The Answer Guy 28: Email Alpha-Paging software

#### "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

# The Answer Guy

#### By James T. Dennis, answerguy@ssc.com
Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/

### Email Alpha-Paging software

#### How to build a mail to pager gateway

From John DiSpirito on Sat, 18 Apr 1998

Hello Answerguy,
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:
A person emails an account: johndoe_page@somemail.com, and it pages them...
I know they are out there, but I dont know where they are. Could you lend some assistance?
Thanks.

> John,
> There are several ways to do this, as you suspected.
> First you could just use the TAP (telephony acces protocol) script that was published in Frank de la Cruz' book on C-Kermit. (The paging can be done as a kermit script and the mail gateway would be a quick `procmail` script to call it).
> 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:

> > http://fohnix.metronet.com/~tye/textpage.html

> For more specialized tools to do this, I just went to the Linux Software Map search engine at: http://www.boutell.com/lsm/ ... selected the search by "keyword" options and typed in "pager"
> I expected this to hit dozens of entries for '`more`' '`less`' '`most`' and other Unix "pagers" (that is, programs for "paging" through a file). However, only Xless showed up under that false hit category.
> 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 The LSM entry for it has some typos (or is just out-of-date from some directory restructuring at sunsite) so I had to chase down the real URL with a few judicious clicks:

> > http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/mailhandlers/!INDEX.html

> ... gets you to the right directory.
> The other few links returned on this search were for '`man`' pagers.
> Now I'm also sure I recently saw another news article somewhere about telecom/paging software for Linux so I decided to hunt further.
> So, I hit my old standby, Yahoo! (most of the answers I give are researched through Yahoo!). I used the string:

> > "`+Linux +pager +alpha`"

> ... and rapidly found a mini-HOWTO on this very topic at:

> > http://ir.parks.lv/li/Resources/HOWTO/mini/Pager

> ... by Chris Snell.
> 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:

> > http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/

> ... and at:

> > http://www.linuxresources.com/LDP/

> don't show it.
> In this mini-HOWTO Chris refers to a package called "`sendpage`" (with URL's).
> If you get this, I'd suggest that there are easier ways to configuring '`sendmail`' 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).
> Another great set of links is on Celeste Stokely's widely acclaimed "Serial Ports Resources" for Unix:

> > http://www.stokely.com/unix.serial.port.resources/fax.pager.html#pager.unix.link

> (which suggests that HylaFax supports pagers in some way!)
> It turns out that there is apparently a mailing list devoted to this topic at ixo-request@plts.org. (IXO is one of the other protocols that modems use to talk to alpha pagers -- I don't know the details).
> In retrospect I think the recent posting I saw on the subject may have been at the "Linux Weekly News" site (http://www.eklektix.com/lwn/). Hitting their search engine revealed links to:

> > QuickPage (ftp.it.mtu.edu:/pub/QuickPage) (in a comment to their staff)

> ... 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 http://www.spatch.com/).
> [I've copied the LWN 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.]
> Finally the oldest freely available package for this that I know of is a perl scripts called '`tpage`' (Tom's Pager) a.k.a. ixobeeper.gz at:
> http://www.oasis.leo.org/perl/exts/date-time/scripts/comm/ixobeeper.dsc.html
> Anyway I hope that helps. Obviously you have plenty of options (which is the PERL motto).

##### Copyright © 1998, James T. Dennis
Published in Linux Gazette Issue 28 May 1998