Home » Posts tagged 'gvoice' (Page 13)
Tag Archives: gvoice
The Most Versatile VoIP Provider: FREE PORTING
JUST RELEASED: Visit the Incredible PBX WikiThe Gotcha-Free PBX: Introducing Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI (Ubuntu)
WARNING: This version is no longer secure and use of it is strongly discouraged.
Remember the old adage that Rome wasn’t built in a day? Well, thanks to Mark Spencer and his team of incredibly talented programmers coupled with the modular design of Asterisk® and Asterisk-GUI, times have changed. It took about a month to put the CentOS version of Incredible PBX™ for Asterisk-GUI together. Today’s Ubuntu® version was created in one day! That should tell you all you need to know about the design. Better yet, with a cloud platform such as Digital Ocean,1 you can deploy Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI in about 15 minutes. Add another 5 minutes to configure some trunks and plug in a couple phones, and you’ll have a Gotcha-Free PBX in less time than it takes to wolf down a Waffle House breakfast.
We try to make new product tutorials stand on their own so you don’t have to jump around to figure everything out. But, if you’re generally familiar with the process of installing Incredible PBX, then this will be a walk in the park for you. Last week we released a tutorial covering all of the new Gotcha Free PBX applications, and that guide applies to today’s Ubuntu release as well. The names of a few components are different (such as the Incredible Fax installer), but functionally everything works in exactly the same way as the CentOS platform release. After all, that’s the beauty of the modular design.
|
Target Audience: Home or SOHO/SBO in need of a turnkey, Gotcha-Free PBX Default Configuration: Asterisk 11 with enhanced Asterisk-GUI, Kennonsoft GUI, and NANPA dialplan Platform: Ubuntu 14.04 (32/64-bit) running on Dedicated Server, Cloud-Based Server, or Virtual Machine Minimum Memory: 512MB Recommended Disk: 20GB+ Default Trunks: Google Voice, CallCentric, DIDlogic, Future-Nine, IPcomms, Les.net, Vitelity, VoIP.ms2 Feature Set: Fax, SMS messaging, VPN, Reminders, ConfBridge Conferencing, AsteriDex, Voicemail, Email, IVR, News, Weather, Voice Dialer, Wolfram Alpha, Today in History, TM3 Firewall WhiteList, Speed Dialer, iNUM and SIP URI (free) worldwide calling, OpenCNAM CallerID lookups, DISA, Call Forwarding, CSV CDRs Administrator Utilities: Incredible Backup/Restore, Automatic Updater, Asterisk Upgrader, phpMyAdmin, Timezone Config, Plug-and-Play Trunk Configurator, WebMin, External IP Setup, Firewall WhiteList Tools |
Getting Started with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI (Ubuntu Edition)
Here’s a quick overview of the installation and setup process for Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI:
- Choose a Hardware Platform – Dedicated PC, Virtual Machine, or Cloud Provider
- Install a Linux Flavor – Install Ubuntu 14.04 Platform for Incredible PBX
- Download and Install Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
- Install Incredible Fax for Asterisk-GUI (optional)
- Set Up Passwords for Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
- Configure Trunks with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
- Connect a Softphone to Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
1. Choose a Platform for Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI works equally well on dedicated hardware, a virtual machine, or a cloud-based server. Just be sure you’ve met the minimum requirements outlined above and that you have a sufficiently robust Internet connection to support 100Kb of download and upload bandwidth for each simultaneous call you wish to handle with your new PBX.
For Dedicated Hardware, we recommend an Atom-based PC of recent vintage with at least a 30GB drive and 4GB of RAM. That will take care of an office with 10-20 extensions and a half dozen or more simultaneous calls if you have the Internet bandwidth to support it.
For Virtual Machine Installs, we recommend Oracle’s VirtualBox platform which runs atop almost any operating system including Windows, Macs, Linux, and Solaris. Here’s a link to our original VirtualBox tutorial to get you started. We suggest allocating 1GB of RAM and at least a 20GB disk image to your virtual machine for best performance.
For Cloud-Based Servers, we recommend RentPBX, one of our financial supporters who also happens to size servers properly and restrict usage solely to VoIP. This avoids performance bottlenecks that cause problems with VoIP calls. If you’re just experimenting, then a 512MB Digital Ocean droplet is a cost-effective option at a cost of less than a penny an hour. In addition to a little referral revenue for Nerd Vittles, the nicest features of Digital Ocean are the availability of preconfigured CentOS images and a platform on which you can install Incredible PBX and be ready to start making calls very, very quickly. If you make a serious mistake during the install or setup, it’s a 30-second task to delete your droplet and create a new one. You’re only out a penny! And reloading Incredible PBX from scratch is never more than a 20-minute task. Remember to run the create-swapfile-DO script included in the Incredible PBX tarball before beginning your install to avoid out-of-memory conditions.
