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The Most Versatile VoIP Provider: FREE PORTING
JUST RELEASED: Visit the Incredible PBX WikiMoving from Incredible PBX 2020 to 2021 on the Raspberry Pi
Many have clamored for an upgrade path from Incredible PBX 2020 on the Raspberry Pi to take advantage of the stability that Asterisk® 18 offers. Today we’re pleased to introduce a quick-and-easy upgrade script that moves your platform to Incredible PBX 2021 and handles everything for you. After running the script, you’ll have the latest release of Asterisk 18 and the latest modules for FreePBX® 15 plus all of the other goodies that make Incredible PBX 2021 the VoIP community’s swiss army knife of choice.
If you’re new to the VoIP world, you can begin your adventure by installing Incredible PBX 2020 for the Raspberry Pi. Our tutorial will walk you through the simple setup process. When you’re finished, you’ll have a fully functional PBX featuring Asterisk 16, FreePBX 15, and literally dozens of utilities to make the setup of your PBX a walk in the park.
Whether you’re new to Incredible PBX or an old-timer, the next step is critically important. You need a clean backup of your microSD card that you’ve tested and verified that it actually works. There are many ways to make backup images, but here’s the one that we’ve always found to be failsafe. Purchase the $8 USB-to-microSD adapter pictured above and buy a spare microSD card as large or larger than the one you’re using with Incredible PBX 2020. With your PBX running, insert the new microSD card into the adapter and then plug it into one of the blue USB slots on your Raspberry Pi. While logged into your server as root, identify the backup microSD card, usually sda (
fdisk -l). Using the sd entry you deciphered, format the microSD card: mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1 && mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2. Then issue the following command to clone the primary microSD card: rpi-clone -f sda.
Once the backup finishes, shutdown your PBX with the halt command. Insert the new microSD card and reboot the RasPi to make sure everything got backed up successfully. Put your old microSD card in a safe place just in case something goes wrong during the upgrade.
After logging back into your PBX as root, issue the following commands to kick off the upgrade to Incredible PBX 2021. When the upgrade finishes, reboot your PBX and verify that everything still functions as advertised. Enjoy!
cd /root wget http://incrediblepbx.com/2021-raspi-upgrade.tar.gz tar zxvf 2021-raspi-upgrade.tar.gz rm -f 2021-raspi-upgrade.tar.gz ./upgrade-to-incrediblepbx2021
From time to time, you may wish to upgrade Asterisk 18 to the latest release. Here’s a script that will do it for you:
cd /root wget http://incrediblepbx.com/upgrade-asterisk18-raspi.tar.gz tar zxvf upgrade-asterisk18-raspi.tar.gz rm -f upgrade-asterisk18-raspi.tar.gz ./upgrade-asterisk18
Originally published: Friday, June 18, 2021 Updated: Friday, July 23, 2021
Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info Forum.
Adding the Linux XFCE GUI to Incredible PBX 2021
One of the most requested add-ons for Incredible PBX® is a graphical user interface for Linux. And today we’ll show you the quick and easy way to add XFCE 4 to your Debian 10 platform. What it gets you is simple access to a number of Linux applications and utilities which only run inside a GUI. These include the Firefox browser, LibreOffice with Microsoft Office compatibility, ImageMagick, media players, a FileManager GUI, and Linux utilities such as TimeShift and gparted.
None of these applications will run inside of SSH. So you’ll need an app such as VNC which is included with most cloud platforms by simply clicking on the Console option inside the cloud server’s management portal. To install XFCE on your Incredible PBX 2021 Debian platform, log in as root using SSH or Putty and issue the following commands:
apt-get update apt-get install task-xfce-desktop reboot
Once your server has rebooted, click on the Console icon in your cloud management portal or in VMware ESXi portal and login with your root credentials when prompted:
Double-click on the Home folder icon and the Home menu for the root user will open:
Icons at the bottom of the display allow you to minimize open windows as well as access the terminal emulator, file manager, web browser, application finder, and your root directory.
