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JUST RELEASED: Visit the Incredible PBX Wiki

The 5-Minute PBX: Incredible PBX 11 and Incredible Fax for PBX in a Flash 3

Thursday, April 3, 2014

With the release of version 3 of PBX in a Flash™, it seemed only fitting to reintroduce our one-click wonder that takes advantage of the latest and greatest feature sets in both Asterisk® 11 and FreePBX® 2.11. Incredible PBX™ 11 gives you the best of all worlds plus all of the very best, preconfigured Asterisk applications we could find. And the installer together with all of the apps are pure open source so you can learn how to build a system like this for yourself if that happens to be your thing.

You’ll need two components to get started: a CentOS 6.5-compatible operating system and the latest PIAF-Green which includes Asterisk® 11 and FreePBX® 2.11. Once you have these components in place and before you make any additions to your server, download and run the Incredible PBX 11 installer. If you wish to add fax support, run the Incredible Fax 11 installer. It’s easy enough for a fifth grader! Five minutes later you’re ready to begin the VoIP adventure. It’s FREE!

News Flash: Incredible PBX 11 and Incredible Fax also are available for the $35 Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black.

So what’s included? Dozens of upgraded Asterisk Apps. 9-Layer Security. 20 Preconfigured VoIP Provider Trunks. One-Click Installers for Asterisk.everything. Certified Asterisk support. Google Voice connectivity with Asterisk Motif until May 15. (HINT: It’s time to start looking elsewhere!) Voice-enabled SMS messaging and script-based SMS message blasting. Incredible PBX Automatic Updates. And Incredible Fax™ 11 delivers free faxing with HylaFax™ and AvantFax®. Both the Incredible PBX and Incredible Fax installers now are GPL2-licensed so add all the tweaks you like. And you’re licensed to use our trademarks so long as you retain the original functionality of the Incredible PBX and Incredible Fax collection of applications.

The Incredible PBX 11 Inventory. For those that have never heard of The Incredible PBX, here’s the current 11.9 feature set in addition to the base install of PBX in a Flash with a CentOS 6.5-compatible OS, Asterisk 11, FreePBX 2.11, and Apache, SendMail, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, IPtables Linux firewall, Fail2Ban, and WebMin. Incredible Fax, NeoRouter and PPTP VPNs, and all sorts of backup solutions are still just one command away and may be installed using the scripts included with Incredible PBX 11 and PBX in a Flash. Type help-pbx and browse /root for dozens of one-click installation scripts.

And then there’s the Incredible Freebie! As they say, "Never look a gift horse in the mouth." What began as a kludgey, dual-call, dual-provider Google Voice implementation to take advantage of Google’s free PSTN calling in the U.S. and Canada with Asterisk 1.4 and 1.6 is now a zippy-quick, Gtalk-based calling platform that rivals the best SIP-to-SIP calls on the planet. The Incredible PBX Google Voice implementation provides virtually instantaneous PSTN connections to almost anybody, anywhere. Trust us! Except for the price which is still free, you’ll never know you weren’t connected via Ma Bell’s overpriced long-distance lines and neither will the Little Mrs.

Creating the Base Linux Platform for PBX in a Flash

We’re not doing anything special here. In fact, you can build your base Linux platform for PBX in a Flash on a standalone server, on a virtual machine of your choice, or in the cloud using a provider such as Amazon or RentPBX. You can use CentOS 6.5, Scientific Linux 6.5, or the PIAF 6.5 OS. The easiest way is documented here because the ISO is the smallest to download and install. The results will be the same with the other Linux OS flavors documented above.

Start by downloading the 32-bit or 64-bit CentOS 6.5 minimal install ISO. You can do exactly the same thing using Scientific Linux if you prefer. The PIAF 3.0.6.5 OS images and torrents for VirtualBox are available on SourceForge. With the ISOs, go through the usual drill of preparing an installer from the ISO. Burn the ISO to a USB Thumb Drive or a CD/DVD using a Mac or Windows machine. With VirtualBox .ova images, you can build a virtual machine in under 2 minutes. So pick your favorite methodology and create your Linux platform on the hardware of your choice. If you want your drive partitions configured without LVM in the standard PIAF2 methodology, follow this tutorial.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Neither CentOS nor Scientific Linux installs with network connectivity enabled. This is one of the primary reasons that we previously have customized CentOS for use with PBX in a Flash. After performing a minimal OS install, log in as root and issue the following commands to prepare your server for PBX in a Flash:

sed -i 's|no|yes|' /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
ifup eth0
yum -y install wget nano

Creating a PBX in a Flash 3.0.6.5 Server

Now you’re ready to install PIAF-Green with Asterisk 11 and FreePBX 2.11. Just download the PIAF3 Installer and run it. It works exactly as it always has. The installer is plain text so feel free to customize it to meet your own requirements. If you need the complete PIAF installation tutorial, jump to this link.

cd /root
wget http://pbxinaflash.com/piaf3-install.tar.gz
tar zxvf piaf3-install.tar.gz
./piaf3-install

Installing Incredible PBX 11

The installation process is simple. Log into your server as root and issue the following commands:

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx11.gz
gunzip incrediblepbx11.gz
chmod +x incrediblepbx11
./incrediblepbx11

When the installation finishes, you’ll be prompted whether to install Travelin’ Man 3 and Travelin’ Man 2. As documented below, Incredible PBX is designed for use behind a hardware-based firewall with no Internet port exposure. If you need phones at remote locations that are not behind your firewall, then you also need a way to protect your server from the bad guys since you’ll have to allow port 5060 and 10000-20000 UDP access to your server through the firewall. Travelin’ Man 3 does this by setting up a whitelist of safe Internet addresses and domains. Travelin’ Man 2 lets end-users take control by creating safe IP addresses using a web browser. If you don’t have external phones, you don’t need either of these resources so you can just cancel the rest of the Incredible PBX install by pressing Ctrl-C. Then restart Asterisk with this command: amportal restart.

A Few Words About Security. Thanks to its Zero Internet Footprint™ design, Incredible PBX is different. It remains the most secure Asterisk-based PBX around. What this means is The Incredible PBX has been engineered to sit safely behind a NAT-based, hardware firewall with no Internet port exposure to your actual server. For those needing remote telephone support, Incredible PBX optionally loads Travelin’ Man 2 and 3 for you so your IPtables Linux Firewall can be either self-managed by end-users or set up with predefined IP addresses and FQDNs for all of your remote sites. Read about this Asterisk SIP vulnerability. Then you’ll understand why WhiteList-based server security has become absolutely essential. WhiteList Security means only those devices with a registered IP address in your WhiteList can get to your server’s resources. To the NSA and everyone else, your server doesn’t even exist. Their only way to connect to you is with a POTS telephone and your published phone number. Can you hear me now?

For those with multiple servers to interconnect, we’ve provided one-click installers for not one but two VPN solutions: NeoRouter and PPTP. Suffice it to say, Incredible PBX has Security in Spades™: customized IPtables Linux Firewall, Fail2Ban tweaked for Asterisk security monitoring, FreePBX Extension Lockdown by IP address, randomized FreePBX extension passwords, Travelin’ Man 2 and 3 WhiteList Security, multiple VPN solutions for encrypted server-to-server communications, plus a bottom-up design focused on flawless operation behind a hardware-based firewall. You won’t find a more secure Personal Branch Exchange™ at any price.

Here’s the Incredible PBX 9-Layer Security Model:

Prerequisites. For standalone hardware buffs, here’s what we recommend to get started properly:

We’ve shifted gears on our recommended Atom platform for PIAF3 after excellent results with both the single-core and dual-core Atom kits manufactured by Foxconn (pictured on the left below). That’s the dLink Gaming Router on the right. Seems kinda silly to spend twice as much for a machine that you can build yourself in under 5 minutes. Basically you remove four screws, insert a Phillips screwdriver in one of the holes and gently pry the cover away from the box. Then you pop off the back by inserting a small flat-blade screwdriver, remove four more screws, slide in a solid-state drive (SSD) and a 4GB stick of notebook computer RAM, and you’re done in a couple minutes. Replace the screws and the cover, and you have a perfect PIAF2 platform with terrific performance and no moving parts for about $200. The link above will take you to the PIAF Forum thread for these machines. They go on sale almost weekly. See the right column of Nerd Vittles (just below our tweets) for this week’s special at Amazon. The dual-core Atom box typically is under $150. It could easily handle an office with 50+ employees sitting on a bookshelf with an Internet connection (wired or wireless!). No noise. Very little heat. Low power requirements. Perfect!

Configuring Google Voice

If you plan to use Google Voice, be advised that, according to Google, it’s going away in less than 6 weeks on May 15. If you want to use it anyway, you’ll need a dedicated Google Voice account to support Incredible PBX 11. If you want to use the inbound fax capabilities of Incredible Fax 11, then you’ll need an additional Google Voice line that can be routed to the FAX custom destination using FreePBX. The more obscure the username (with some embedded numbers), the better off you will be. This will keep folks from bombarding you with unsolicited Gtalk chat messages, and who knows what nefarious scheme will be discovered using Google messaging six months from now. So keep this account a secret!

We’ve tested this extensively using an existing Gmail account, and inbound calling is just not reliable. The reason seems to be that Google always chooses Gmail chat as the inbound call destination if there are multiple registrations from the same IP address. So, be reasonable. Do it our way! Set up a dedicated Gmail and Google Voice account, and use it exclusively with Incredible PBX 11. It’s free at least through 2013. Google Voice no longer is by invitation only so, if you’re in the U.S. or have a friend that is, head over to the Google Voice site and register.

You must choose a telephone number (aka DID) for your new account, or Google Voice calling will not work… in either direction. Google used to permit outbound Gtalk calls using a fake CallerID, but that obviously led to abuse so it’s over! You also have to tie your Google Voice account to at least one working phone number as part of the initial setup process. Your cellphone number will work just fine. Don’t skip this step either. Just enter the provided 2-digit confirmation code when you tell Google to place the test call to the phone number you entered. Once the number is registered, you can disable it if you’d like in Settings, Voice Setting, Phones. But…

IMPORTANT: Be sure to enable the Google Chat option as one of your phone destinations in Settings, Voice Setting, Phones. That’s the destination we need for The Incredible PBX to work its magic! Otherwise, all inbound and outbound calls will fail. If you don’t see this option, you may need to call up Gmail and enable Google Chat there first. Then go back to the Google Voice Settings.

While you’re still in Google Voice Settings, click on the Calls tab. Make sure your settings match these:

  • Call Screening – OFF
  • Call Presentation – OFF
  • Caller ID (In) – Display Caller’s Number
  • Caller ID (Out) – Don’t Change Anything
  • Do Not Disturb – OFF
  • Call Options (Enable Recording) – OFF
  • Global Spam Filtering – ON

Click Save Changes once you adjust your settings. Under the Voicemail tab, plug in your email address so you get notified of new voicemails. Down the road, receipt of a Google Voice voicemail will be a big hint that something has come unglued on your PBX.

One final word of caution is in order regardless of your choice of providers: Do NOT use special characters in any provider passwords, or nothing will work!

