1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
|
<!--startcut ======================================================= -->
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<html>
<head>
<TITLE>The Answer Guy 28: Email Alpha-Paging software </TITLE>
</head>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#A000A0"
ALINK="#FF0000">
<!--endcut ========================================================= -->
<H4>"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
</H4>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!-- =============================================================== -->
<H1 align="center"><A NAME="answer">
<img src="../gx/dennis/qbubble.gif" alt="" border="0" align="middle">
<a href="./lg_answer28.html">The Answer Guy</a>
<img src="../gx/dennis/bbubble.gif" alt="" border="0" align="middle">
</A></H1> <BR>
<H4 align="center">By James T. Dennis,
<a href="mailto:answerguy@ssc.com">answerguy@ssc.com</a><BR>
Starshine Technical Services,
<A HREF="http://www.starshine.org/">http://www.starshine.org/</A> </H4>
<p><hr><p>
<H3><img src="../gx/dennis/qbub.gif" alt="(?)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">Email Alpha-Paging software </H3>
<h4>How to build a mail to pager gateway</h4>
<p><strong>From John DiSpirito on Sat, 18 Apr 1998 </strong></p>
<p><strong>Hello Answerguy,
<br><br>
I was wondering if you could help me with something?
I was looking for a package that sits on my linux machine
and will do email alpha-paging.
Im sure you know what this is, but just in case:
<br><br>
A person emails an account: <em>johndoe_page@somemail.com</em>, and
it pages them...
<br><br>
I know they are out there, but I dont know where they are.
Could you lend some assistance?
<br><br>Thanks.
</strong></p>
<blockquote><img src="../gx/dennis/bbub.gif" alt="(!)" width="50" height="28"
align="left" border="0">John,
<br><br>
There are several ways to do this, as you suspected.
<br><br>
First you could just use the TAP (telephony acces protocol)
script that was published in Frank de la Cruz' book on
<a href="http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/">C-Kermit</a>.
(The paging can be done as a kermit script and the mail gateway
would be a quick
<a href="http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~reriksso/procmail/mini-faq.html"i
><tt>procmail</tt></a> script to call it).
<br><br>
That approach requires a little bit of coding but uses
tools you hopefully already have around. You can get
out of the kermit coding/typing by looking at:
<br><blockquote>
<A HREF="http://fohnix.metronet.com/~tye/textpage.html"
>http://fohnix.metronet.com/~tye/textpage.html</A>
</blockquote><br>
For more specialized tools to do this, I just went to the
Linux Software Map search engine at:
<A HREF="http://www.boutell.com/lsm/">http://www.boutell.com/lsm/</A>
... selected the search by "keyword" options and typed in "pager"
<br><br>
I expected this to hit dozens of entries for '<tt>more</tt>'
'<tt>less</tt>' '<tt>most</tt>' and other Unix "pagers" (that is,
programs for "paging" through a file). However, only Xless showed
up under that false hit category.
<br><br>
The first "real" hit was a program by a Joshua Koplik. The
LSM entry for it has some typos (or is just out-of-date from
some directory restructuring at sunsite) so I had to chase
down the real URL with a few judicious clicks:
<br><blockquote>
<A HREF="http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/mailhandlers/!INDEX.html"
>http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/mailhandlers/!INDEX.html</A>
</blockquote><br>
... gets you to the right directory.
<br><br>
The other few links returned on this search were for '<tt>man</tt>'
pagers.
<br><br>
Now I'm also sure I recently saw another news article somewhere
about telecom/paging software for Linux so I decided to hunt
further.
<br><br>
So, I hit my old standby, <a href="http://www.yahoo.com/">Yahoo!</a>
(most of the answers I give are researched through Yahoo!). I used
the string:
<br><blockquote>
"<tt>+Linux +pager +alpha</tt>"
</blockquote><br>
... and rapidly found a mini-HOWTO on this very topic at:
<br><blockquote>
<A HREF="http://ir.parks.lv/li/Resources/HOWTO/mini/Pager"
>http://ir.parks.lv/li/Resources/HOWTO/mini/Pager</A>
</blockquote><br>
... by Chris Snell.