At the top of the display, you’ll find tabs for all of your open windows including Applications which provides access to all of the installed GUI applications:
CrownCloud & RackNerd Setup for Remote VNC Access
If you’re running Incredible PBX 2021 on CrownCloud or RackNerd or any other provider using the SolusVM Control Panel, here are the steps for remote VNC access. First, login to your Control Panel and click on the VNC Access button. Write down the IP address, port number, and password for remote VNC access. Next, install the appropriate VNC Viewer for your desktop computer from RealVNC. Open the VNC Viewer app on your desktop and enter the IP address followed by a colon and the port number that you wrote down above. When prompted for your password, enter the VNC password assigned by your provider. You then will get a login screen to enter your root username and root password for Incredible PBX 2021. NOTE: The public IP address of your desktop computer must be whitelisted in IPtables using the All-Access option 0 with add-ip or add-fqdn in the /root folder of your server.
Vultr & Digital Ocean Setup for Remote VNC Access
If you’re running Incredible PBX 2021 on Vultr, Digital Ocean, and most other platforms including VMware, here are the additional steps to gain remote VNC access to your server’s public IP address or VMware’s private IP address. Issue the following commands after logging into your server as root:
apt-get -y install xorg lxde-core tightvncserver reboot
Once your server has rebooted, log back in as root. First, set an 8-character VNC access password: tightvncserver :1
Next, edit the xstartup config file: nano ~/.vnc/xstartup
Uncomment the x-window-manager line. Immediately below that line, add the two new entries below and save the file:
x-window-manager & lxterminal & /usr/bin/lxsession -s LXDE &
Finally, stop and restart tightvncserver:
tightvncserver -kill :1 vncserver :1 -geometry 1024x768 -depth 16 -pixelformat rgb565
With VMware ESXi, substitute the following vncserver startup command:
vncserver :1 -geometry 800x600 -depth 16 -pixelformat rgb565
Now install the appropriate VNC Viewer for your desktop computer from RealVNC. Open the VNC Viewer app on your desktop and enter the IP address followed by :1. Enter your root credentials when prompted.
With VMware, you also can access VNC through the VMware ESXi Console by simply entering your root credentials.
NOTE: The public IP address of your desktop computer must be whitelisted in IPtables using the All-Access option 0 with add-ip or add-fqdn in the /root folder of your server.
Originally published: Friday, June 11, 2021
Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info Forum.
Moving from Incredible PBX 2020 (CentOS) to 2021 (Debian)
If you’re still shackled to CentOS 7 with Incredible PBX 2020, the time has come to put the horse and buggy out to pasture. RedHat has become an unreliable partner upon whom your entire PBX depends. When RedHat abruptly reneged on LTS support for CentOS 8, the writing was on the wall. They could do much the same thing with CentOS 7. Rather than waiting for the other shoe to drop, we introduced Incredible PBX 2021 and migrated to Debian 10. Now it’s your turn, and today we’ll guide you to a much more stable platform moving forward.
Step 1. To get started, you’ll want to bring up a new Incredible PBX 2021 server on a platform of your choice. We recommend using one of the virtual machine platforms, all of which are documented on the Incredible PBX Wiki. The Vultr platform is especially well suited for Incredible PBX 2021 because a snapshot image is available which lets you bring up a functioning server in a couple of minutes.
Make note of your server’s public IP address (23.45.67.89 in example).
Step 2. The next step is to bring the FreePBX modules on your existing Incredible PBX 2020 up to the latest releases. After logging into your Incredible PBX 2020 server as root, issue the following commands:
fwconsole restart rm -f /tmp/* fwconsole ma upgradeall fwconsole reload /root/sig-fix systemctl restart apache2 /root/sig-fix
Verify that everything is functioning properly by logging into the FreePBX GUI as admin using your favorite web browser.
Make note of your Incredible PBX 2020 server’s public IP address (12.34.56.78 in example).