[purehtml id=10]

Accessing The FreePBX 2.11 GUI

Using a web browser, you access the FreePBX GUI by pointing your browser to the IP address of Incredible PBX 11. Click on the Users tab. It will change to Admin. Now click the FreePBX Admin button. When prompted for a username, it’s maint. When prompted for the password, it’s whatever you set up as your maint password when you installed PBX in a Flash. If you forget it, you can always reset it by logging into your server as root and running passwd-master.

Configuring Google Voice Trunks in FreePBX. All trunk configurations now are managed within FreePBX, including Google Voice. This makes it easy to customize your Incredible PBX to meet your specific needs. If you plan to use Google Voice, here’s how to quickly configure one or more Google Voice trunks within FreePBX. After logging into FreePBX with your browser, click the Connectivity tab and choose Google Voice/Motif. To Add a new Google Voice account, just fill out the form. Do NOT check the third box or incoming calls will never ring!

While you’re still in FreePBX, choose Applications, Extensions, and click on the 701 extension. Write down your extension and voicemail passwords. You’ll need them to configure a phone in a minute.

IMPORTANT LAST STEP: Google Voice will not work unless you restart Asterisk from the Linux command line at this juncture. Using SSH, log into your server as root and issue the following command: amportal restart.

Installing Incredible Fax 11

If you want the added convenience of having your Incredible PBX double as a free fax machine, run /root/incrediblefax11.sh after the Incredible PBX 11 install completes. Plug in your email address for delivery of incoming faxes and enter your home area code when prompted. For every other prompt, just press the Enter key. If you’d like to also add the optional OCR utility, just choose it when prompted. For complete documentation, see this Nerd Vittles article. Don’t forget that a REBOOT OF YOUR SERVER is required when the install is finished, or faxing won’t work! Then log in through the PIAF GUI as maint with your password. You’ll find the AvantFax GUI on the Admin menu.

Also be sure to set up a second, dedicated DID or Google Voice trunk if you want support for inbound faxing. Once the credentials are configured in FreePBX for the additional line, simply add an Inbound Route for this DID to point to the Custom Destination: Fax (Hylafax). This comes preconfigured with Incredible PBX 11.

Troubleshooting Audio and DTMF Problems

You can avoid one-way audio on calls and touchtones that don’t work with these simple settings in FreePBX: Settings -> Asterisk SIP Settings. Just plug in your public IP address and your private IP subnet. Then set ULAW as the only Audio Codec.

Configuring a Desktop Softphone

PBX in a Flash supports all kinds of telephones, but we’ll start with the easy (free) one today. You can move on to "real phones" once you’re smitten with the VoIP bug. For today, you’ll need to download a softphone to your desktop PC or Mac.

The easiest way to get started is to set up a YATE softphone on your Desktop computer. Versions are available at no cost for Macs, PCs, and Linux machines. Just download the appropriate one and install it from this link. Once installed, it’s a simple matter to plug in your extension credentials and start making calls. Run the application and choose Settings -> Accounts and click the New button. Fill in the blanks using the IP address of your server, 201 for your account name, and whatever password you created for the extension. Click OK.

Once you are registered to extension 701, close the Account window. Then click on YATE’s Telephony Tab and place your first call. It’s that easy!

Taking Incredible PBX 11 for a Spin

The proof is in the pudding as they say. So let’s try two simple tests. First, let’s place an outbound call. Using the softphone, dial your 10-digit cellphone number. Google Voice or your other SIP trunk should transparently connect you. Answer the call and make sure you can send and receive voice on both phones. Second, from another phone, call the number that you’ve dedicated to The Incredible PBX. Your softphone should begin ringing shortly. The call will be answered by the Nerd Vittles sample IVR. You can explore all of the preconfigured options at your leisure.

Learn First. Explore Second. Even though the installation process has been completed, we strongly recommend you do some reading before you begin your VoIP adventure. VoIP PBX systems have become a favorite target of the hackers and crackers around the world and, unless you have an unlimited bank account, you need to take some time learning where the minefields are in today’s VoIP world. Start by reading our Primer on Asterisk Security. We’ve secured all of your passwords except your root password and your passwd-master password. We’re assuming you’ve put very secure passwords on those accounts as if your phone bill depended upon it. It does! There’s loads of additional documentation on the PBX in a Flash documentation web site.

Incredible PBX 11 Automatic Update Utility

Incredible PBX 11 includes an automatic update utility to assist in keeping your system current and secure. It runs each time you log into your server as root. The first ten updates are at no cost. You then can elect to continue the service by subscribing to the update service which is available for a modest $20 for the remainder of the calendar year. Whether you subscribe or not, new releases of PBX in a Flash and Incredible PBX will always be free! This simply is a way for us to recover our costs in providing a service that many of our users have asked for. We hope you like it.

Choosing VoIP Providers

Nothing beats free when it comes to long distance calls. But nothing lasts forever. And, in the VoIP World, redundancy is dirt cheap. So we strongly recommend you set up another account with Vitelity using our special link below. This gives your PBX a secondary way to communicate with every telephone in the world, and it also gets you a second real phone number for your new system… so that people can call you. Here’s how it works. You pay Vitelity a deposit for phone service. They then will bill you $3.99 a month for your new phone number. This $3.99 also covers the cost of unlimited inbound calls (two at a time) delivered to your PBX for the month. For outbound calls, you pay by the minute and the cost is determined by where you’re calling. If you’re in the U.S., outbound calls to anywhere in the U.S. are a little over a penny a minute. If you change your mind about Vitelity and want a refund of the balance in your account, all you have to do is ask. The trunks for Vitelity already are preconfigured with The Incredible PBX. Just insert your credentials using FreePBX and uncheck the Disable Trunk checkbox. Then add the Vitelity trunk as the third destination for your default outbound route. That’s it. Congratulations! You now have a totally redundant phone system.

Incredible PBX 11 includes preconfigured trunk setups for all of your favorite trunk providers. Just plug in your credentials and activate the trunks you need. In less than a minute, you’re done. Here’s the Incredible PBX Top 20 Trunk List with some reasons why these providers made our short list:

  • AxVoice ($14.99/mo. Business Plan; $16.58/mo. Unlimited Calls to 45 Countries)
  • CallCentric (Good International Calling Rates)
  • DIDforSale (20 channels per DID; unlimited DID calls for $8.99/mo.)
  • ENUM
  • FlowRoute (Good International Calling Rates)
  • FreeNum
  • Future-Nine (Supports CallerID Spoofing)
  • Google Voice (Free DIDs and free U.S./Canada calling)
  • IPkall (Free SIP/IAX DIDs)
  • Les.net (Supports CallerID Spoofing; very low rates)
  • LocalPhone (Dirt-cheap DIDs and calling rates worldwide; Free iNum DID)
  • Simon Telephonics (Free SIP-to-GoogleVoice Gateway)
  • SIPgate (Free residential DIDs sometimes)
  • Skype (Free Skype-to-Skype calls worldwide)
  • Teliax (Unlimited inbound DID $5/mo.)
  • Vitelity (Our supporter and the Best in the Business!)
  • VoIPms (CallerID spoofing; Free iNum calling; Very low rates)
  • VoIPMyWay (Residential Unlimited: $15.50/mo. Business Unlimited: $40/mo.)
  • VoIPStreet (Free DID)

Configuring Email Noticing in FreePBX

You’re going to want to be notified when updates are available for FreePBX, and you may also want notifications when new voicemails arrive. Everything already is set up for you except actually entering your email notification address. Using a web browser, open the FreePBX GUI by pointing your browser to the IP address of your Incredible PBX. Then click Administration and choose FreePBX. To set your email address for FreePBX updates, go to Admin -> Module Admin and click on the shield on the right margin. To configure emails to notify you of incoming voicemails, go to Applications -> Extensions -> 701 and scroll to the bottom of the screen. Then follow your nose. Be sure to reload FreePBX when prompted after saving your changes.

A Final Word About Security

In case you couldn’t tell, security matters to us, and it should matter to you. Not only is the safety of your system at stake but also your wallet and the safety of other folks’ systems. Unless you subscribe to the new Automatic Update Utility, our only means of alerting you to security issues which arise is through the RSS Feed that we maintain for the PBX in a Flash project. This feed is prominently displayed in the web GUI which you can access with any browser pointed to the IP address of your server. Check It Daily! Or add our RSS Feed to your favorite RSS Reader. We also recommend you follow @NerdUno on Twitter. We’ll keep you entertained and provide immediate notification of security problems that we hear about. Finally, visit the PIAF Forums regularly. You’ll be surprised what you can learn in 10 minutes of browsing. Be safe!

Kicking the Tires

NEWS FLASH: Google Speech Recognition was an integral part of several Incredible PBX apps including the 949 Weather Reports and 411 Phonebook Directory Lookups with AsteriDex. Google changed their API to now require a personal API key for further use of the service. Thanks to Lefteris Zafiris, the speech recognition engine has been restored to operation. For instructions on obtaining your own API key and for properly reconfiguring your system to support speech-to-text, see this thread on the PIAF Forum. Google’s API is for personal and development use only!

That’s enough tutorial for today. Let’s play. Using your new softphone, begin your adventure by dialing these extensions:

  • D-E-M-O – Incredible PBX Demo (running on your PBX)
  • T-I-D-E – Get today’s tides and lunar schedule for any U.S. port
  • 4-1-1 – Phonebook lookup/dialer with AsteriDex
  • C-O-N-F – Set up a MeetMe Conference on the fly (PIN: 1234)
  • 1-2-3 – Schedule regular/recurring reminder (PW: 12345678)
  • 2-2-2 – ODBC/Timeclock Lookup Demo (Empl No: 12345)
  • 2-2-3 – ODBC/AsteriDex Lookup Demo (Code: AME)
  • 3-3-3 – Look up a definition for any word or term
  • 9-4-9 – Weather forecast for any city in the world
  • 9-5-0 – Retrieve stock report by stock symbol
  • 9-5-1 – Latest Google News headlines
  • Dial *68 – Schedule a hotel-style wakeup call from any extension

Don’t forget to List Yourself in Directory Assistance so everyone can find you by dialing 411. And add your new number to the Do Not Call Registry to block telemarketing calls. Or just call 888-382-1222 from your new number.

Deals of the Week. A relatively new company called Copy.com is offering 20GB of free cloud storage with no restrictions on file size uploads (which are all too common with other free offers). Copy.com has free sync apps for Windows, Macs, and Linux systems. To take advantage of the offer, just click on our referral link here. We get 5GB of extra storage, too, which will assist with our disaster recovery plan.

Originally published: Thursday, April 3, 2014


Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.

 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

BYOB: Easy Peasy PIAF-Green with Asterisk 11.8.1 and ‘Genuine’ CentOS 6.5

Tuesday, March 18, 2014 / 1 Comment on BYOB: Easy Peasy PIAF-Green with Asterisk 11.8.1 and ‘Genuine’ CentOS 6.5


Let’s put aside the debate over Red Hat CentOS licensing and the GPL for a moment and talk about everyone’s favorite party. And we confess up front to being big fans of Patrón tequila. But let’s suppose for a moment that the Patrón family added some fine print to the label on their tequila bottles that said you cannot distribute margaritas with Patrón tequila and claim they are made with genuine Patrón tequila because the drink is no longer pure Patrón. In other words, for your Margaritaville invitations, you now have to state that each invitee BYOB, and you’ll provide the mixers and ice. WOW! What a party!

