12.11Voice Mail

Voice mail is like an answering machine run by a computer. To do this you must have a modem that supports "voice" and supporting software. Instead of storing the messages on tape, they are stored in digital format on a hard-drive. When a person phones you, they hear a "greeting" message and can then leave a message for you. More advanced systems would have caller-selectable mail boxes and caller-selectable messages to listen to.

Free software is available in Linux for simple answering, but doesn't seem to be available yet for the more advanced stuff.

I know of two different voicemail packages for Linux. One is a very minimal package (see Voicemail Software). The other, more advanced, but currently poorly documented, is vgetty. It's an optional addition to the well documented and widely distributed mgetty program. It supports ZyXEL-like voice modem commands. In the Debian distribution, you must get the mgetty-voice package in addition to the mgetty package and mgetty-doc package.

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