Whitelist 2021 server on 2020 server: /root/add-ip 2021pbx 23.45.67.89 then option 0
Step 3. Next, we need a good FreePBX backup of your Incredible PBX 2020 setup. While still logged into your Incredible PBX 2020 server as root, issue the following commands:
fwconsole stop mysqldump -u root -ppassw0rd asterisk > /root/asteriskDB.sql mysqldump -u root -ppassw0rd asteriskcdrdb > /root/asteriskCDR.sql tar -zcf /root/snapshot.tar.gz /var/www/html/admin/modules \ /var/spool/asterisk /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin \ /etc/asterisk/*custom.conf /var/lib/asterisk/astdb.sqlite3 \ /root/asteriskDB.sql /root/asteriskCDR.sql
Step 4. Log into your 2021 server as root and issue the following commands substituting your Incredible PBX 2020’s actual IP address for 12.34.56.78 below:
cd / scp root@12.34.56.78:/root/snapshot.tar.gz . fwconsole stop tar zxvf snapshot.tar.gz rm snapshot.tar.gz cd /root mysql -u root -ppassw0rd asterisk < asteriskDB.sql mysql -u root -ppassw0rd asteriskcdrdb < asteriskCDR.sql mysql -u root -ppassw0rd asterisk -e "UPDATE freepbx_settings \ SET value = 'Incredible PBX 2021' WHERE \ freepbx_settings.keyword = 'DASHBOARD_FREEPBX_BRAND';" chown -R asterisk:asterisk /var/lib/asterisk chmod -R 755 /var/lib/asterisk fwconsole start fwconsole reload fwconsole ma delete clearlytrunking fwconsole ma delete sms fwconsole ma delete webrtc fwconsole ma delete ucp fwconsole ma downloadinstall ucp fwconsole ma downloadinstall webrtc fwconsole ma downloadinstall sms fwconsole ma downloadinstall clearlytrunking fwconsole reload
That completes the migration to Debian 10 and Incredible PBX 2021. Keep in mind that you may need to tweak the directories in the tarball step above if you've made custom changes in your Incredible PBX 2020 setup. If you're also migrating Incredible Fax from your 2020 platform, see the Incredible PBX Wiki for step-by-step instructions. Enjoy!
Originally published: Tuesday, June 2, 2021
Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info Forum.
Introducing Vultr Marketplace Featuring Incredible PBX 2021
One of our oldest open source supporters, Vultr, introduced their new Vultr Marketplace today featuring one-click installs for dozens of turnkey apps including Incredible PBX 2021. Vultr boasts a whopping 1.3 million users running applications in 17 different locations around the globe. And, today, it’s easier than ever. With the new Incredible PBX 2021 image, a user can choose a location and server size and simply click on the Incredible PBX 2021 application in the Vultr Marketplace instead of wrestling with Linux and a cumbersome install procedure. Within a matter of minutes, your PBX is ready to start making calls. If you use our referral code to sign up, our open source projects get $25 from Vultr, and you receive a $100 credit to kick the tires for up to a month. So… you have nothing to lose!
Here’s a snapshot of the applications that await you in the new Vultr Marketplace:
If you’ve never used Vultr, you owe it to yourself to take their cloud platform for a spin. The performance is legendary, and a $5 a month Cloud Compute platform can easily manage the calls for dozens of users. Add automatic backups for an additional 20% a month, and your platform is virtually indestructible. And you’ll never have to babysit on-premise hardware as well as Internet and power issues again. Read the Incredible PBX 2021 tutorial to get started.
Originally published: Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info Forum.
Virtual Paradise: It’s Incredible PBX 2021 for VMware
Today we’re rounding out our Virtual Machine Trifecta with the introduction of Incredible PBX 2021 for VMware. If you haven’t already figured it out, virtual Machines are the future of server administration. Whether you prefer your own dedicated hardware or cloud-based resources managed by you or someone else, virtual platforms are the way to go. You get more bang for the buck out of your hardware by pooling resources for multiple tasks. VMware®, Proxmox®, and VirtualBox® make it easy. This latest VMware image provides the latest Asterisk® 18 and FreePBX® 15 components and now includes Incredible Fax featuring HylaFax and AvantFax. All are built from source, and the install only takes a few minutes.