So that’s where we find ourselves in the current CentOS standoff with Red Hat. To demonstrate just how silly this entire trademark gimmick is, today we’re going to show you how to Bring Your Own CentOS platform and build a genuine PBX in a Flash server with Asterisk and FreePBX in about the same time as in the good ol’ days. When you’re finished you’ll have exactly the same PBX in a Flash server running on a genuine CentOS platform. Have we diluted CentOS or the CentOS brand? Not at all. In fact, we’ve made the exact same margarita! What this little experiment demonstrates is the real motivation behind the Red Hat licensing restrictions which have little or nothing to do with brand dilution.

Creating the Base CentOS Platform for PBX in a Flash

We’re not doing anything special here. In fact, you can build your base CentOS platform for PBX in a Flash on a standalone server, on a virtual machine of your choice, or in the cloud using a provider such as Amazon or RentPBX.

Start by downloading the 32-bit or 64-bit CentOS 6.5 minimal install ISO. You can do exactly the same thing using Scientific Linux if you prefer. Go through the usual drill of preparing an installer from the ISO. Burn the ISO to a USB Thumb Drive or a CD/DVD using a Mac or Windows machine. Then create your CentOS 6.5 platform on the hardware of your choice.

By default, neither CentOS nor Scientific Linux installs with network connectivity enabled. This is one of the primary reasons that we always have customized CentOS for use with PBX in a Flash. After performing a minimal OS install, log in as root and issue the following commands to prepare your server for PBX in a Flash:

sed -i 's|no|yes|' /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
ifup eth0
yum -y install wget nano

Creating a PBX in a Flash 3.0.6.5 Server

Now you’re ready to make a margarita. Just download the PIAF3 Installer and run it. It works exactly as it always has. The installer is plain text so feel free to customize it to meet your own requirements. If you need the complete PIAF installation tutorial, jump to this link. Party on!

cd /root
wget http://pbxinaflash.com/piaf3-install.tar.gz
tar zxvf piaf3-install.tar.gz
./piaf3-install

Originally published: Tuesday, March 18, 2014


Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.

 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

Closing the Book on CentOS: Introducing PBX in a Flash 3 with PIAF 3.0.6.5 OS

Friday, February 21, 2014 / 10 Comments on Closing the Book on CentOS: Introducing PBX in a Flash 3 with PIAF 3.0.6.5 OS

Over the past few weeks, we’ve attempted to document some of the issues that have arisen as a result of what Red Hat claims it has been assigned from a few of the current CentOS developers. The CentOS trademark issues boil down to these: (1) ownership, (2) prior assignments and licenses, (3) dilution, and (4) GPL2. You can only sell that which you own. You can’t undo licenses that previously have been issued and relied upon. Generic use of a term over a lengthy period of years raises a strong presumption of genericide particularly when there has never been any attempt to protect the mark. And you can’t breathe a trademark exemption into GPL2 just because you’d like it to be a GPL3 license.

These issues obviously aren’t going to be settled overnight. Indeed, there are "the usual suspects" that put a not in front of virtually anything we suggest. That’s perfectly fine. We all have the right to our own opinions. But, absent some flexibility from Red Hat, these issues will work their way through a very cumbersome legal process over many years regardless of the views of the armchair quarterbacks. We’ll be watching and, if it becomes necessary, participating. There’s almost a decade of history on CentOS that some appear to have forgotten or perhaps never knew. Suffice it to say, CentOS has had a bit of a checkered past. We’ll cover some of it in coming months to give everyone a better appreciation of the issues that are at stake. In the meantime, PBX in a Flash has a loyal following, and we owe it to our users and supporters to remove the CentOS distraction and move on.

Today we are pleased to introduce PBX in a Flash 3 with an all-new GPL2 operating system, our own. It is compatible with the LAAMP stack that has been deployed by all of the Asterisk aggregations over the past decade including PBX in a Flash, Asterisk@Home, trixbox, Elastix, AsteriskNOW, and the FreePBX Distro. Simply stated, nothing has changed except the removal of the items to which Red Hat now asserts some ownership interest.

We’re rolling PIAF3 out in three stages, two of which we’re introducing today. There are new 32-bit and 64-bit virtual machine images. There are migration scripts to transform a PIAF2 server into PIAF3. And there will be new ISO images down the road a bit. The PIAF Dev Team is a group of individuals that do this for fun, not for profit. So eating comes first. Then we work on PBX in a Flash as time permits. No, we haven’t gotten filthy rich from donations and advertising. And, yes, we have sufficient resources to maintain the infrastructure necessary to continue to support the project indefinitely. If you’d like to volunteer to assist, by all means do so. The more, the merrier!

Movin’ On Up: Migrating Your PIAF2 Server to PIAF3

We’ve documented a simple procedure on the PIAF Forum to convert your PIAF2 server into a PIAF3 server. We fully appreciate that some may need a little hand-holding even though the scripts are provided and are in plain text. If you’d like to perform the procedure, set aside about an hour when your server is not in use AND only after you have made a full backup of your current system. For backup tips, go here and here and here. Then follow this link to begin. If you run into issues, just post your question on the forum. We have hundreds of gurus that stand ready to help you… cheerfully.

The Ultimate VoIP Appliance: PIAF3 Virtual Machine for VirtualBox

Today brings us to a new plateau in the virtual machine development era. We’re pleased to introduce a new product that can be installed in under 5 minutes and will run on any Windows PC, Mac, or Linux machine as well as Solaris. And, unlike the dedicated machine platforms and OpenVZ compromises of years past, today’s PIAF-Green Virtual Machine is state-of-the-art giving you everything a bare metal install from source code would have provided. Most importantly, the components are truly portable. They can be copied to a 4GB flash drive1 for the price of a good hamburger and installed from there onto any type of machine that happens to be in front of you. Five minutes later, you have a fully functional Asterisk server with FreePBX and exactly the same feature set and source code that you would have had doing a bare metal PIAF install to a dedicated server. And we’ve built 32-bit and 64-bit production-ready PIAF-Green Virtual Machines with Asterisk 11.7 and FreePBX 2.11. No Internet access required to perform the install. Sound too good to be true? Keep reading or, better yet, try the PIAF appliance for yourself. The install process is simple:

  1. Download and install VirtualBox onto a Desktop Machine of your choice
  2. Download and double-click on the PIAF-Green Virtual Machine to import it into VirtualBox
  3. Select the PIAF-Green Virtual Machine in VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button

Introducing Oracle VM VirtualBox

We’re late to the party, but Virtual Box®, Oracle’s virtual machine platform inherited from Sun, is really something. It’s not only free, but it’s pure GPL2 code. VirtualBox gives you a virtual machine platform that runs on top of any desktop operating system. In terms of limitations, we haven’t found any. We even tested this on an Atom-based Windows 7 machine with 2GB of RAM, and it worked without a hiccup. So step #1 is to download one or more of the VirtualBox installers from VirtualBox.org or Oracle.com. As mentioned, our recommendation is to put all of the 100MB installers on a 4GB thumb drive. Then you’ll have everything in one place whenever and wherever you happen to need it. Once you’ve downloaded the software, simply install it onto your favorite desktop machine. Accept all of the default settings, and you’ll be good to go. For more details, here’s a link to the Oracle VM VirtualBox User Manual.

Installing the PIAF3 Virtual Machine

Step #1 is to download the PIAF-Green Open Virtualization Appliance (.ova) of your choice from SourceForge. If you prefer torrents, they are there as well thanks to the work of Isaac McDonald.

Step #2: Verify the checksums for the .ova appliance to be sure everything got downloaded properly. To check the MD5/SHA1 checksums in Windows, download and run Microsoft’s File Checksum Integrity Verifier.

For Mac or Linux desktops, open a Terminal window, change to the directory in which you downloaded the .ova file and type the following commands:

md5 PIAF-Green-3.6.5.-32.ova (use md5sum for Linux)    MD5: a0562d213a31ace848b8a00bfb3d9218
openssl sha1 PIAF-Green-3.6.5-32.ova    SHA1: 7aa74ffdc6a0f2b5a2ec0557c7bb78f8fe9cfb23


md5 PIAF-Green-3.6.5.-64.ova (use md5sum for Linux)    MD5: d146ce1381b58effcaaaf3ef095806ab
openssl sha1 PIAF-Green-3.6.5-64.ova    SHA1: 19a9981094047eb25d585f9a2d0198a056d56a98

Step #3: Double-click on the downloaded .ova file which will begin the import process into VirtualBox. It only takes a couple minutes, and you only do it once. IMPORTANT: Be sure to check the Reinitialize the Mac address of all network cards box before clicking the Import button.

Once the import is finished, you’ll see the new PIAF-Green virtual machine in the VM List of your VirtualBox Manager Window. You’ll need to make a couple of one-time adjustments to the VM configuration to account for differences in sound and network cards on different host machines.

Click on the PIAF-Green Virtual Machine in the VM List. Then click Settings -> Audio and check the Enable Audio option and choose your sound card. Save your setup by clicking the OK button. Next click Settings -> Network. For Adapter 1, check the Enable Network Adapter option. From the Attached to pull-down menu, choose Bridged Adapter. Then select your network card from the Name list. Then click OK. On some VM platforms in order to successfully boot the VM, you may need to manually enable PAE/NX support under System -> Proccessor. On most platforms, it’s enabled by default. That’s all the configuration that is ever necessary for your PIAF-Green Virtual Machine. The rest is automagic.

Running the PIAF-Green Virtual Machine in VirtualBox

Once you’ve imported and configured the PIAF3 Virtual Machine, you’re ready to go. Highlight PIAF3 Virtual Machine in the VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button. The PIAF3 boot procedure will begin just as if you had installed PBX in a Flash on a standalone machine. You’ll see a couple of dialogue boxes pop up that explain the keystrokes to move back and forth between your host operating system desktop and your PIAF VM.

Here’s what you need to know. To work in the PIAF3 Virtual Machine, just left-click your mouse while it is positioned inside the VM window. To return to your host operating system desktop, press the right Option key on Windows machines or the left Command key on any Mac. For other operating systems, read the dialogue boxes for instructions on moving around. Always shut down PIAF gracefully! Click in the VM window with your mouse, log in as root, and type: shutdown -h now.

Run the PIAF3 Virtual Machine behind a hardware-based firewall with no Internet port exposure!

To begin, position your mouse over the VM window and left-click. Once the PIAF VM has booted, log in as root with password as the password. Change your root password immediately by typing passwd at the command prompt. Now set up a secure maint password for FreePBX as well. Type passwd-master. If you’re not in the Eastern U.S. time zone, then you’ll want to adjust your timezone setting so that reminders and other time-sensitive events happen at the correct time. While logged into your server as root, issue this command:

setup-timezone

Next, use a browser to log into your PIAF3 server by pointing to the IP address of the PIAF3 VM that’s displayed in the status window of the CLI. Click on the User button to display the Admin choices in the main PIAF3 Menu. Click on the FreePBX option to load the FreePBX GUI. You will be prompted for an Apache username and password. For the username, use maint. For the password, use whatever password you set up with passwd-master.

