Asterisk 1.8 package

carlm

I started out w/ v 0.3.1 of the Asterisk package.
Others have commented that this version is much larger than the previous version.
Anyone know what accounts for the size increase?
Anything to do with the gcc48 stuff? Is that stuff necessary?

Whenever I have to reinstall Asterisk (e.g., restore a previous config) it takes about 25 minutes to untar the Asterisk .pbi. I'm running nanoBSD i386 with a SanDisk 8GB Class 4 microSD card. Was about the same with a Kingston Class 10 card. A much smaller .pbi would really help, unless there's a way to speed up the untar operation (permanent R/W on nanoBSD??).

Thanks!

marcelloc

Until pfSense 2.3 some packages will work better(and smaller) if you isntall via gui and then via console remove the pbi and install the freebsd package via pkg install

carlm

@marcelloc:

Until pfSense 2.3 some packages will work better(and smaller) if you isntall via gui and then via console remove the pbi and install the freebsd package via pkg install

Maybe I wasn't clear. My primary problem is the time required to reinstall Asterisk when, for instance, I restore a previous pfSense config. Of course, the time to untar the .pbi is proportional to the size of the .pbi, so any significant size reduction would be a significant help.

Your suggestion wouldn't help with the installation time: pfSense would still reinstall the .pbi when it determined it necessary to do so. (Unless you're talking about uninstalling the .pbi. But then I'd lose the Asterisk GUI.)

Also, the Asterisk package is unusual in that has that embedded gcc48 stuff and embedded Perl. The Perl is definitely necessary (res_snmp.so uses it, for one example). I'm not sure how I'd replace the untarred .pbi package with the FreeBSD package and its dependencies, even if it would help with the install time problem.

One more little gotcha: The FreeBSD 10.1 package is a slightly older Asterisk version: 1.8.31.1.

doktornotor

1/ No, you don't lose any GUI by removing PBI. (That is NOT the same thing like unstalling the package from GUI.)
2/ Install the latest package version (0.3.2).

marcelloc

@carlm:

One more little gotcha: The FreeBSD 10.1 package is a slightly older Asterisk version: 1.8.31.1.

Freebsd ports has both 11 and 13 version of asterisk.

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/ports.cgi?query=asterisk13&stype=all

carlm

I didn't know there was a v0.3.2.
What is the size of the .pbi? (0.3.1 i-386: 113MB)
What is the installed size not including the .pbi? (0.3.1 i-386: 472MB)

(I couldn't find the .pbi to download manually.)

doktornotor

Simply install the updated package via GUI and report back whether it works for you or not. I have NFC why would the PBI size matter. It's actually the GUI install that's changed, hopefully fixing a bunch of stuff here.

carlm

@doktornotor:

Simply install the updated package via GUI and report back whether it works for you or not. I have NFC why would the PBI size matter. It's actually the GUI install that's changed, hopefully fixing a bunch of stuff here.

OK, I looked at GitHub.

I was asking about size because I had no idea what had changed in v0.3.2. If the .pbi were half the size of v0.3.1 then I'd expect the installed size to be about half of v0.3.1.

I had already manually applied Robi's fixes to get v0.3.1 working and added a fix of my own (earlier in this thread) to eliminate the log warnings about the missing Perl library. My v0.3.1 Asterisk installation is working fine, no warnings or errors in the log file.

If anyone knows, I'd still like to know why v0.3.1 got so much larger and if there is anything that can be done about it, again because it takes 25+ minutes to revert a config while pfSense nanoBSD untars 472MB of Asterisk stuff, and that's 25+ minutes that my phone is down.

doktornotor

The package version has nothing to do with the PBI version. There is no 0.3.2 PBI. There are no changes in the binaries in this update.

carlm

Bug and fix

I just found and fixed a bug in /usr/local/pkg/asterisk.inc (v0.3.1, not latest).

Symptom:
Every time the Asterisk package is started, the following files in /conf/asterisk are modified:
asterisk.conf
logger.conf

Edits that the user has made to these files may be lost (if they overlap the modifications
performed by asterisk.inc).

Description:
These files are supposed to be modified the FIRST time that the Asterisk package is started.
When asterisk.inc modifies other .conf files it adds a flag comment '; by pfSense ;' .
The flag comment is present in logger.conf, missing in asterisk.conf.
The code in asterisk.inc doesn't, but should, check for presence of the flag comment in these two files and not modify them if the flag comment is present.

Fix:
In asterisk.inc:
1. Add flag comment to asterisk.conf when modifying it.
2. Do not modify asterisk.conf or logger.conf if the file already contains the flag comment.