2. Install Ubuntu 14.04 Platform for Incredible PBX
For dedicated hardware installs, download the 32-bit or 64-bit Ubuntu 14.04 “Trusty Tahr” Minimal ISO. Burn it to a CD/DVD or thumb drive and boot your dedicated server from the image. Remember, you’ll be reformatting the drive in your server so pick a machine you don’t need for other purposes.
For virtual machine installs, download the same ISO and specify it as the boot drive for your virtual machine. If you’re using the VirtualBox platform, create a new virtual machine specifying either the 32-bit or 64-bit version of Ubuntu. Allocate 1024MB of RAM (512MB also works fine!) and at least 20GB of disk space using the default hard drive setup in all three steps. In Settings, click System and check Enable I/O APIC and uncheck Hardware Clock in UTC Time. Click Audio and Specify then Enable your sound card. Click Network and Enable Network Adapter for Adapter 1 and choose Bridged Adapter. Finally, in Storage, add the Ubuntu 14.04 mini.iso to your VirtualBox Storage Tree as shown below. Then click OK and start up your new virtual machine.
Here are the steps to get Ubuntu 14.04 set up on dedicated hardware or a virtual machine:
UBUNTU mini.iso install:
Choose language
Choose timezone
Detect keyboard
Hostname: incrediblepbx < continue >
Choose mirror for downloads
Confirm archive mirror
Leave proxy blank unless you need it < continue >
** couple minutes of whirring as initial components are loaded **
New user name: incredible < continue >
Account username: incredible < continue >
Account password: makeitsecure < continue >
Encrypt home directory < no >
Confirm time zone < yes >
Partition disks: Guided - use entire disk and set up LVM
Confirm disk to partition
Write changes to disks and configure LVM
Whole volume? < continue>
Write changes to disks < yes> < -- last chance to preserve your disk drive!
** about 15 minutes of whirring during base system install ** < no touchy anything>
** another 5 minutes of whirring during base software install ** < no touchy anything>
Upgrades? Install security updates automatically
** another 5 minutes of whirring during more software installs ** < no touchy anything>
Software selection: *Basic Ubuntu server (only!)
** another couple minutes of whirring during software installs ** < no touchy anything>
Grub boot loader: < yes>
UTC for system clock: < no>
Installation complete: < continue> after removing installation media
** on VirtualBox, PowerOff after reboot and remove [-] mini.iso from Storage Tree & restart VM
login as user: incredible
** enter user incredible's password **
sudo passwd
** enter incredible password again and then create secure root user password **
su root
** enter root password **
apt-get update
apt-get install ssh -y
sed -i 's|without-password|yes|' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|yes"|without-password"|' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|"quiet"|"quiet text"|' /etc/default/grub
update-grub
ifconfig
** write down the IP address of your server from ifconfig results
reboot
** login via SSH to continue **
For Cloud-based servers or virtual machines, typically the provider has done the hard work for you. Just choose either a 32-bit or 64-bit Ubuntu 14.04 platform with at least 512MB of RAM and 20GB of disk storage. If you have to roll your own from an ISO, just follow the steps above.
3. Install Incredible PBX on Your Ubuntu 14.04 Server
Adding Incredible PBX to a running Ubuntu 14.04 server is simple. To restate the obvious, your server needs a reliable Internet connection to proceed. Using SSH (or Putty on a Windows machine), log into your new server as root at the IP address you deciphered in the ifconfig step at the end of the Ubuntu install procedure above.
First, run the update and upgrade procedure for Ubuntu before you begin the install. This is especially important if using a cloud-based Ubuntu 14 server.
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y && reboot
WARNING: If you’re using a 512MB droplet at Digital Ocean, be advised that their Ubuntu setup does NOT include a swap file. This may cause serious problems when you run out of RAM. Uncomment ./create-swapfile-DO line below to create a 1GB swap file which will be activated whenever you exceed 90% RAM usage on Digital Ocean.