Now read the latest PIAF Quick Start Guide and begin your VoIP adventure. Then you’ll want to do some reading on VirtualBox. We’ve barely scratched the surface. Setting up Headless VMs that run in the background on any server is a breeze. From the command line, here’s an article to get you started. But you also can start Headless VMs from within the GUI by highlighting the VM and clicking Shift->Start. Always shut down VMs gracefully: Close->ACPI Shutdown. You’ll find more great tips at virtualbox.org and GitHub.

One of the real beauties of VirtualBox is you don’t have to use a GUI at all. The entire process can be driven from the command line. Other than on a Mac, here is the procedure to import, configure, and run the PIAF-Green Virtual Machine:
 
VBoxManage import PIAF-Green-3.6.5-32.ova
VBoxManage modifyvm "PIAF-Green-3.6.5-32" --nic1 nat
VBoxManage modifyvm "PIAF-Green-3.6.5-32" --acpi on --nic1 bridged
VBoxHeadless --startvm "PIAF-Green-3.6.5-32" &
# Wait 1 minute for PIAF-Green-3.6.5-32 to load. Then decipher IP address like this:
VBoxManage guestproperty get "PIAF-Green-3.6.5-32" /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/IP
# Now you can use SSH to login to PIAF-Green-3.6.5-32 at the displayed IP address
# Shutdown the PIAF-Green-3.6.5-32 Virtual Machine with the following command:
VBoxManage controlvm "PIAF-Green-3.6.5-32" acpipowerbutton

On a Mac, everything works the same way except for deciphering the IP address. Download our findip script for that.

Adding Incredible PBX 11 and Incredible Fax

You can read all about the Incredible PBX 11 and Incredible Fax feature set in our recent Nerd Vittles article. If you decide you’d like to add one or both to your PIAF-Green Virtual Machine, just log into your server as root and issue the following commands. NOTE: You must install Incredible Fax after installing Incredible PBX, or you will lose the ability to install Incredible PBX at a later time. With Incredible Fax, there are a number of prompts during the install. With the exception of the prompt asking for your local area code, just press Enter at every other prompt.

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx11.gz
gunzip incrediblepbx11.gz
chmod +x incrediblepbx11
./incrediblepbx11
./incrediblefax11.sh

The Incredible PBX 11 Inventory. For those that have never heard of The Incredible PBX, here’s the current 11.0 feature set in addition to the base install of PBX in a Flash with PIAF 3.0.6.5, Asterisk 11, FreePBX 2.11, and Apache, SendMail, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, IPtables Linux firewall, Fail2Ban, and WebMin. Incredible Fax, NeoRouter and PPTP VPNs, and all sorts of backup solutions are still just one command away and may be installed using the scripts included with Incredible PBX 11 and PBX in a Flash 3. Type help-pbx and browse /root for dozens of one-click install scripts.

Originally published: Friday, February 21, 2014


Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.

 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

  1. Many of our purchase links refer users to Amazon when we find their prices are competitive for the recommended products. Nerd Vittles receives a small referral fee from Amazon to help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate Amazon commissions. However, when pricing is comparable or availability is favorable, we support Amazon because Amazon supports us. [↩]

Crippleware: Is Red Hat Rewriting the GPL and the Future of Open Source?

Tuesday, February 11, 2014 / 15 Comments on Crippleware: Is Red Hat Rewriting the GPL and the Future of Open Source?

We’ve always been a believer that things happen for a reason. And so it is with the recent CentOS "acquisition" by Red Hat. It’s no secret that CentOS was cutting into Red Hat’s revenue stream. While Red Hat had announced plans to create its own CentOS-like spinoff, the actual absorption of CentOS and its development team into Red Hat, Inc. was a surprise. So was the claim by Karanbir Singh that he individually owned the CentOS trademark. As we previously described, the whole CentOS story is more than a little murky. What began as a rebellion by some open source developers to the heavy-handed Red Hat reinvention of what open source and the GPL were all about abruptly morphed into something quite different. We hope Red Hat has the best of intentions, but some may see things differently given Red Hat’s history in the open source space. Did one or more developers just throw in the towel in exchange for some undisclosed money and a cushy job? Only the developer(s) know the answer to that. From Red Hat’s perspective, it gives them complete control of the best known, free, competitive and compatible product that was making inroads into their cash cow, Enterprise Linux. Only time will tell whether the goal of this acquisition was to make CentOS a better product. Nothing now prevents Red Hat from diminishing the compatibility between Enterprise Linux and CentOS.

In the VoIP world, CentOS has played a leading role in the evolution of Asterisk-compatible turnkey systems. That history includes Asterisk@Home, trixbox, Elastix, PBX in a Flash, Asterisk Now, and the FreePBX platform. Just as Excel relies upon Windows to run, all of these distributions have relied upon CentOS as the underlying Linux operating system for their VoIP platform. And this has been the case for almost a decade with no objection from the CentOS folks. In fact, some of us that contributed to the CentOS project received tacit approval to do exactly what we’ve been doing by bundling CentOS with the PBX in a Flash VoIP platform. After all, CentOS is GPL2 software, and we can read.

Having said that, the PBX in a Flash Dev Team is shifting gears. Down the road we plan to release 32-bit and 64-bit Scientific Linux-based ISOs. By popular demand, over the next few weeks, we will release the PIAF3-Installer, a freeware installation program that installs PBX in a Flash 3.0.6.5 on an existing Linux platform. You first install the operating system of your choice, and then the PIAF3-Installer takes it from there. The first release will support 32-bit or 64-bit CentOS 6.5 or the Scientific Linux 6.5 minimal install. Future releases will support additional Linux operating systems, and we’ll keep you posted on what those platforms will be. All of the installs have been designed to look and feel and perform exactly as the PIAF 2.0.6.5 ISO works today. The installer also has been designed to work with our cloud partner, RentPBX. And it should work well on other cloud platforms as well as virtual machines including VirtualBox. The PIAF-Green Virtual Machine featuring Scientific Linux 6.5 is already available and was built using the new PIAF3-Installer. For the time being, the PIAF3-Installer gets us out of the operating system business until some of the legal issues are resolved. There’s lots of exciting new PIAF3 software coming your way very shortly. So stay tuned.

So what’s the big deal with the Red Hat acquisition?

Red Hat has a different view of the open source universe and the GNU General Public license (GPL2) under which CentOS is distributed. And, make no mistake, Red Hat has no choice about using the GPL2 license because their aggregations include thousands of components, most of which are licensed under GPL2. One of the fundamental precepts of GPL licensing is you are free to use or add to others’ GPL-licensed products so long as you also license your software under the same terms, i.e. the GPL2 license. Historically, Red Hat has applied its own GPL interpretation.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Red Hat aggregated thousands of these GPL2 products and configured them so that they worked harmoniously. And thus was born Enterprise Linux, a wildly profitable Linux "operating system" which consisted primarily of other developers’ free open source software components. And what did Red Hat bring to the table? A trademarked name and logo consisting of some artwork, a method of installing and configuring the various components so that they played nice with each other, and a marketing, support, and legal department. In pulling off this hat trick, Red Hat sprinkled its trademarked name and copyrighted artwork in various files throughout the operating system in such a way that the system wouldn’t function if you removed or renamed some of the files under which the Enterprise Linux operating system was running. Then Red Hat barred others from using its trademarks and copyrighted artwork in competitive products that sought to fork, use, and enhance the Enterprise Linux GPL2-licensed code claiming brand confusion. Merriam-Webster calls it a gotcha. We do, too.

With CentOS, the developers (perhaps with some Red Hat coaching) were sufficiently savvy to remove the Red Hat branding and artwork and then recompiled the source code substituting their own branding and artwork while never disclosing exactly how they did what they did. Scientific Linux did much the same thing a bit later. Was there a non-disclosure agreement between CentOS and Red Hat that was part of their legal settlement? Who knows? The bottom line was that the CentOS project operating under the cAOS Foundation made bold claims that they’d never act like RedHat in dealing with others that wanted to use their free product. And, more importantly, they kept their word and never did… at least until the 2014 Red Hat acquisition when CentOS license terms abruptly changed.

Here’s the key language that all of us relied upon as far as CentOS licensing and integration into other products:

[W]e will never make the system depend on an item of non-free software.

We won’t object to commercial software that is intended to run on cAos systems, and we’ll allow others to create value-added distributions containing both cAos and commercial software, without any fee from us. To support these goals, we will provide an integrated system of high quality, 100% open source software, with no legal restrictions that would prevent these kinds of use. (Emphasis added)

Indeed, this licensing approach is exactly what GPL2 requires! The Red Hat theory of open source licensing goes something like this. You are free to use our source code (only) to develop your own GPL2 product provided you recompile the executables after removing all of our trademarks and copyrighted artwork from the source before you proceed. And here’s the rub with that approach: the GPL2 license. Three important components of the GPL2 license are listed below. Red Hat’s new CentOS license only partially complies with sections 1 and 2 while ignoring sections 3 and 7.

Sections 1 and 2 of GPL2 give users the right to copy, modify, and redistribute source code provided appropriate notices are attached and the new source code is licensed under GPL2. There’s no authorization to restrict or limit reuse or modification of individual components in the GPL2 program.

Section 3 of GPL2 gives users the right to copy and use or modify the object code provided in the original work. There’s no authorization to restrict or limit reuse or modification of individual executable components in the program.

Section 7 of GPL2 is the enforcement mechanism of the license. If the licensor uses a patent "or any other reason (not limited to patent issues)" to restrict the use of a GPL2-licensed product then the licensor has two options: (1) remove the restriction on use or (2) stop distributing the product pursuant to GPL2. If the licensor insists upon enforcement of a patent, a trademark, or copyright claim whether real or contrived, then "the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program." The quoted passages couldn’t be more clear.

Red Hat wants to have its cake and eat it, too: sell a product using everyone else’s free GPL2 products without restriction and then tie up its own GPL2 product with trademark and copyright land mines that deter others from using the product except in an inoperative form. This is nothing new. Back in the shareware days, we called it Crippleware. Stated another way, Red Hat wants to permit GPL2 use of modified CentOS in source code format only minus the CentOS marks and images and without any object code or executables and without telling you how to restore functionality after removing the required pieces to which RedHat claims ownership. Simply stated, the boat won’t float without major plumbing changes from any user that wants to keep the boat from sinking. And Red Hat won’t tell you where the boat is leaking or how to fix the leaks. Never mind that Red Hat didn’t mind using thousands of other developers’ trademarks and copyrighted artwork in the Enterprise Linux and CentOS aggregations. There’s a reason. Such restrictions are impermissible under the GPL2 license. Indeed, it’s one of the primary reasons that the GPL license came about in the first place. Assuming Red Hat ever obtains the CentOS registered trademark (which we plan to challenge if no one else does), Red Hat has two options under section 7 of GPL2: drop the trademark and artwork removal requirements or stop marketing CentOS and Enterprise Linux as GPL products (which they obviously cannot do since they are using thousands of other folks’ open source trademarked GPL2 products in "their work" at no cost).