Just download the VMware tarball image from SourceForge to your desktop. Fire up your browser and login to your VMware Web Console. With a few mouse clicks, you’ll have a Debian 10.9 platform in place with Incredible PBX® and Incredible Fax just a single keystroke away. It doesn’t get much easier. And, you get the very latest release of Asterisk 18 compiled from source code that you can actually examine, enhance, and share… just like the GPL license says.
Choosing a Virtual Machine Platform
Making the right deployment choice for your virtual machine platform depends upon a number of factors. We’ve already sung the praises of VirtualBox so we won’t repeat it here. Similarly, Proxmox has a loyal following, and we’ve got you covered there as well. VMware also is rock-solid and has been for decades. VMware typically runs on dedicated hardware. If you don’t have the funds for a hardware purchase to support your virtualization requirements, then VirtualBox on your desktop machine is a no-brainer. For many, however, some separation of the virtualization environment from your desktop computing environment is desirable. That choice is equally easy. VMware wins, hands down. Better yet, you can make snapshot backups of your virtual machines in seconds with a single button click. If you’ve wrestled with backups on standalone hardware with Linux, you’ll quickly appreciate the difference.
Getting Started with VMware ESXi
Many of you have VMware platforms already in place at work. For you, installing Incredible PBX 2021 is as simple as downloading the image to your desktop and importing it into your existing platform. Better yet, your system administrator can do it for you. If you’re new to VMware, here’s an easy way to get started, and the software won’t cost you a dime. VMware offers a couple of free products that will give you everything you need to run a robust VMware platform on relatively inexpensive hardware. The choice is up to you. See our previous tutorial for step-by-step instructions to install VMware ESXi and the vSphere Web Client.
Deploying the Incredible PBX Template
Deploying the Incredible PBX 2021 template only takes a few minutes, but first you need to download the Incredible PBX 2021 tarball from SourceForge onto your Desktop PC. Then untar the tar.gz file which will create the IncrediblePBX folder with the VMware image components.
Once the Incredible PBX template components are on your desktop, here are the install steps:
1. Using a browser, login to the VMware Web Console using the root account you set up when you installed ESXi. Choose File, Deploy OVF/OVA Template.
2. Drag-and-drop the IncrediblePBX folder from your Desktop PC onto the web console.
3. Click Next.
4. Give the new Virtual Machine a name: Incredible PBX 2021.
5. IMPORTANT: Choose Thin Provision option and click Next.
6. Review your entries and click Next to create the new Virtual Machine.
7. It only takes a few minutes to create the new Virtual Machine.
8. The Main Client window will redisplay and your new VM should now be shown in the left panel. (1) Click on it. (2) Then click the Green start icon. (3) Then click the Console Window icon.
9. When the VM’s Console Window opens, click in the window in the black area. Log into your virtual machine as root using the default password: password.
10. To complete the Incredible PBX 2020 setup, you will automatically be walked through the short installation procedure when you start the virtual machine. Following the automatic reboot, just log in a second time as root and the install will complete. We recommend using SSH for your second login so that your desktop PC gets whitelisted in the Incredible PBX firewall.
11. Set up the proper time zone for your server: /root/timezone-setup.
12. Choose an email delivery address for your faxes: ./avantfax-email-change.
That should be enough tutorial for today. Enjoy your new VMware platform.
Continue Reading: Configuring Extensions, Trunks & Routes
Don’t Miss: Incredible PBX Application User’s Guide covering the 31 Whole Enchilada apps
Originally published: Monday, May 17, 2021
Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info 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.
Meet Proxmox: A Virtual Machine Platform for Asterisk
UPDATE: Read our latest Proxmox tutorial: It’s Incredible PBX for Proxmox 7.
More than a decade ago, we introduced the Proxmox virtual machine platform for Asterisk®. Five years later we took another look. Along the way, there have been a few hiccups. But, by and large, Proxmox has had a loyal following for many years. Today we’re pleased to provide an updated tutorial to deploy Proxmox 6.3 with Incredible PBX®. Yes, we know Proxmox 6.4 was released yesterday, but we haven’t had a chance to test it. And, we had a terrific hardware special that’s only available for a short while. We will update this tutorial once we’ve had a chance to run Proxmox 6.4 through its paces.