IMPORTANT: Before you begin the Incredible PBX install, expand your console window to at least 80×27, or the Asterisk compilation step may fail. If you’re in doubt about the window dimensions, just maximize the window to full-screen during the install process.
Now let’s begin the Incredible PBX install. Log back in as root and issue the following commands:
cd /root wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx11guiU.tar.gz tar zxvf incrediblepbx11guiU.tar.gz #./create-swapfile-DO #add this step for Digital Ocean droplets rm -f incrediblepbx11guiU.tar.gz sed -i 's|pbxinaflash.com|incrediblepbx.com|' IncrediblePBX11U-GUI.sh ./IncrediblePBX11U-GUI.sh
4. Install Incredible Fax for Asterisk-GUI (optional)
Administrators have been trying to stomp out faxing for at least two decades. Here’s a hint. It ain’t gonna happen. So go with the flow and add Gotcha-Free Faxing to your server. It’ll be there when you need it. And sooner or later, you’ll need it. This install script is simple enough for any monkey to complete. Run the script and enter the email address for delivery of your faxes. Then, if you’re in the U.S. or Canada, press the Enter key to accept every default entry during the HylaFax and AvantFax installation steps. For other countries, read the prompts and answer accordingly. When the installation finishes, reboot your server to bring faxing on line. Be sure to change your AvantFax admin password. By default, it is password. You can use the script included in the /root folder: avantfax-pw-change. REMINDER: Don’t forget to reboot your server!
cd /root ./incrediblefax11_ubuntu14.sh ./avantfax-pw-change reboot
5. Initial Configuration of Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
Incredible PBX is installed with the preconfigured IPtables Linux firewall already in place. It implements WhiteList Security to limit server access to connected LANs, your server’s IP address, your desktop computer’s IP address, and a few of our favorite SIP providers. You can add additional entries to this WhiteList whenever you like using the add-ip and add-fqdn tools in /root. There’s also an Apache security layer for our web applications. And, of course, Asterisk-GUI has its own security methodology using Asterisk’s manager.conf. Finally, we randomize extension and DISA passwords as part of the initial install process. Out of the starting gate, you won’t find a more secure VoIP server implementation anywhere. After all, it’s your phone bill.
Even with all of these layers of security, here are 10 Quick Steps to better safeguard your server. You only do this once, but failing to do it may lead to security issues you don’t want to have to deal with down the road. So DO IT NOW!
First, log into your server as root with your root password and do the following:
Make your root password very secure: passwd
Set your correct time zone: ./timezone-setup
Create admin password for web apps: htpasswd -b /etc/pbx/wwwpasswd admin newpassword
Make a copy of your other passwords: cat passwords.FAQ
Make a copy of your Knock codes: cat knock.FAQ
Decipher IP address and other info about your server: status
Second, log into your server as admin using a web browser pointed to your server’s IP address:
Click USERS tab in Incredible PBX GUI
Click Asterisk-GUI Administration
Log in as user: admin with password: password
Immediately change your admin password and login again
Log in to Asterisk-GUI again with your new password. Expand the options available in the GUI:
Options -> Advanced Options -> Show Advanced Options
Last but not least, Incredible PBX includes an automatic update utility which downloads important updates whenever you log into your server as root. We recommend you log in once a week to keep your server current. Now would be a good time to log out and back into your server at the Linux command line to bring your server up to current specs.
6. Configure Trunks with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
Now for the fun part. If this is your first VoIP adventure, be advised that this ain’t your grandma’s phone system. You need not and should not put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to telephone providers. In order to connect to Plain Old Telephones, you still need at least one provider. But there is nothing wrong with having several. And a provider that handles an outbound call (termination) need not be the same one that handles an incoming call (origination) and provides your phone number (DID). We cannot recommend Vitelity highly enough, and it’s not just because they have financially supported our projects for almost a decade. They’re as good as VoIP providers get, and we use lots of them. If you’re lucky enough to live in the U.S., you’d be crazy not to set up a Google Voice account. It’s free as are all phone calls to anywhere in the U.S. and Canada. The remaining preconfigured providers included in Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI are equally good, and we’ve used and continue to use almost all of them. So pick a few and sign up. You only pay for the calls you make with each provider so you have little to lose by choosing several. The PIAF Forum includes dozens of recommendations on VoIP providers if you want additional information.