Here’s a modest proposal that we believe would make everybody happy. First, many folks don’t give a rip about using either the RHEL or CentOS marks or artwork. It’s the source AND executable code that was released under the GPL that users are after just as they were promised under GPL2 and under CentOS previously published licensing terms. What we’re not going to do is invest hundreds of programming hours rebranding and maintaining what is touted and distributed as a GPL2 product. Personally, I’d prefer to spend the hours on a legal brief blowing Red Hat’s GPL2 reincarnation of open source out of the water. It’s dead wrong based upon the clear language of the GPL2 license. Paying lawyers or experts to twist the meaning of the GPL2 language that’s perfectly clear on its face simply isn’t going to fly. We’ve been down this road before. And David and Goliath is still one of our favorite Bible stories.

If Red Hat wants a generic, mark-free, image-free distribution of CentOS in lieu of waiving its trademark and copyright claims, then Red Hat can produce a clone with binaries AND keep it current as new versions of RHEL and CentOS are released! Make it a 100% RHEL-compatible and call it MugWump™. Use the Nerd Vittles logo for the artwork. Or come up with any other name and logo so long as there are no restrictions on use by others. If Red Hat uses our proposed name and logo, we will license everyone to use the product, the copyrighted artwork and the MugWump trademark pursuant to GPL2 at no cost. If Red Hat chooses its own new name and logo, then Red Hat agrees to license the product under the same terms we have proffered. The end result: everybody will be happy while saving Red Hat hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. What’s not acceptable is distribution of a product which purports to be GPL2 code but places unreasonable and unachievable restrictions on use without hundreds of hours of development work by potential end users. That’s not what GPL2 was ever about. Hopefully the federal courts won’t have to say so.

Originally published: Tuesday, February 11, 2014


Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.

 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

A New Star Is Born: The PIAF-Green Virtual Machine featuring Scientific Linux 6.5

Wednesday, January 29, 2014 / 7 Comments on A New Star Is Born: The PIAF-Green Virtual Machine featuring Scientific Linux 6.5

We are delighted to announce our first of many releases of PBX in a Flash™ 3.0.6.5 running atop the just released Scientific Linux™ 6.5. In keeping with our historical methodology (minus CentOS™), today’s PIAF-Green™ VM release with Asterisk 11® and FreePBX® 2.11 provides everyone an opportunity to kick the tires and provide some feedback before the tailorable PIAF™ 3.0.6.5 hits the street. What’s missing is the CentOS operating system. Good riddance! See last week’s article for why. We are pleased to introduce our new OS platform:

"From the beginning Scientific Linux was designed to be a community project. We solicited input from the labs and Universities that originally contacted [Fermilab™ computer scientists], as well as other interested parties. We also designed the sites area to make it easy for sites to create their own distribution, as well as add to the mirrors without disturbing the main core distribution."

Feel free to read up on its history, its legal footing, and its incredible growth over the past decade. If you’d like to build your own creation from Scientific Linux, there’s a well-documented tutorial to get you there. Incredible Linux™ here we come! And what a terrific contribution to the open source community by the Scientific Linux developers. Imagine actually being able to spin off GPL code into enhanced products just as the GPL license envisioned. What a concept!

We’ll have more news about Scientific Linux in coming weeks. But, for today, we hope you’ll take the new PIAF-Green Virtual Machine for a spin. This new release was put together within days of the release of Scientific Linux 6.5. That speaks volumes about SL platform stability and its enthusiastic community. We’re delighted to be the newest member!

The Ultimate VoIP Appliance: PIAF Virtual Machine for VirtualBox

Today brings us to a new plateau in the virtual machine development era. We’re pleased to introduce a new product that can be installed in under 5 minutes and will run on any Windows PC, Mac, or Linux machine as well as Solaris. And, unlike the dedicated machine platforms and OpenVZ compromises of years past, today’s PIAF-Green Virtual Machine is state-of-the-art giving you everything a bare metal install from source code would have provided. Most importantly, the components are truly portable. They can be copied to a 4GB flash drive1 for the price of a good hamburger and installed from there onto any type of machine that happens to be in front of you. Five minutes later, you have a fully functional Asterisk server with FreePBX and exactly the same feature set and source code that you would have had doing a bare metal PIAF install to a dedicated server. And we’ve built this 32-bit production-ready PIAF-Green Virtual Machine with Asterisk 11.7 and FreePBX 2.11. No Internet access required to perform the install. Sound too good to be true? Keep reading or, better yet, try the PIAF appliance for yourself. The install process is simple:

  1. Download and install VirtualBox onto a Desktop Machine of your choice
  2. Download and double-click on the PIAF-Green Virtual Machine to import it into VirtualBox
  3. Select the PIAF-Green Virtual Machine in VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button

Introducing Oracle VM VirtualBox

We’re late to the party, but Virtual Box®, Oracle’s virtual machine platform inherited from Sun, is really something. It’s not only free, but it’s pure GPL2 code. VirtualBox gives you a virtual machine platform that runs on top of any desktop operating system. In terms of limitations, we haven’t found any. We even tested this on an Atom-based Windows 7 machine with 2GB of RAM, and it worked without a hiccup. So step #1 is to download one or more of the VirtualBox installers from VirtualBox.org or Oracle.com. As mentioned, our recommendation is to put all of the 100MB installers on a 4GB thumb drive. Then you’ll have everything in one place whenever and wherever you happen to need it. Once you’ve downloaded the software, simply install it onto your favorite desktop machine. Accept all of the default settings, and you’ll be good to go. For more details, here’s a link to the Oracle VM VirtualBox User Manual.

Installing the PIAF Virtual Machine

Step #1 is to download the PIAF-Green Open Virtualization Appliance (.ova) from SourceForge.

Step #2: Verify the checksums for the 32-bit .ova appliance to be sure everything got downloaded properly. To check the MD5/SHA1 checksums in Windows, download and run Microsoft’s File Checksum Integrity Verifier.

For Mac or Linux desktops, open a Terminal window, change to the directory in which you downloaded the .ova file and type the following commands:

md5 PIAF-Green-SL.ova (use md5sum for Linux)    MD5: 33fcda3badc7cae025905b59d59f8213
openssl sha1 PIAF-Green-SL.ova    SHA1: f3aa8d966cd8e7bed1d0d6e16d29806056b81e6a

Step #3: Double-click on the downloaded .ova file which will begin the import process into VirtualBox. It only takes a couple minutes, and you only do it once. IMPORTANT: Be sure to check the Reinitialize the Mac address of all network cards box before clicking the Import button.

Once the import is finished, you’ll see the new PIAF-Green virtual machine in the VM List of your VirtualBox Manager Window. You’ll need to make a couple of one-time adjustments to the VM configuration to account for differences in sound and network cards on different host machines.

Click on the PIAF-Green-SL Virtual Machine in the VM List. Then click Settings -> Audio and check the Enable Audio option and choose your sound card. Save your setup by clicking the OK button. Next click Settings -> Network. For Adapter 1, check the Enable Network Adapter option. From the Attached to pull-down menu, choose Bridged Adapter. Then select your network card from the Name list. Then click OK. That’s all the configuration that is ever necessary for your PIAF-Green Virtual Machine. The rest is automagic.

Running the PIAF-Green Virtual Machine in VirtualBox

Once you’ve imported and configured the PIAF Virtual Machine, you’re ready to go. Highlight PIAF Virtual Machine in the VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button. The PIAF boot procedure with Scientific Linux 6.5 will begin just as if you had installed PBX in a Flash on a standalone machine. You’ll see a couple of dialogue boxes pop up that explain the keystrokes to move back and forth between your host operating system desktop and your PIAF VM.

Here’s what you need to know. To work in the PIAF Virtual Machine, just left-click your mouse while it is positioned inside the VM window. To return to your host operating system desktop, press the right Option key on Windows machines or the left Command key on any Mac. For other operating systems, read the dialogue boxes for instructions on moving around. Always shut down PIAF gracefully! Click in the VM window with your mouse, log in as root, and type: shutdown -h now.

Run the PIAF Virtual Machine behind a hardware-based firewall with no Internet port exposure!

To begin, position your mouse over the VM window and left-click. Once the PIAF VM has booted, log in as root with password as the password. Change your root password immediately by typing passwd at the command prompt. Now set up a secure maint password for FreePBX as well. Type passwd-master. If you’re not in the Eastern U.S. time zone, then you’ll want to adjust your timezone setting so that reminders and other time-sensitive events happen at the correct time. While logged into your server as root, issue this command:

setup-timezone

Next, use a browser to log into your PIAF server by pointing to the IP address of the PIAF VM that’s displayed in the status window of the CLI. Click on the User button to display the Admin choices in the main PIAF Menu. Click on the FreePBX option to load the FreePBX GUI. You will be prompted for an Apache username and password. For the username, use maint. For the password, use whatever password you set up with passwd-master.

Now read the latest PIAF Quick Start Guide and begin your VoIP adventure. Then you’ll want to do some reading on VirtualBox. We’ve barely scratched the surface. Setting up Headless VMs that run in the background on any server is a breeze. From the command line, here’s an article to get you started. But you also can start Headless VMs from within the GUI by highlighting the VM and clicking Shift->Start. Always shut down VMs gracefully: Close->ACPI Shutdown. You’ll find more great tips at virtualbox.org and GitHub.

One of the real beauties of VirtualBox is you don’t have to use a GUI at all. The entire process can be driven from the command line. Other than on a Mac, here is the procedure to import, configure, and run the PIAF-Green-32 Virtual Machine:
 
VBoxManage import PIAF-Green-SL.ova
VBoxManage modifyvm "PIAF-Green-SL" --nic1 nat
VBoxManage modifyvm "PIAF-Green-SL" --acpi on --nic1 bridged
VBoxHeadless --startvm "PIAF-Green-SL" &
# Wait 1 minute for PIAF-Green-SL to load. Then decipher IP address like this:
VBoxManage guestproperty get "PIAF-Green-SL" /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/IP
# Now you can use SSH to login to PIAF-Green-SL at the displayed IP address
# Shutdown the PIAF-Green-SL Virtual Machine with the following command:
VBoxManage controlvm "PIAF-Green-SL" acpipowerbutton

On a Mac, everything works the same way except for deciphering the IP address. Download our findip script for that.

Adding Incredible PBX 11 and Incredible Fax

You can read all about the Incredible PBX 11 and Incredible Fax feature set in our recent Nerd Vittles article. If you decide you’d like to add one or both to your PIAF-Green Virtual Machine, just log into your server as root and issue the following commands. NOTE: You must install Incredible Fax after installing Incredible PBX, or you will lose the ability to install Incredible PBX at a later time. With Incredible Fax, there are a number of prompts during the install. With the exception of the prompt asking for your local area code, just press Enter at every other prompt.

