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Linux mail server that converts audio

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 12:09 am
by Giraffe }{unter
Odd request, but I know it exists.

Our VM server emails Voice mail as an attache G711 wave file not playable on windows mobile and iPhones.


I would like our VM server that emails files encoded as G711 wav file to send out the wave file to user1234@convertingserver.com the "converting server" which converts the file to mp3 then emails it to the same user on our mail server user1234@corporatemailserver.com

There are some free services that do this on the web (like http://www.koolwire.com/Default.aspx), but I need to host it internally for confidentiality.



Any suggestions?

Re: Linux mail server that converts audio

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 4:12 pm
by ^misantropia^
What mail server are you running (sendmail, postfix, exim, etc.)?

Re: Linux mail server that converts audio

Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 12:47 am
by Giraffe }{unter
The corporate mail server is exchange 2007. Which is why I am looking to set up a linux box just for sending the Voicemails to. On the linux box I would use any email server (free or paid) that will allow me to easily scrip this operation.

Turns out VONAGE uses the same encoding so people are setting up scripts. like this dude here

http://www.kfu.com/~nsayer/blog/2008/01 ... -with.html

I'm looking for a detailed setup guide or ecen a VMWare image with it relatively complete :D

Re: Linux mail server that converts audio

Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 9:11 am
by ^misantropia^
Ah, right. I doubt a ready-to-go VMWare image exists, but this should be fairly easy to accomplish with postfix. Easier still, have your corporate mail server drop the files on a shared mount and run the perl script as a cron job every minute, processing the files in a FIFO fashion.

If I still was a free-roaming contractor, I'd offer you my services, because this sounds like a fun thing to set up.

Re: Linux mail server that converts audio

Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 12:36 pm
by ^misantropia^
Talked it over with my company's resident postfix guru. You could implement this either through a content filter - http://www.postfix.org/FILTER_README.html - or by some /etc/aliases / /etc/mail/aliases magic:

Code: Select all

converter: |/path/to/converter.pl
*: converter
Where 'converter' is the username of a local account. This might or might not work. If it doesn't, you need to set up a virtual table with the following catch-all entry:

Code: Select all

@convertingserver.com converter@convertingserver.com

Re: Linux mail server that converts audio

Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 1:19 pm
by Giraffe }{unter
We want to avoid doing any work on the exchange side. This may work with postfix or similar program I'm going to dig in over the weekend.

VM server sends VM to bob1234@convertserver.com > content filter > script > Script output to send mail to bob1234@corpemailserver.com with new attachment.

Any other hints and suggestions would e appreciated, I don't want to have all my eggs in the postfix basket ;)

Re: Linux mail server that converts audio

Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 6:42 am
by creep
I have pretty limited konowldge as well, but I'd agree with what misan said above, the easiest way would be to have postfix/sendmail dumping to a directory, with a perl script monitoring/converting that directory based on a cron job. It may be even easier with postfix to trigger the script on mail arrival.

I'd reiterate that you're probably not going to find a ready-made solution for this, but you may have some luck finding a conversion script that works with a certain mail server, and just needs minor tweaks to suit your implementation