With the preconfigured trunks in Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI, all you need are your credentials for each provider and the FQDN of their server. Log into Asterisk-GUI Administration as admin using a browser. From the System Status screen, click Incredible PBX Apps. Click on each provider you have chosen and fill in the blanks with your credentials. When you’ve saved all of your settings, log into your server as root via SSH and type: service asterisk restart or asterisk-restart. You can also issue the command in the Asterisk-GUI by choosing the Asterisk CLI tab3 in the left column. Doesn’t get any simpler!
Update: It should be noted that Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI also supports Anveo Direct trunks; however, they are configured differently because of the way Anveo handles the calls. You’ll need the PIN provided by Anveo to set up your trunk, and Anveo supports CallerID spoofing so you can enter any CallerID number for the trunk that you are authorized to use. You’ll find the Anveo Direct setup link in the Incredible PBX Apps tab. To route an outgoing call through Anveo trunk, dial 2 + any desired 10-digit number.
Here is the complete list of dialing prefixes and the trunks to which they are associated:
- 1 – Google Voice
- 2 – Anveo Direct
- 3 – Future Nine
- 4 – CallCentric
- 5 – DIDlogic
- 6 – IPcomms
- 7 – Les.net
- 8 – Vitelity
- 9 – VoIP.ms
For free iNUM calling worldwide, the following dialing prefixes are supported in conjunction with the last seven digits of any destination iNUM DID. Free iNUM DIDs for your own PBX are available from both of these providers as well.
- 0XXXXXXX – CallCentric
- 90XXXXXXX – VoIP.ms
7. Configure a Softphone with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
We’re in the home stretch now. You can connect virtually any kind of telephone to your new Gotcha-Free PBX. Plain Old Phones require an analog telephone adapter (ATA) which can be a separate board in your computer from a company such as Digium. Or it can be a standalone SIP device such as ObiHai’s OBi100 or OBi110 (if you have a phone line from Ma Bell to hook up as well). SIP phones can be connected directly so long as they have an IP address. These could be hardware devices or software devices such as the YateClient softphone. We’ll start with a free one today so you can begin making calls. You can find dozens of recommendations for hardware-based SIP phones both on Nerd Vittles and the PIAF Forum when you’re ready to get serious about VoIP telephony.
We recommend YateClient which is free. Download it from here. Run YateClient once you’ve installed it and enter the credentials for the 6002 extension on Incredible PBX. You’ll need the IP address of your server plus your extension 6002 password. Choose Users -> 6002 and write down your SIP/IAX Password. You can also find it in /root/passwords.FAQ. Fill in the blanks using the IP address of your server, 6002 for your account name, and whatever password is assigned to the extension. Click OK to save your entries.
Once you are registered to extension 6002, close the Account window. Then click on YATE’s Telephony Tab and place some test calls to the numerous apps that are preconfigured on Incredible PBX. Dial a few of these to get started:
7001 - IVR Demo
123 - Reminders
947 - Weather by ZIP Code
951 - Yahoo News
*61 - Time of Day
TODAY - Today in History
If you are a Mac user, another great no-frills softphone is Telephone. Just download and install it from the Mac App Store.
Configuring Google Voice
If you want to use Google Voice, you’ll need a dedicated Google Voice account to support Incredible PBX. 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!
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. Good News! You’re in luck. Google has apparently had a change of heart on discontinuing Google Chat support so it’s enabled by default in all new Google Voice accounts. Once you’ve created a Gmail and Google Voice account, go to Google Voice Settings and 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’ve adjusted 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!
Now you’re ready to configure your Google Voice account in Incredible PBX. You can do it from within Asterisk-GUI by choosing Google Voice within the Incredible PBX Apps tab. Once you entered your credentials, don’t forget to restart Asterisk, or Google Voice calls will fail. If you still have trouble placing or receiving calls, try these tips.
OK, Smarty Pants: Show Me the Beef!
We know what some of you are thinking. "What does a fast food worker really know about VoIP and Gotcha-Free PBXs?? Before I waste a bunch of time on this, show me the beef!" Fair enough. Sit by your phone and click the Call Me icon below. Type in a fake name and your real phone number. Click the Connect button, answer your phone when it rings, and press 1. You’ll be connected to the Incredible PBX IVR for Asterisk-GUI. Pick an option from the menu of choices and take the Incredible PBX apps for a spin on our dime… actually it’s Google’s dime. Everything you see and hear is part of what you get with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI including the ability to set up your own click-to-dial web interface exactly like this one. The demo just happens to be running on our Mac desktop instead of yours. So… what are you waiting for? Click away and try Incredible PBX for yourself. And, by the way, nobody besides the NSA and Google will be monitoring your call. 😉
Nerd Vittles Demo IVR Options
1 – Call by Name (say “Delta Airlines” or “American Airlines” to try it out)
2 – MeetMe Conference (password is 1234)
3 – Wolfram Alpha (say “What planes are overhead?”)