Why go the virtual machine route? First, you can build Incredible PBX VMs in about one minute. Second, you can make backups and snapshots of your system with the click of a few buttons in the Proxmox GUI. Third, the performance is almost identical to running Incredible PBX on standalone hardware. What’s not to like?
One of our pet peeves with Proxmox has always been the nag screens trying to get you to pay for support. Fortunately, John McLaren solved that with this tutorial. Aside from that, there’s not much not to like about Proxmox. So let’s get started.
This tutorial assumes you have a working Proxmox server. If you don’t and you’re a home or SOHO user, here’s a steal from Amazon that’s only available at the $475.15 price while the remaining inventory is available. It includes a quad-core Intel Core i5 processor with 16GB of RAM, a 512GB NVME SSD drive plus wired and wireless networking. We’ve tried it. It’s great. Installing the Proxmox server from a USB flash drive takes about 5 minutes. This Proxmox tutorial will walk you through building the Proxmox installer with a USB flash drive. Once you have it, plug in a network cable, plug in the flash drive, and turn on the machine while holding down the F7 key. When the drive list appears, choose the USB drive and the Proxmox installer will load. Set up your credentials and fully-qualified domain name and email address, and the rest is just watching the installer work its magic. If you’re tempted to go the Intel NUC route, be advised that Intel and Microsoft have made some BIOS changes which may or may not lead you into harm’s way. Our earlier tutorial has some tips if you run into a snag.
Configuring Proxmox for Incredible PBX VMs
There are three ways you can "talk" to your Proxmox server once it’s up and running: SSH, SFTP, and the Proxmox web GUI. We’ll be using all three. Make note of the IP address assigned to your server during the install procedure.
1. Log into your Proxmox server as root using SSH. Issue the commands in John McLaren’s tutorial to disable the nag screens and restart Proxmox.
2. Download the Debian 10.9 ISO and our Incredible PBX installer (vzdump*.vma.gz) for Proxmox from SourceForge to your desktop.
3. Log into SCP as root using your Proxmox credentials. Using SCP, copy the vzdump*.vma.gz installer to /var/lib/vz/dump on your Proxmox server
4. Using a web browser navigate to https://192.168.0.208:8006/ where 192.168.0.208 is the IP address assigned to your Proxmox server. Login as root using the same root credentials you used with SSH.
5. In the Proxmox GUI, navigate to Datacenter -> Local -> ISO Images -> Upload and upload the Debian 10 ISO from your desktop.
Your Proxmox server now is configured to let you build as many Incredible PBX 2021 virtual machines as you like.
Creating Your First Incredible PBX Virtual Machine
The easiest way to create Incredible PBX 2021 virtual machines is using the Proxmox web GUI. Navigate to Datacenter -> Local -> Backups -> Restore. When the dialog box appears, fill it in as shown below using a unique Proxmox Container Number for each VM (777 in the example). Be sure to tick the Unique box to assure that your VMs don’t step on each other. If you want to start up the VM after creating it, just tick the start up box. When you’re finished, click the Restore button.
In about a minute, your VM will be ready to Start if you didn’t tick the start up box. Once started, click the Console button to open the Incredible PBX console box just as if you had logged in with SSH. For username and password, use root and password. You then will be prompted to change all of your VM’s passwords. New SSH credentials also will be generated. Following the reboot, log back in again with your new root password and let the installer complete its setup. You now have a fully-operational Incredible PBX and Incredible Fax platform. Hop over to the Incredible PBX 2021 tutorial to set up extensions, trunks, and routes.
Originally published: Saturday, May 1, 2021
Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info 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.
Housekeeping 101: Managing Your Asterisk Backups and Logs
If you’re one of those that likes planting shrubbery but ignores maintenance thereafter, then today’s column is for you. Linux servers and Asterisk® PBXs need some regular attention. If you don’t invest a little time in the backup and log purging tasks, sooner or later you’ll regret it when disaster strikes.