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx11.gz
gunzip incrediblepbx11.gz
chmod +x incrediblepbx11
./incrediblepbx11
./incrediblefax11.sh

The Incredible PBX 11 Inventory. For those that have never heard of The Incredible PBX, here’s the current 11.0 feature set in addition to the base install of PBX in a Flash with Scientific Linux 6.5, Asterisk 11, FreePBX 2.11, and Apache, SendMail, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, IPtables Linux firewall, Fail2Ban, and WebMin. Incredible Fax, NeoRouter and PPTP VPNs, and all sorts of backup solutions are still just one command away and may be installed using the scripts included with Incredible PBX 11 and PBX in a Flash. Type help-pbx and browse /root for dozens of one-click install scripts.

Originally published: Wednesday, January 29, 2014


Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.

 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

  1. Many of our purchase links refer users to Amazon when we find their prices are competitive for the recommended products. Nerd Vittles receives a small referral fee from Amazon to help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate Amazon commissions. However, when pricing is comparable or availability is favorable, we support Amazon because Amazon supports us. [↩]

Obivoice = OBi Heaven: Dumping Google Voice for Less Than 10¢ a Day

Monday, January 13, 2014 / 7 Comments on Obivoice = OBi Heaven: Dumping Google Voice for Less Than 10¢ a Day

What a difference a week makes! When we wrote last week’s article about netTALK and their terrific pricing, we were pleased to report that at least one company could offer a drop-in replacement for Google Voice without breaking the bank. But, alas, all is not well in netTALK Land. For openers, the Better Business Bureau revoked their accreditation last June because of failure to respond to or resolve technical complaints. And a recent SEC Filing paints a fairly bleak picture of the company’s financial condition. Special thanks to Gershom1624 for his sleuthing efforts. This merely reinforces the difficulty of providing reliable, unlimited VoIP service at the $2.50 a month price point. But we firmly believe $2.50 is the magic price point, and it is achievable with some safeguards for the provider, i.e. residential service, no call centers, no 10,000 minutes-a-month customers. My mom loved the telephone, but she never spent 5 hours a day on the telephone. There also has to be some tradeoff in the level of support customers can expect. If customers tie up expensive support reps with multiple calls, the pricing matrix falls apart very quickly. And that brings us to this week.


Let’s review the Wish List for those that missed last week’s article. We want a drop-in replacement for Google Voice on both the OBi110 (stand-alone with any POTS telephone) and Asterisk® (PBX) platforms. It needs to provide unlimited (within reason) calling in the U.S. and Canada. It needs a feature set that is fairly comparable to Google Voice. It needs to include E911 service because the federal government says so. We don’t care much about support as long as the setup process is well-documented, the service is reliable, and calls sound great. Charging for support requests to resolve issues that aren’t the company’s fault is perfectly fine with us. But the price point for unlimited calling needs to be $2.50 a month, i.e. $30 a year or $60 every two years for the math-challenged. We’d prefer no tips, taxes, or fees. We want to keep our existing number. And, lest we forget, the company must promise to stay in business and never raise prices… forever.

Suppose we could find you a company that, with a 2-year commitment, could provide all of the above (minus the last sentence) plus fax support including a web page to send outgoing faxes from attachments, free calling and a mobile app for your iOS and Android devices, Visual Voicemail with voicemail transcription as well as email delivery of voicemail messages, call forwarding, call waiting, CallerID spoofing for any number you own, and unbelievable customer service. Not sure about the service? How about a 30-day free trial with 60 free minutes?

Let us introduce you to Obivoice. Don’t be alarmed by the one-year price of $40. The two-year price is just $60. But it doesn’t cost you a nickel to sign up and try the service. Obivoice is a pure SIP provider so the setup with PBX in a Flash™ or an OBi110™ takes only a couple minutes. Here’s the SIP trunk setup for PBX in a Flash using FreePBX®. All you need is your SIP credentials and phone number once you’ve signed up for an account. Plug in your 10-digit phone number in the Outbound CallerID and Register String, replace 1234 with your Account Number in the username, fromuser, and Register String, and replace yourpassword with your real Password in the secret and Register String.

Next, build yourself an Inbound Route with your 10-digit DID ↑ and point it to your favorite PBX destination. Finally, create an Outbound Route using obivoice as the Trunk Sequence, and you’re all set. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

We don’t think you will but, if you need assistance setting this up, head over to the PIAF Forum where there’s a lively discussion about Obivoice already.

The OBi110 setup is just as easy. Plug in sms.intelafone.com as the ProxyServer and OutboundProxy in your ITSP Profile, add your SIP credentials in the SP1 Voice Services dialog, and forward (or transfer) your existing Google Voice number to Obivoice. Done! Obivoice’s complete tutorial is available here.

Let us close with our own customer service story. We were so excited about this new service when it was announced yesterday that we actually clicked the wrong button and signed up for the wrong plan. Of course, it only takes a minute to get that sinking feeling in your stomach when you know you’ve screwed up. So late yesterday (Sunday night!) I opened a support ticket and asked to either cancel the wrong plan so that I could reenlist or to transfer to the $60 two-year plan. At 1:30 a.m. this morning, I got an email back from customer service indicating that the plan had been adjusted and that I had been billed for the price difference. WOW!

Run, don’t walk, to sign up for Obivoice. It’s that great!

p.s. The Obivoice jingle in their YouTube video is as good as their calls. We want it for our Music on Hold!

Originally published: Monday, January 13, 2014


Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.

whos.amung.us If you’re wondering what your fellow man is reading on Nerd Vittles these days, wonder no more. Visit our whos.amung.us statistical web site and check out what’s happening. It’s a terrific resource both for all of us.

 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

netTALK to the Rescue: Dumping Google Voice for Less Than 10¢ a Day

Tuesday, January 7, 2014 / 7 Comments on netTALK to the Rescue: Dumping Google Voice for Less Than 10¢ a Day

The Google Voice Adventure with Asterisk® has been disappointing to put it charitably. Google never really saw the benefit of providing free phone service to millions of Americans because they never could quite figure out how to monetize the project. In the meantime, shady call centers were eating them alive with dozens if not hundreds of Google Voice trunks that were placing endless calls around the clock. The final straw was Microsoft deciding to keep Skype proprietary while adding free Google Voice connectivity to its communications products. This meant Microsoft customers had the best of all worlds while Google’s platform had no way to access Skype except through Microsoft’s proprietary client. Google decided to pull the plug on XMPP beginning May 15 of this year and more or less blamed it on abuse by the open source community for using Google’s own open source development toolkit for Google Voice.

We’ve never been one to sit around crying about spilt milk when there are plenty of other excellent choices available to the VoIP community. Today we begin our exploration of alternatives with a look at all-you-can-eat VoIP. There still are a few pure VoIP service plans available, but every one that we’ve tried leaves a bait-and-switch aftertaste. The first year may be reasonable, but once they’ve got you hooked, look out. Quite literally, they have your number. For this reason, we’ve chosen a hardware hybrid approach that still relies upon VoIP for the actual calls. Below the stratospheric pricing of the Bell Sisters, Comcast, and Vonage, there still are several wallet-friendly, all-you-can-eat VoIP products to choose from including netTALK, Ooma, and magicJack.

We know. Nothing beats free even with a little pain. But we think you’ll love today’s alternative especially given its expanded feature set and modest long-term cost. Up front hardware cost including service for the first year is about $100. Amortizing the hardware and service costs over three years reduces your investment for unlimited U.S./Canada/E911 phone service to roughly $1 a week. After recovery of your $100 hardware investment, the cost is $29.95 a year which works out to less than 10¢ a day… forever. This compares quite favorably to today’s best all-you-can-eat VoIP deal. AxVoice charges $99 for equivalent first year service and then the price escalates to over $150 for subsequent years. It doesn’t take a math major to figure out that’s 5 times the netTALK pricing beginning in Year 2.

That brings us back to Google. If you had several million happy customers already using your VoIP service and you saw a small company that was still in business charging $30 a year for a VoIP feature set that was better than yours, wouldn’t you think you might try to cash in on $100 million a year in new revenue rather than flushing the project down the toilet while shafting the open source developers that got you the customers in the first place??

Earth to Google: Few on the planet are ever going to use a web browser with Hangouts to make traditional phone calls regardless of how many places you plaster the Hangouts logo. Before you hire another Marketing Genius, read a good book or two. The well-deserved 2013 Lame Foot of the Year Award goes to Google. </rant>

Overview. Today we’ll be pairing an old friend, the OBi110, with the unlimited calling options provided by netTALK. When we’re finished, you’ll have a drop-in replacement for Google Voice on your Asterisk server that provides unlimited calling within the U.S. and Canada, plus free calling to other netTALK and OBi users around the world, plus free 911 emergency service for you and your family, plus voicemail delivery by email, and fax support. And you can keep your existing phone number! All of the existing PBX in a Flash and Incredible PBX features still work exactly as they do today without worrying about Google pulling the rug out from under you… again. With the OBiON app for iOS or Android, you can make free calls from your cellphone using today’s netTALK-OBi110 setup. And, if calls from a cellphone aren’t your thing, when you go on vacation to anywhere with an Internet connection, you can slip the netTALK device into your suitcase and plug it in to the Internet at your destination without ever losing the ability to make and receive free calls. We’ll cover all these magic tricks and more today so hang on to your hat. Let’s get started.

Legal Disclaimer. This is not legal advice. Consult your own attorney for that. We have reviewed netTALK’s Terms of Service and find nothing that would preclude your using the services as described in this article so long as the device is used in the United States, usage is under 3,000 minutes per month, and usage is limited to "normal residential or home office usage patterns" without "auto-dialing, continuous or extensive call forwarding, telemarketing, fax broadcasting or fax blasting." Terms of service can and do change from time to time. Review them regularly.

BY IMPLEMENTING THE TIPS IN THIS TUTORIAL, YOU AGREE TO ASSUME ALL RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH THE METHODOLOGY INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE LEGAL AND FINANCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR ACTIONS. IF YOU ARE UNWILLING TO DO SO, STOP READING HERE!

Hardware Requirements. Here’s what you’ll need. First, purchase a netTALK device. You have several choices. The netTALK DUO is still available for under $50 and includes a full year of unlimited calling in the U.S. and Canada. The netTALK DUO II is the newer model (with the same feature set). It sells for about $30 but only includes three months of free calling. The netTALK DUO WiFi is about $60 and adds WiFi support. Additional years of free calling in the U.S. and Canada are $29.95 with a guarantee of no price escalation as long as you continue the service without interruption. You can add free calling to 60+ countries for an additional $10 a month. Unlimited SMS messaging in the U.S. and Canada is an additional $2.50 a month. AT&T charges $20 a month for unlimited SMS messaging, and it only works on a single cell phone.

