The line on PMfax

For some time now, I have only used modems on road trips, so purchasing one was my first order of business before trying Pmfax, which is manufactured by Keller Group. I settled on an external modem to avoid problems with lobotomized internals; you know, those WinModem things. I've had very good luck with my 56-KB Zoom PCMCIA card on the laptop, so I picked another Zoom -- the FaxModem 56Kx Dualmode (V.90 and K56flex protocol) -- for the external. By the time I purchased and installed the hardware, the beta had almost expired. I downloaded the software on the final day and requested a serial number that would allow me to run it in its full-featured mode (the Pro version) through the last day of the month.

I followed the instructions in the ample documentation included in the download, and created a subdirectory to hold all the programs and documentation. Then I went into that directory and typed ./pmfpro-l.bin. A license agreement immediately appeared, and after I accepted the terms, the file unzipped itself. Then I started PMfax (see the screen shot below) by entering ./pmfax, then entering the serial number provided.

Next, I had to add a new printer to /etc/printcap, and a new spool directory for that printer to /var/spool/lpd. If that sounds difficult, don't be afraid. I copied a few lines of text from the documentation into the printcap file, created the required directory by typing mkdir/var/spool/lpd/fx, then changed the owner and group of the newly created fx directory to match that of other spooled devices. In Red Hat 6.2, that means changing the owner to root and the group to lp. For Storm 2000, that means changing both the owner and the group to lp. You need to find out how your distribution sets the permissions on existing spool directories, and follow suit for the fx directory.

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