faxalter - alter parameters of a job queued for transmission

faxalter [ options ] id...

faxalter changes the state of one or more jobs that are queued for transmission. Numerous parameters can be altered; see the options below.

An id is a number that identifies a job that has been submitted to ; these numbers are printed by sendfax(1) when jobs are queued for transmission and can also be displayed with faxstat(1). Unprivileged users can alter the parameters of jobs that they own; clients with administrative privileges on a server can manipulate any job (see the -A option below). The user may be specified by the FAXUSER environment variable. By default, faxalter contacts the facsimile server on the host specified in the FAXSERVER environment variable; but consult the -h option for more information.

-a time

Specify a new time to send a job. The syntax for specifying a time is the same as used by sendfax(1) (and at(1)).

-d destination

Change the destination number to destination.

-h host

Force the server to be contacted on a specific host. The host may be either a symbolic name or a network address. If no -h option is supplied, faxalter uses the FAXSERVER environment variable to identify the server to contact. If this variable is not set, then faxalter checks for a setting in the configuration files (first in the per-user file and then in the system-wide file). If all of the above fails, then faxalter attempts to contact a server on the machine where it is run.

-A

Use administrative privileges; faxalter will prompt for the password to set administrative privileges.

-k time

Specify a new time to kill a job; the syntax is the same as used for the -a option.

-m modem

Assign/reassign the jobs to the specified modem. Specifying ``any'' for modem causes the jobs to be scheduled for any available modem.

-p

The jobs should be pushed; that is, they should be requeued with a time-to-send as the current time (this is equivalent to ``-a now'').

-P pri

Set the scheduling priority for the specified jobs. The priority is an integer value in the range 0-255; lower values give a job higher priority. The default scheduling priority for a job is 127 and priorities are recalculated after each attempt to process a job.

-t tries

Set the maximum number of times the server should call the remote fax machine.

-n scheme

Select a notification scheme to use for the specified jobs. Possible schemes are: ``none'' for no notification (default), ``when done'' for notification when the job is completed, ``when requeued'' for notification when the job is requeued after a failed transmission attempt. The -Q, -D, and -R options are shorthand for these notification schemes, respectively. One can also leave off ``when'' when using the -n option; e.g., ``done'' instead of ``when done''.

-v

Trace the protocol exchanges between faxalter and the remote hfaxd process. Tracing information is written to the standard output.

faxalter reads configuration information from the file /etc/hylafax/hyla.conf and then from the file ~/.hylarc. Configuration files follow the conventions described in hylafax-client(1). The following configuration parameters are recognized:

Tag	Type	Default	Description
Host	string	localhost	host to contact for service
Port	integer	4559	port to use in contacting server
Protocol	string	tcp	protocol to use in contacting server
Verbose	boolean	No	whether or not to enable protocol tracing

The configuration parameters are explained below:

Host

The host to contact for service. (Equivalent to the -h option.)

Port

The network port to contact for service. (Eqvuialent to the -h option.)

Protocol

The name of the communication protocol to use when contacting a server. (Equivalent to the FAXSERVICE environment variable.)

Verbose

Control protocol tracing. (Equivalent to the -v option.)

Setting a job's killtime without also setting the time to send may cause the wrong value for the killtime to be sent. This is because the killtime is calculated as the difference in time between the killtime and time to send: and if the time to send is not specified, then faxalter uses the current time instead of querying the server for the job's time to send.

faxalter suspends a job before attempting to alter its state. If a job is active when a suspend request is made there may be a delay while waiting for the job to enter a consistent state where it can be suspended. If faxalter is interrupted during this time then jobs may be left suspended.

faxalter requeues the job. This means that the job will end up at the bottom of the queue for the job's priority. Thus, when queues are heavy an adjustment of the job's killtime may need to be considered when altering any other parameter.

faxalter only understands how to alter a subset of the available job parameters; there are many more client-controllable parameters that can only be modified by communicating directly with the server using the underlying protocol.

The continued use of the at(1)-style notation for specifying times is questionable (it was done for backwards compatibility).

hylafax-client(1), sendfax(1), faxrm(1), faxstat(1), hfaxd(8)