4 – Lenny (The Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare)
5 – Today’s News Headlines
6 – Weather Forecast (say the city and state, province, or country)
7 – Today in History
8 – Speak to a Real Person (or maybe just voicemail if we’re out)
Homework Assignment: Mastering the Asterisk-GUI
Now would be a good time to explore the Incredible PBX applications. Continue reading there. After you’ve played with the preconfigured features, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and learn about Asterisk-GUI and its powerful feature set. Here’s one word of warning. We mentioned that Incredible PBX was a hybrid system that combines some customized settings with the standard Asterisk-GUI interface. Before modifying existing settings for the default trunks, extensions, and default routes, take a look at the credentials* files in /etc/asterisk. If you modify any of these trunk entries or the Outgoing or Incoming Call Rules in Asterisk-GUI, you may break the Incredible PBX setup. So steer clear of that minefield until you know what you’re doing. Adding new extensions and additional trunks is perfectly fine and will not break anything.
Rather than reinvent the wheel, we’ll point you to some excellent tutorials that already exist. Start with Chapter 3 of Digium’s Asterisk Appliance™ Administrator Manual. Next, review Chapter 11 of The Asterisk Book (Second Edition). Finally, take a look at a couple of the tutorials that have been written by other companies that incorporated Asterisk-GUI into their hardware products, e.g. Yeastar’s MyPBX SOHO User Manual and Grandstream’s UCM6100 User Manual.
In the meantime, if you have questions, join the PBX in a Flash Forums and take advantage of our awesome collection of gurus. There’s an expert available on virtually any topic, and the price is right. As with Incredible PBX, it’s absolutely free.
We also are quickly building a collection of tutorials tailored specifically for Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI:
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Scripts 101
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Inbound Call Routing
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Outbound Call Routing
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Add-a-Trunk
- Gotcha-Free PBX: SMTP Mail Relay with SendMail or PostFix
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Music on Hold
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Changing TTS Engine
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Voicemail with Email Attachments
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Telephone and Web Reminders
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Sending Faxes
- Gotcha-Free PBX: VMobile Extension
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Anveo Direct
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Google Voice
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Voice Menus Setup
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Harnessing SIP URIs for Free Worldwide Calling
Enjoy your new Gotcha-Free PBX!
Just Released: The Gotcha-Free Incredible PBX Application User’s Guide
Originally published: Thursday, February 5, 2015
Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.
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…
- Nerd Vittles relies upon modest referral fees from some providers such as Digital Ocean to keep the lights on. But you get a free ride, too! Create an Ubuntu 14.04 (not 14.10!) 512MB droplet of the cheapest flavor ($5/mo.). A $10 credit will be added to your account when you sign up, and you can play with Incredible PBX on Digital Ocean’s nickel for a couple months risk-free. Add and delete droplets to your heart’s content and enjoy! [↩]
- Vitelity and Google provide financial support to Nerd Vittles and the Incredible PBX project. [↩]
- If, for some reason, the Asterisk CLI tab does not appear on your server, click Options -> Advanced Options -> Show Advanced Options. [↩]
The Gotcha-Free PBX: Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI Application User’s Guide
For those just beginning the Incredible PBX™ for Asterisk-GUI adventure, start here. Once your system is up and running, you’ll be ready to kick the tires. And today we’ll cover the applications for Asterisk® that are included in Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI. Down the road a bit, we’ll provide an in-depth review of the Incredible PBX internals and how to tweak things under the covers to get the most out of Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI. We’re not planning to provide an Asterisk-GUI User’s Guide because a number of them already have been written. That doesn’t mean it’s not important. See last week’s homework assignment for the links. If you have questions, by all means post them on the PIAF Forum for some quick help.
If you’ve always loved Baskin-Robbins’ 31 Flavors of ice cream, then you’re in for a treat today with our special scoop.
Here’s our Table of Contents to the 31 Incredible PBX Applications for Asterisk-GUI with hotlinks plus some bonus apps for those that are still awake at the end of today’s adventure. You may want to print this for future reference.