With Incredible PBX® 2020 and 2021 servers, you only have yourself to blame if you don’t make regular backups and move them off site. Simply run /root/incrediblebackup2020 and move the image from /backup to a safe place. For Incredible PBX 16 servers, use the /root/incrediblebackup16 script. If you’re considering a move of your on premise Incredible PBX 2020 or 2021 server to the cloud, then we recommend making a full FreePBX® backup. Simply use the FileStore module in FreePBX in conjunction with the FreePBX Backup module to backup to S3, FTP, SCP, or DropBox. For those using cloud platforms for your PBXs, we strongly recommend investing the few cents more to activate automatic backups or snapshots. See the Incredible PBX Wiki for provider suggestions.
Next, let’s turn to logs. On Linux-based systems running Asterisk, there are literally dozens of logs. If you don’t monitor them carefully, you run the risk of a system failure once your storage device fills up. For PUBLIC implementations of Incredible PBX, you also need to monitor /var/log/secure (CentOS) and /var/log/auth.log (Debian/Ubuntu) for SSH break-in attempts. Monitoring the logs for most other system problems is less necessary because these issues typically will rear their ugly heads in a way that you will instantly know there’s a problem.
That leaves us with taming log creep. Even though many of the logs rotate and manage their own total size, this isn’t true for all of them. The easiest way to identify where your problem areas are is to do full listings of the files in both the /var/log and /var/log/asterisk directories: ls -al /var/log && ls -al /var/log/asterisk. When you see the size of logs creeping into 7 digits or more, it’s time to take corrective action. The simplest way is to build yourself a bash script that runs as a cron job every week or so. Here’s what we typically put in the script. The first few lines clean out the rotated logs, and the other lines initialize all of the current log files except the SSH log. You would obviously want to examine any extremely large logs for issues and security breaches before running this script! We typically create a backup before running the script. This preserves a historical record in case of any problems.
#!/bin/bash rm -rf /tmp/* rm -f /var/log/*-2* rm -f /var/log/asterisk/*-2* rm -f /var/log/httpd/*-2* rm -f /var/log/*.gz rm -f /var/log/asterisk/*.gz rm -f /var/log/apache2/*.gz rm -f /var/log/apache2/*.1 rm -f /var/log/*.1 rm -f /var/log/asterisk/*.1 truncate -s 0 /root/.mysql_history truncate -s 0 /root/.asterisk_history truncate -s 0 /root/.bash_history truncate -s 0 /var/log/wtmp truncate -s 0 /var/log/lastlog truncate -s 0 /var/log/mysql/error.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/auth.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/boot.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/cron truncate -s 0 /var/log/cron.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/daemon.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/debug truncate -s 0 /var/log/dmesg truncate -s 0 /var/log/dmesg.old truncate -s 0 /var/log/dracut.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/fail2ban.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/ipchecker.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/kern truncate -s 0 /var/log/kern.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/knockd.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/mail.err truncate -s 0 /var/log/mail.info truncate -s 0 /var/log/maillog truncate -s 0 /var/log/mail.warn truncate -s 0 /var/log/messages truncate -s 0 /var/log/mysqld.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/slpd.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/syslog truncate -s 0 /var/log/alternatives.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/bootstrap.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/dpkg.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/tallylog truncate -s 0 /var/log/yum.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/faillog truncate -s 0 /var/log/fontconfig.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/regen_ssh_keys.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/apache2/access.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/apache2/error.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/apache2/other_vhosts_access.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/asterisk/freepbx_dbug truncate -s 0 /var/log/asterisk/freepbx_debug truncate -s 0 /var/log/asterisk/freepbx.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/asterisk/freepbx_security.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/asterisk/full truncate -s 0 /var/log/asterisk/h323_log truncate -s 0 /var/log/asterisk/messages truncate -s 0 /var/log/asterisk/queue_log truncate -s 0 /var/log/asterisk/ucp_out.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/asterisk/clearlydevices_out.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/asterisk/clearlysp_out.log truncate -s 0 /var/log/asterisk/core*.log
To automate this process, create a truncate-logs script in /root with the entries above. Make the script executable: chmod +x /root/truncate-logs. Then add this entry to the bottom of /etc/crontab: 35 4 * * 6 root /root/truncate-logs >/dev/null 2>&1. This would run the script every Saturday morning at 4:35 a.m.