<br><br>
Despite, Chris' "disclaimer" (first line of the HOWTO reads
"This document sucks.") the directions are very clear and seem
to be very complete. I gather that it used to be listed on
the LDP mini-HOWTO's and I'd like to see it re-appear there.
(There are old, out-of-date mirrors of the LDP pages that
have it and the current ones at:
<br><blockquote>
<A HREF="http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/">http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/</A>
</blockquote><br>
... and at:
<br><blockquote>
<A HREF="http://www.linuxresources.com/LDP/"
>http://www.linuxresources.com/LDP/</A>
</blockquote><br>
don't show it.
<br><br>
In this mini-HOWTO Chris refers to a package called "<tt>sendpage</tt>"
(with URL's).
<br><br>
If you get this, I'd suggest that there are easier ways to
configuring '<tt>sendmail</tt>' You really don't need to do any of
that (writing custom rulesets) with a modern sendmail.
Something similar can be done via m4 configuration macros
and built-in features (or easily handled with a simple one
line procmail script).
<br><br>
Another great set of links is on Celeste Stokely's
widely acclaimed "Serial Ports Resources" for Unix:
<br><blockquote>
<A HREF="http://www.stokely.com/unix.serial.port.resources/fax.pager.html#pager.unix.link"
>http://www.stokely.com/unix.serial.port.resources/fax.pager.html#pager.unix.link</A>
</blockquote><br>
(which suggests that HylaFax supports pagers in some way!)
<br><br>
It turns out that there is apparently a mailing list devoted
to this topic at
<A HREF="mailto:ixo-request@plts.org">ixo-request@plts.org</A>.
(IXO is one of the
other protocols that modems use to talk to alpha pagers --
I don't know the details).
<br><br>
In retrospect I think the recent posting I saw on the
subject may have been at the "Linux Weekly News" site
(<A HREF="http://www.eklektix.com/lwn">http://www.eklektix.com/lwn</A>/). Hitting their search
engine revealed links to:
<br><blockquote>
QuickPage (<a href="ftp://ftp.it.mit.edu/pub/QuickPage"
>ftp.it.mtu.edu:/pub/QuickPage</a>)
(in a comment to their staff)
</blockquote><br>
... but, oddly, didn't find the paragraph in their
previous issue. It turns out that they didn't
know about any of the links I've discussed above and
were referring readers to a commercial package (of which
there are several --- the most well-known being at
<A HREF="http://www.spatch.com/">http://www.spatch.com/</A>).
<br><br>
[I've copied the <a href="http://www.eklektix.com/lwn/">LWN</a>
staff as well. This really
wasn't meant to "scoop" them, since I think that
LWN is the best thing since Linux Gazette --- and
it comes out four times as often! Every LG reader
should also check it out! I just can't figure out
where they get all the time to work on it.]
<br><br>
Finally the oldest freely available package for this that I know of
is a perl scripts called '<tt>tpage</tt>' (Tom's Pager) a.k.a. ixobeeper.gz at:
<br><br>
<A HREF="http://www.oasis.leo.org/perl/exts/date-time/scripts/comm/ixobeeper.dsc.html"
>http://www.oasis.leo.org/perl/exts/date-time/scripts/comm/ixobeeper.dsc.html</A>
<br><br>
Anyway I hope that helps. Obviously you have plenty of
options (which is the PERL motto).
</blockquote>
<!--================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P>
<H5 align="center"><a href="http://www.linuxgazette.com/ssc.copying.html"
>Copyright ©</a> 1998, James T. Dennis <BR>
Published in <I>Linux Gazette</I> Issue 28 May 1998</H5>
<P> <hr> <P>
<!--================================================================-->
<A HREF="./lg_toc28.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/indexnew.gif"
ALT="[ Table Of Contents ]"></A>
<A HREF="../index.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/homenew.gif"
ALT="[ Front Page ]"></A>
<A HREF="./lg_answer28.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/dennis/answernew.gif"
ALT="[ Answer Guy Index ]"></A>
<!--startcut ======================================================= -->
</body>
</html>
<!--endcut ========================================================= -->
|