In addition to your Asterisk server, the other piece for today’s puzzle is OBiHai’s OBi110, a terrific analog telephone adapter that we’ll use to connect the netTALK adapter to your Asterisk server. If you want to connect a Google Voice account for a few more months, it can do that as well. It also supports a connection to another SIP provider of your choice for redundancy. For today, our focus is getting a Google Voice replacement service in place for your Asterisk server. You can scour the Internet to add the other pieces. The OBi110 is available through Amazon for under $50.1

Installing and Configuring the netTALK Duo

Before your netTALK Duo will work, it has to be registered on the netTALK web site. Locate your temporary username and password for the NetTalk DUO inside the box. Log into the web site and click Start Activation. Plug in your credentials and click LOGIN. Fill out the registration information and create a username and password for your new account. Then press CONTINUE. Complete the E911 information and click SAVE. Select a phone number and ASSIGN it to your account. Now plug a plain-old phone into your netTalk Duo, connect the device to your LAN, and then connect the power adapter. Some routers are problematic. Be sure SIP ALG is disabled on your router. It took about 5 minutes for ours to change from alternating green and red lights to a solid green light and the one-ring call indicating that the device is operating properly. Once you get the solid green light, make a call to the device and from the device. Nothing else works if the netTALK can’t make calls! Once it’s working, you can unplug the phone and use it to configure the OBi110 in the next section.

Installing and Configuring the OBi110

There are a number of steps to the OBi110 setup, but it isn’t difficult. If you can handle slice-and-bake cookies, you can do this. Just follow the recipe and don’t skip any steps. We’ll be configuring the OBi110 in two phases using the OBiTalk web site first and then using the OBi110’s built-in web server. Plug the OBi110 into your LAN and then attach the power adapter. Plug a POTS phone into the PHONE port of your OBi110. Once the OBi110 has booted, pick up the phone and make sure you have a dial tone. Then hang up.

IMPORTANT: Make sure that you restore the OBi to its factory default settings if you have previously used the device! ALWAYS keep your OBi110 behind a hardware-based firewall with NO Internet port exposure!

Now head over to the OBi web portal and set up an account if you don’t already have one. From the OBi Dashboard, click ADD DEVICE. Uncheck the box to set up a Google Voice account. You can do that later if desired. Now pick up the phone connected to the OBi110 and dial **5 plus the 4-digit number shown in your browser. This will identify your device to OBiTalk. Your OBi110 will appear in a dialog box for confirmation. Click CONFIRM promptly, or start over.

In the Device Configuration window that appears, add a Device Display Name, Webpage Admin PW, OBi Attendant PIN, and your TimeZone. SAVE your settings. The OBi110 should now appear in the OBi Dashboard with its assigned OBi number and speed dial number together with a Green status icon signifying it’s working.

Now is a good time to download the OBiON app to your iOS device or Android phone. Launch the app and login with your OBiTalk account information. In the OBi Dashboard, you will note that your softphone now has appeared and was assigned a 9-digit OBiTALK number. Write it down. You’ll need it in a minute to complete the OBi110 setup. Click on the Edit icon for the softphone and assign your OBi110 as the OBi Voice Gateway. SAVE your settings.

For the remainder of the OBi110 setup, we’ll be using the web interface built into the OBi110. If you don’t know the IP address of your OBi110, pick up the phone connected to your OBi and dial ***1.

1. Use your browser to log into the OBi110’s web interface. Log in with admin:admin as the username:password.

2. Once you’re logged into your OBi110’s web interface, the Setup Wizard will display. Expand the first five headings in the left column by clicking on the + icons for Status, System Management, Service Providers, Voice Services, and Physical Interfaces. Then expand ITSP Profile B under Service Providers.

3. Download the latest firmware from here to your desktop. Currently it’s 1.3.0 (Build: 2824). Install it on your device: Device Update -> Firmware Update. Your OBi110 will restart after loading the new firmware.

4. Disable ALL AutoProvisioning: Auto Provisioning -> Firmware Updates, ITSP Provisioning, OBiTalk Provisioning. Then Submit and Reboot.

This keeps external forces from stepping on your setup once it’s working. If something breaks down the road, you can manually provision your device once you know what’s broken.

5. While not absolutely necessary, we recommend you set a static IP address for your OBi110: Network Settings -> Internet Settings. Submit and Reboot. Using your browser, log back into the new IP address.

Another alternative is to permanently lock the DHCP-assigned IP address to the OBi110 using the web interface of your router.

6. Open the SIP profile under ITSP Profile B. Here you’ll need to insert the IP address of your Asterisk server in BOTH the ProxyServer and X_AccessList fields. Also add a check mark for X_SpoofCallerID. Before you can add these entries, you’ll need to uncheck the Default checkbox beside each entry. This applies to all further steps as well. After making the three entries, click Submit and Reboot.

7. Open the SP2 Service window. For X_ServProvProfile and X_CodecProfile, change the settings to B. Change X_InboundCallRoute to LI. Add a check mark for X_KeepAliveEnable. Change X_KeepAliveServerPort and X_UserAgentPort to 5061.

In the SIP Credentials section, change AuthUserName to obitrunk. Make up a secure password and insert it in the AuthPassword field. Remember the password! We’ll need it to configure your Asterisk trunk in a minute. For the URI entry, use the following with the actual IP address of your Asterisk server: obitrunk@192.168.0.82. Double-check all nine entries carefully and then click Submit and Reboot.

8. In the OBiTalk Service Settings window, change the InboundCallRoute to an entry that looks like this: {pp(ob290999999),li}. We recommend you cut-and-paste our example and then replace 290999999 with the 9-digit OBiTalk number that was assigned to your softphone above. A punctuation error here will block your softphone from ever working. Click Submit and Reboot.

9. Finally, we need to configure the LINE Port. For the InboundCallRoute, insert the following using the 10-digit phone number assigned to your netTALK Duo: SP2(6781234567). For the SilenceTimeThreshold, set the number of seconds you want the OBi110 to wait before disconnecting a call where nobody at the other end of the call says anything. We recommend 600 which is 10 minutes. Click Submit and Reboot.

10. Now it’s time to connect your netTALK Duo to your OBi110. Unplug any phone connected to the netTALK Duo. Using a telephone cable, connect the PHONE port of the netTALK Duo to the LINE port of the OBi110. Never plug the netTALK Duo into the PHONE port of the OBi110, or your OBi is (burnt) toast!!!

11. Test your configuration. Pick up the phone that’s still connected to the OBi110 and dial either a 10-digit or 11-digit number of someone you love: 8005551212 or 18005551212. Do the same thing using the OBiON app on your cellphone or tablet. Be patient! OBiON connections are not instantaneous. Your connections have to be authenticated through OBiHai’s servers before they go through.

Interconnecting Asterisk with the OBi110

There basically are three pieces you need to add to Asterisk so that it can communicate with your netTALK Duo and OBi110. You need a Trunk to which the OBi110 will register. You need an Inbound Route to tell Asterisk how to handle incoming calls from the netTALK Duo phone number. And you need an Outbound Route to tell Asterisk which outgoing calls should be routed out through the netTALK Duo. We’re assuming you will be using the netTALK Duo as your primary trunk for outbound AND emergency calls. We’re also assuming you will not be making international calls. Finally, we’re assuming you are using FreePBX 2.11 with either PBX in a Flash or with one of the Incredible PBX builds on the CentOS 6.5, Raspbian, or Ubuntu platforms. Other FreePBX 2.11 setups should work in much the same way. If any of these assumptions don’t apply, you’ll obviously need to make the necessary adjustments for your environment.

Trunk Configuration. To set up the obitrunk under FreePBX 2.11, log into FreePBX and choose Connectivity -> Trunks -> Add SIP Trunk. For the Trunk Name, use obitrunk. For Outbound Caller ID, enter the 10-digit phone number assigned to your netTALK Duo. For Maximum Channels, use 1. For Dialed Number Manipulation Rules, add the following Match Patterns: 1NXXNXXXXXX, NXXNXXXXXX, and 911.

In Outgoing Settings, use obitrunk for Trunk Name and enter the following PEER Details:
type=peer
host=dynamic
port=5061
disallow=all
allow=ulaw
dtmfmode=rfc2833

In Incoming Settings, enter your actual 10-digit netTalk phone number in the User Context field: 6781234567. Enter the following USER Details replacing mypassword with the password you set up in OBi110 step #7 SIP credentials above and adjusting the permit entry to match your LAN subnet:
type=friend
secret=mypassword
host=dynamic
context=from-trunk
canreinvite=no
nat=yes
port=5061
qualify=yes
dtmfmode=rfc2833
disallow=all
allow=ulaw
deny=0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0
permit=192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0

Click Submit Changes and Apply Config to save your entries.

Inbound Route Configuration. If you already have a default inbound route on your Asterisk server, then you can skip this step unless you want incoming calls from the netTALK DID routed in a special way. To create an inbound route for the netTALK phone number, choose Connectivity -> Inbound Routes -> Add Incoming Route. For the Description, enter netTALK-OBi110. For the DID Number, enter your 10-digit netTALK phone number. For CID Lookup Source, choose CallerID Superfecta if you’re using this module. For Set Destination, choose how you want FreePBX to route the incoming calls, i.e. an extension, ring group, IVR, etc.

Click Submit and Apply Config to save your entries.

Outbound Route Configuration. If you want all 10-digit, 11-digit, and 911 calls placed from your Asterisk server to be routed out through the netTALK Duo, then you’d Add a Route under Connectivity -> Outbound Routes that looks something like the following. Don’t forget to move this Outbound Route (in the right column) to the TOP of your list of Outbound Routes to make certain it is processed first by FreePBX.

For Route Name, use obiout. For Dial Patterns, use the same ones you used in your Trunk setup above: 1NXXNXXXXXX, NXXNXXXXXX, and 911. For Trunk Sequence, select obitrunk.

Click Submit Changes and Apply Config to save your entries.

While still in Outbound Routes, drag obiout to the top of the outbound routes list in the right column. Then click Apply Config again to save your trunk processing sequence.

Verifying Connectivity. Let’s be sure everything works. First, log back into the IP address of your OBi110 and verify that System Status -> SP2 Service Status shows the OBi110 is registered to your Asterisk server. Next place a 10-digit call using an extension on your Asterisk server and monitor the Asterisk CLI to make certain that the call went out using the netTALK Duo trunk and was completely successfully. Finally, use your cellphone to call the number assigned to your netTALK Duo. The call should ring on the devices you configured in the Inbound Route above. Enjoy your new freedom from Google Voice!

Special Thanks. We want to express our appreciation to ObiHai for an excellent Administrator’s Guide and to the numerous individuals who have wrestled with the OBi110 setup over the years. This includes Adrian Li, Ad_Hominem and MichiganTelephone on the OBiTalk Forum as well as the reference articles which now are available here.

Originally published: Tuesday, January 7, 2014


Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.

whos.amung.us If you’re wondering what your fellow man is reading on Nerd Vittles these days, wonder no more. Visit our whos.amung.us statistical web site and check out what’s happening. It’s a terrific resource both for all of us.

 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

  1. Many of our purchase links refer users to Amazon when we find their prices are competitive for the recommended products. Nerd Vittles receives a small referral fee from Amazon to help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate Amazon commissions. However, when pricing is comparable or availability is favorable, we support Amazon because Amazon supports us. [↩]

IVR 101: Six Quick Steps to Building Incredible IVRs for Asterisk with FreePBX

Monday, December 30, 2013 / 1 Comment on IVR 101: Six Quick Steps to Building Incredible IVRs for Asterisk with FreePBX

As more and more Asterisk® platforms enter the open source community, it seems as if we spend a lot of energy covering the basics of getting those new systems into place, and there’s little time left for tutorials that really make the difference in a great telephony system and one that just makes calls. So our New Year’s Resolution is to try to devote a column every month to smelling the roses and pushing out some information that actually helps newbies in the VoIP community learn something while getting them up to speed on creating important pieces of a PBX themselves.