I have attached a .zip with both a unified context diff and the full file (patched), whichever you prefer to work with.
Remember, this is for package v0.3.1 (what I'm running).
The file asterisk.inc has changed since then.

asterisk_inc_0_3_1-patch.zip

doktornotor

Any patches need to go to https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense-packages/ and obviously need to be against current code. Just a note.

Fesoj

res_fax.so and res_fax_spandsp.so
Hi,
the package contains res_fax.so, but not res_fax_spandsp.so. Is there a specific reason why this lib does not exits?

I have a native build for res_fax_spandsp.so, but this does not seem to work (libspandsp does not seem to be able to find libjpeg, although it is also in /usr/local/lib).

Fesoj

res_fax.so and res_fax_spandsp.so

I found the place where to put symlinks for the missing libaries.

Now I have the following problem

[Oct 16 20:56:18] WARNING[-1]: loader.c:835 inspect_module: Module 'res_fax_spandsp.so' was not compiled with the same compile-time options as this version of Asterisk.
[Oct 16 20:56:18] WARNING[-1]: loader.c:836 inspect_module: Module 'res_fax_spandsp.so' will not be initialized as it may cause instability.
[Oct 16 20:56:18] WARNING[-1]: loader.c:923 load_resource: Module 'res_fax_spandsp' could not be loaded.

The basic reason could be that the versions of Asterisk and the module are different: 1.8.32 vs. 1.8.x. I compiled Asterisk from the ports directory of the current 10.1 version, so I cannot arbitrarily choose the version.

Fesoj

I am currently working with the Asterisk package, where I am using pfSense/Asterisk essentially as a session border controller.

T.38 facsimiles are now working for me, which essentially involves patching the AST_BUILDOPT_SUM string inside the res_fax_spandsp.so lib. This is not really nice.

After restarting, some configuration files seem to get modified every time. There is some funny stuff that gets appended to modules.conf and extensions.conf. Does anyone know why this is happening?

After rebooting pfSense, there's also a problem with the SIP module on my box, which looks as if other network functions are not yet properly running. Waiting and restarting the Asterisk solves the problem

Is currently someone working on this package? I have some spare time to work on the package.

doktornotor

1/ You do NOT make changes to config files via shell. They get lost. You configure things via GUI. If it's not possible, modify the GUI code and submit a pull request against the current code… Not outdated one that noone can install. Useless.
2/ You do not produce any similar nonsense like binary patches mixing libraries from different binary packages. That has nothing to do with "work on the package". Noone will merge such crap.
3/ About 99% of the world abandoned junk like fax ages ago. Hardly surprising noone tests it.
4/ Before wasting time on trying to fix unfixable crap such as PBI, perhaps rather play with pfSense 2.3 and get it working there.

P.S. My personal observation: There's tons of whole LOT more suitable places to run a PBX on. Such as some VM on a DMZed server. Frankly, why anyone thinks putting this monster on their firewall is a good idea goes beyond me. Especially when a VM-ready appliance incl. a configuration GUI is readily available for download! http://www.asterisk.org/downloads/asterisknow

Fesoj

@doktornotor - Maybe you don't know what the role of an SBC is. An SBC is not a PBX, although the package may be the same…

carlm

RTCP stats problem

CLI command 'sip show channelstats' issued during an active call: all data except duration is zero.
I've done 'rtcp set stats on'.
I've turned on rtcp debug: I get Sender Reports from both my endpoint and my provider's SIP proxy.

Just wondering:
Where does Asterisk store the RTCP stats? Memory? Disk? If disk, does the Asterisk init script need to create another directory under /var?

Thanks!

EDIT:
The problem is due to this Asterisk 1.8 open bug:

https://issues.asterisk.org/jira/browse/ASTERISK-18455

I temporarily forced Asterisk to transcode and I started getting valid data from 'sip show channelstats'.

Fesoj

There might be a different cause. Please check the value of directmedia in sip.conf. The default setting is "yes", where Asterisk tries to redirect media directly between caller and callee. In this case Asterisk doesn't see any audio and hence cannot generate any statistics.

carlm

In sip.conf all of my device definitions include directmedia=no, so that's not it.
But thanks for the suggestion.

Fesoj

The current Asterisk package generates an rc-file named asterisk.sh. This causes the service to get started two times in rc.start_packages, because the second instance cannot check that another instance is already running. It takes a moment before the pid file has been generated.

The package should generate a simple rc-file with the name asterisk, such that the manual boot time service does not get called.