came to you from July 17, 1995 — vintage, iconic, still slaying, no cap ⭐