For today, IVR 101 tackles Interactive Voice Response systems (IVRs) and AutoAttendants. These are the tools that let callers interact with a PBX without assistance from a receptionist. What’s the difference in an IVR and AutoAttendant? Both offer unattended call processing, but an IVR is more sophisticated typically offering much more than a menu tree of connection options to the caller. For example, some of the options in today’s demo IVR let the caller interact directly with the computer to retrieve customized responses. Call by Name lets the caller speak the name of a person or company to dial, Weather by City lets the caller choose the City and State, Province, or Country of a weather forecast to retrieve, and Wolfram Alpha lets the caller ask about almost anything you’d find in your favorite almanac. Twenty years ago, companies were spending $100,000+ to get this functionality from the Bell Sisters and companies like Nortel. Today you can do it with a Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone Black running Incredible PBX for less than $50. Much has been written about IVR Hell and how to build effective IVRs that don’t drive callers crazy. We’ll leave that one for you to explore on your own. But we can’t stress enough how important this really is. It can make or break a company! If you’re unwilling to invest the time in the IVR design, there are companies such as CallFire that will do it for you. For do-it-yourselfers, you’ll want to start with Allison’s 15 Commandments (for ease of reference, we have linked to the individual articles on Digium’s site below) and then do a little Googling on your own. There’s a wealth of information on the topic.

Allison’s 15 Commandments of IVR
 
1. Don’t Overestimate Your Listener’s Attention Span
2. Thou Shalt Not Create Fake Mailboxes
3. Keep Things Simple
4. Always Give Callers an Opt-”In”
5. Front-Load Important Information
6. Understand What Constitutes a “Prompt”
7. Understand The Effects of Proper Punctuation in Concatenation
8. Thou Shalt Not Give Directions To Your Office/Facility
9. Give a Pronunciation Guide for Proper Names and Place Names
10. Name Your Company Something That Needs No Special Instruction
11 Don’t Go Overboard with Niceties
12. Read The Copy Out Loud
13. Be Clear on Your Company’s Vision/Image — And Be Able To Explain That To Me
14. Don’t Front-Load Too Much Information in The Opening Greeting
15. Write in a Conversational Tone

Step #1: Documenting What You Want Your IVR to Do

Our task today is to cover the mechanics of building an effective IVR. That, of course, starts with a pencil and paper. Before you can build anything, you need a blueprint for what you’re trying to accomplish and how we go about getting there. What choices do you want to give callers that dial into your PBX? Do you want all of these options announced to every caller, or should some of them be left hidden (perhaps behind passwords) that let certain users interact with your PBX in ways that casual callers won’t know about. Keep in mind that the bad guys have telephones, too. So, even though an IVR option may not be mentioned, that doesn’t mean that the curious caller won’t push buttons you didn’t describe as available. Unless you have deep pockets, for example, you probably wouldn’t want to make a DISA call-out option available, whether hidden or otherwise, without protecting it with a very secure password. Similarly, an IVR option that lets anybody schedule a reminder to any phone number of their choice is not too smart.

Rule #1: The very first question you need to ask yourself with every IVR option is "Can this function end up costing me money?" If the answer is "yes" then you need a very secure password before any caller can access that feature.

For today, we’re going to build a call tree that shows off some of the features included in Incredible PBX. When a caller dials into a certain number on your PBX, we’ll play a message that describes the available options. Then we’ll let the caller play with the Incredible PBX feature set. You probably would want to set this system up on a phone number that supports unlimited inbound calls at no additional cost. In short, ask yourself: "Do thousands of 30-minute calls to my demo IVR end up costing me money?" If the answer is "yes" then don’t build a non-essential IVR without first securing a DID that doesn’t cost you by the minute. There are lots of choices including Google Voice which happens to still be free and available until May 15, 2014. There’s also IPkall that still gives out free DIDs in the Seattle area to anyone with a SIP URI. If you haven’t already guessed, we’re trying to get you in the mindset of always assuming the worst case from every potential caller. After all, it’s your phone bill.

We started with our pencil and paper and sketched out what we wanted to include in our Demo IVR. And, by the way, you would never want to position "speak to a real person" as the last option in a real IVR unless you just love pissing off your customers. Today’s IVR wasn’t designed to let you speak to a real person… other than Lenny. 😉

Test Drive: Demo IVR with Incredible PBX on the $45 BeagleBone Black RasPBX

Step #2: Recording the Voice Prompt for the Demo IVR

When people call your phone number, they expect someone to answer the call. In the case of an IVR or AutoAttendant, you’ll need a voice prompt to tell callers what options are available. The options need to be concise keeping in mind that the average attention span of callers is about 30 seconds. You don’t want callers hanging up before they’ve even reached the end of your schpeel. You also don’t want callers to have to listen to a dozen options when the option they wanted was #1. We’re going to be using FreePBX® to create the IVR so it will automatically permit callers to interrupt the talking head by pressing a button. If you’re doing this with Asterisk dialplan code, make sure you use the Background function to play your voice prompt rather than Playback which forces callers to listen to the entire recording before making a choice.

In recording voice prompts, you have a number of options. The most professional is to hire Allison to record the prompts for you. Then it matches all of the other prompts on your Asterisk system. You can do this through Digium’s web site, and the cost is quite reasonable. For bigger projects, contact Allison directly through her web site. Another alternative is to record the prompt yourself. This can be done with professional recording equipment or using an ordinary phone with FreePBX: Admin -> System Recordings -> Extension Number. Who knows? You may want to break into the voice-over business yourself.

The other alternatives involve use of a text-to-speech engine to create the voice prompts. A synthesized "Allison voice" is available from Cepstral®; however, due to a change in licensing, you now will need three different licenses in order to record voice prompts. If you want on-the-fly prompts using Cepstral, you also will need additional licenses for each simultaneous caller. Other than in the corporate environment, we can no longer recommend Cepstral. And, even for business use, Allison’s custom recordings are far superior to the TTS renditions in our opinion.

Two free text-to-speech alternatives are available on Incredible PBX platforms. Flite sounds much like Herman Munster. You can understand him. That’s about it. GoogleTTS is a female voice that actually does a good job. For demo projects, we typically use GoogleTTS although you won’t have to today. GoogleTTS voice prompts can be created from the command line by logging in as root. The following command would build an ivr.wav voice prompt for this demo IVR that is suitable for use on all Asterisk-based systems:

googletts-cli.pl -t "Hi: Thank you for calling. To call by name, press 1: To join the conference, press 2: For Wool From Alpha: press three: To speak to Lenny: press four: For today's news headlines, press 5: For today's weather forecast, press 6. For today in history, press 7. Or press 8 for the house phones and speak to a real person." -r 8000 -o ivr.wav

As a Christmas present to all of us, Allison has actually recorded the voice prompt for this demo IVR, and you are more than welcome to download it and use it in building a Demo IVR for your own computer. It provides a great example of the quality of Allison’s recordings. Night and day pretty much sums up the difference between Allison’s recording and the GoogleTTS version, but you can judge that for yourself. Here’s the download link for the ivr-Allison.wav prompt. And here’s the download link for the GoogleTTS ivr.wav prompt. Just import the files into FreePBX as outlined below.

Step #3: Importing the Voice Prompt into FreePBX

Before we actually create our IVR application in FreePBX, we first need to get our two voice prompts from Allison and GoogleTTS imported so that they can be used as part of the FreePBX system. There are two ways to do this. The first is to import a file from your desktop PC using the FreePBX GUI. We’ll use this to grab the Allison prompt you downloaded to your desktop above. Choose Admin -> System Recordings. Then Choose File -> ivr-Allison.wav -> Upload. Now Name the file: ivr-Allison and click Save.

The second option is to create a dummy IVR voice prompt in FreePBX and then replace the dummy ivr.wav file with your actual recording. Let’s create a dummy recording just to show you the procedure to use for GoogleTTS prompts. Choose Admin -> System Recordings. Enter an extension number that is connected to your PBX: 701 then click Go button. Using extension 701, dial *77 and record a few words of gibberish. Press # and hang up. Give the recording the same name as the file we wish to upload (without the extension): ivr. Click the Save button. Finally, from the directory on your Incredible PBX server where you recorded your GoogleTTS ivr.wav file in Step #2 above, move the ivr.wav file to its permanent location: mv ivr.wav /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/custom

Step #4: Creating the IVR in FreePBX

To create the IVR in FreePBX on the Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone Black platform, choose Applications -> IVR -> Add IVR and then fill in the blanks to match this template clicking the + button to add the necessary number of IVR options, SUBMIT your entries, and APPLY CONFIG to reload FreePBX. You will note that, for each of the applications, we already have created a Misc Destination within FreePBX so that it can be used as part of a FreePBX-generated IVR. If you’ve created your own dialplan or AGI applications, you would need to complete this step before creating your IVR. To use Allison’s prompt instead of the GoogleTTS prompt, simply change the top Announcement entry below from ivr to ivr-Allison. Then, Allison’s prompt will play when a call is first answered, and the GoogleTTS version will play for invalid, timeout, and repeat announcements. That makes it easy for you to compare the two alternatives.

Step #5: Linking the IVR to an Incoming DID in FreePBX

Finally, you’ll need a DID that folks can call to reach your IVR. We’ll assume you’ve already set that up on your PBX so all we need to do in FreePBX is create an Inbound Route to pass incoming calls to that phone number. Choose Connectivity -> Inbound Routes -> Add Incoming Route and fill in the blanks using the template below and the actual number of your DID. Click Submit and Apply Config to complete the process.

Step #6: Taking the Demo IVR for a Test Drive

This is a really important final step. ALWAYS try out every option on your IVR immediately after creating it. Be sure you call the IVR twelve times and press every button on your phone to make certain the results match what you expected to create. If not, edit the IVR in FreePBX and then try your calls again. As obvious as this sounds, you probably already know that many "professionally-built" IVR creations seem to have forgotten this step. We couldn’t begin to tell you the number of IVRs we have encountered with dead links, looping menus, and on and on. Do your callers a favor. Test your stuff before you put it in production.

Test Drive: Demo IVR with Incredible PBX on the $45 BeagleBone Black RasPBX

Another Banner Year at Nerd Vittles. As 2013 comes to a close, we want to thank our 500,000+ unique and very special visitors this year from 218 countries around the globe! With an average 5 million page views every month, it’s heartening to see the VoIP story spreading like wildfire. Are you listening VoIP merchants? We wish all of you a very Happy and Prosperous New Year and hope you will join us again in 2014 as the VoIP revolution marches on.

Originally published: Monday, December 30, 2013


Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.

whos.amung.us If you’re wondering what your fellow man is reading on Nerd Vittles these days, wonder no more. Visit our whos.amung.us statistical web site and check out what’s happening. It’s a terrific resource both for all of us.

 

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

BOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

The lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

VitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

Special Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 

Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…

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