Originally published: Monday, April 26, 2021
Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info 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.
Taming the Condo Call Box with a Raspberry Pi & Asterisk
If you live in an apartment complex or condominium with a call box to let visitors gain door access by calling your apartment, then today’s column is for you. The way almost all of these call boxes work is the management company programs your name, phone number, and apartment number into the call box after which a visitor can look up your name or enter your apartment number and the call box will call you. When you answer the call and press 9 on your phone, the apartment door will unlock momentarily allowing the visitor to enter the building. But what if you don’t answer the call and a delivery driver needs to drop off your check from Publisher’s Clearinghouse? Or suppose you or a significant other has gone jogging without a cellphone and locked yourself out of the building? Well, worry no more. With Asterisk and a $35 Raspberry Pi running Incredible PBX, you can conquer the call box and let anybody into the building without ever touching your phone. All you need is an access code.
We will assume that you have a functioning Incredible PBX server with at least one incoming phone number. If not, start here. Then provide the management company with your 10-digit DID to assign to the call box. Once it’s set up, use the call box to call yourself and review the call detail records on your PBX to decipher the callbox’s actual phone number.
You do NOT need a dedicated DID to answer Call Box incoming calls. Deploying the script below will tell Asterisk to intercept calls from the Call Box for special processing and pass the rest of your incoming calls to your DID’s preconfigured Inbound Route. When a Call Box call is detected by its CallerID Number, the script will prompt the visitor to enter a security code. If the code entered is valid, a DTMF tone simulating the pressing of 9 on your phone will be sent to the Call Box to open the door, and the visitor will be advised that the door is being unlocked. If the visitor enters an invalid access code three times in a row, Asterisk will hang up the call from the Call Box. Easy peasy!
Now let’s reconfigure your Asterisk PBX to manage incoming calls from the Call Box. You’ll need (1) the 10-digit DID that you provided to the management company for calls from the CallBox. (2) the 10-digit phone number that the Call Box uses to call you, and (3) a security PIN which the visitor must enter to gain door access. In the sample code below, (1) substitute your 10-digit DID for 8881234567 on the 14 lines (twice on lines 3 and 5), (2) substitute the Call Box 10-digit phone number for 9990000000 on line 4, (3) in line 7 replace 90210 with the security PIN you want visitors to enter to gain door access, and (4) enter your email address on line 11 replacing yourname@gmail.com so you’re notified when visitors arrive.
[from-callbox]
exten => 8881234567,1,Answer
exten => 8881234567,n,Wait(1)
exten => 8881234567,n,NoOp(*** Incoming call on 8881234567 DID ***)
exten => 8881234567,n,GotoIf($["${CALLERID(number)}" = "9990000000"]?BUZZMEUP)
exten => 8881234567,n,Goto(from-trunk,8881234567,1)
exten => 8881234567,n,Hangup
exten => 8881234567,n(BUZZMEUP),Authenticate(90210)
exten => 8881234567,n,Playback(access-granted)
exten => 8881234567,n,agi(picotts.agi,"The door is opening. Please come in.")
exten => 8881234567,n,SendDTMF(9,50,2000)
exten => 8881234567,n,system(echo "Condo door opened" | /usr/bin/mail -s ALERT yourname@gmail.com)
exten => 8881234567,n,Wait(3)
exten => 8881234567,n,Playback(goodbye)
exten => 8881234567,n,Hangup
exten => s,1,Hangup
;-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next, copy the edited code to the end of /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf and reload your dialplan: asterisk -rx "dialplan reload".
Finally, using a browser, open the FreePBX GUI. Edit the trunk corresponding to your DID above and change the context to from-callbox. Also make certain you have an Inbound Route for your 10-digit DID to redirect non-CallBox calls to whatever destination is desired.
Now leave your building (with your key) and use the Call Box to test your new setup. Enjoy!
Originally published: Monday, April 5, 2021
Need help with Asterisk? Visit the VoIP-info 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.
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