Embedded PFSense and combining CF and USB stick
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I have been thinking today how to solve the issue that the Freeswitch package is not supported because of the continuous read-write operations. Now I am curious if it's possible to mount a USB stick of a few gigabytes and use that for storing files on. Such as, log files and voicemail files and other needed files. I am currently running pfSense on a ALIX board which has two usb ports so I think it should be possible in theory.
My other idea was to use a ramdisk or storing the data on my NAS over a network share. But I have to admit that I don't really care about things as voicemail recording or CDR related functionality.
Does anyone know if any of my plans above would work? If they do I think I would need to mount the compact flash partition on a FreeBSD box to read/write to add the appropriate mounting.
My hardware are:
http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2d13.htm
http://www.pcengines.ch/cf1024dp.htm -
As far as I know, common USB sticks use the same flash as common CF cards, and neither implement any sort of wear-levelling. So the reason you wouldn't want to run freeswitch from a USB stick is the same reason that you wouldn't want to run it from CF: it will die. If you're ok with that, then save yourself the trouble of finding a USB stick and figuring out how to mount it and how to install freeswitch on an embedded install, and just go ahead and install the full pfsense on your CF card. Then sit back and wait for it to die. It took about 3 months in my case.
Now, if you wanted to do embedded on CF + FS on hard drive, that's a little more tenable.
Better yet, what is your NAS running on? Are you aware that the same champ that brought you the pfsense freeswitch package now spends more time developing the FusionPBX GUI for linux-based freeswitch installs? So if your NAS is running linux, why not check out the wiki at fusionpbx.com for clear and easy to follow directions on installing freeswitch and the FusionPBX front end on your distro of choice? I actually just migrated my freeswitch from pfsense to ubuntu just a couple days ago. It's dead dumb easy and if you've already been using freeswitch in pfsense you will find the fusionpbx interface quite familiar.
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I am running Linux on the NAS, it's QNAP TS-210 device (see: http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=135) and it supports the nlsu2 packages. But I can't make a network share connection to my NAS and store the changing files over there? I am planning to use it for only one or two hardphones in the future but currently a simple softphone.
The nice thing about pfSense is that there is a ready made package for Freeswitch.
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make a network share connection to my NAS and store the changing files over there?
That's an interesting thought. I don't know if pfsense can mount a network share, such as nfs. Wouldn't be too tough try try I guess.
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Yes, but if I understand it correctly I would need to install the non-embedded version of pfSense to try this mounting out, right? Because the filesystem is mounted read only. Are there any ways to get the same settings as the embedded on this non-embedded version to avoid unnecessary read-write actions?
Thanks.
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even if the filesystem is mounted ro you may still be able to mount another fs, such as an nfs share, rw.
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Hmm, earlier I had tough time to mount my usb stick. Because I couldn't create a directory in /mnt/
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You can't create a directory on a ro filesystem, but you can mount to an existing directory (make sure it's empty first). Or you may be able to temporarily mount your rs read-write. I'm less familiar with BSD's mount, but you could try something like 'mount -oremount,rw / && mkdir /mnt && mount -oremount,ro /'