- Checking System Status
- Enabling Speech Recognition
- Wolfram Alpha for Siri-like queries by phone*
- Automatic Update Utility
- Asterisk 11 Upgrade Utility
- Apache Authentication for Apps
- IPtables Firewall WhiteList
- PortKnocker Remote Access
- Travelin’ Man 4 Remote Access by Phone
- Conference Bridge
- CallerID Name (CNAM) Lookups
- Faxing with Incredible PBX
- Voicemail 101 with Incredible PBX
- Email Delivery of MP3 Voicemails
- Reconfiguring SendMail for SmartHosts
- SMS Blasting with Google Voice
- SMS Voice Messaging with Google Voice*
- SMS Messaging with VoIP.ms
- SIP URI Calling with Speed Dials
- IVR Demo of Incredible PBX Applications*
- Backup and Restore Options
- AsteriDex – The Poor Man’s Rolodex®
- Voice Dialing with AsteriDex*
- Speed Dialing with AsteriDex
- Scheduling Reminders by Phone or Web
- DISA Access with Incredible PBX
- Yahoo! News Headlines
- Weather Forecasts with Incredible PBX*
- ODBC Application Support
- Today in History
- Time of Day
- Harnessing SIP URIs for Free Worldwide Calling
* Requires Voice Recognition implementation. See #2 above.
1. Checking Current Status of Incredible PBX
There are several ways to check the status of your server. First, log into your server as root and type: status or pbxstatus
The second option is to use a browser to access your server. Choose the Admin menu. Then click Asterisk-GUI Administration. Once you log in, the System Status of your server, trunks, and extensions will be displayed.
Finally, with your browser, choose the Admin menu. Click System Information to bring up the terrific SysInfo application that’s included in Incredible PBX.
2. Adding Speech Recognition to Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
Google changed the licensing of their speech recognition engine last year and now restricts use to "personal and development use." Assuming you qualify, the very first order of business is to enable speech recognition for your new PBX. Once enabled, the Incredible PBX feature set grows exponentially. You’ll have access to the Voice Dialer for AsteriDex, Worldwide Weather Reports where you can say the name of a city and state or province to get a weather forecast for almost anywhere, Wolfram Alpha for a Siri-like encyclopedia for your PBX, and Lefteris Zafiris’ speech recognition software to build additional Asterisk apps limited only by your imagination.
Here’s how to activate speech recognition on Incredible PBX. Don’t skip any steps!
1. Using an existing Google/Gmail account, you first must join the Chrome-Dev Group.
2. Using the same account, create a new Speech Recognition Project.
3. Click on your newly created project and choose APIs & auth.
4. Turn ON the Speech API by clicking on its Status button in the far right margin. HINT: If you forgot to complete Step #1, the Speech API option will be missing!
5. Click on Credentials in APIs & auth and choose Create New Key -> Server key. Leave the IP address restriction blank!
6. Write down your new API key or copy it to the clipboard.
7. Log into your server as root and issue the following command:
nano -w /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/speech-recog.agi
8. When the nano editor opens, go to line 70 of speech-recog.agi: my $key = "". Insert your API key from Step #6 above between the quotation marks and save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then Enter.
Congratulations! Speech recognition is now available with Incredible PBX applications for Asterisk-GUI.
3. Using Wolfram Alpha with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
Ever wished your Asterisk server could harness the power of a 10,000 CPU Supercomputer to answer virtually any question you can dream up about the world we live in? Well, so long as it’s for non-commercial use, today’s your lucky day. Apple demonstrated with Siri™ just how amazing this technology can be by coupling Wolfram Alpha® to a speech-to-text engine on the iPhone. Now you can do much the same thing using voice recognition on the Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI.
Before using Wolfram Alpha from any phone connected to your PBX, you first must configure it by obtaining and adding a Wolfram Alpha application ID to Incredible PBX. Here are the simple steps:
1. Obtain your free Wolfram Alpha APP-ID here.
2. Log into your server as root and issue the following command:
nano -w /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/4747
3. When the nano editor opens, the top line of the file will look like this:
APPID="Your-Wolfram-Alpha-App-ID-Goes-Here"
4. Replace the text between the quotes with your APP_ID key from Step #1 above. Then save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then Enter.
To use Wolfram Alpha, dial 4747 (that’s S-I-R-I backwards) from any extension.
Here are some sample queries to get you started:
Weather in Charleston South Carolina
Weather forecast for Washington D.C.
Next solar eclipse
Otis Redding
Define politician
Who won the 1969 Superbowl? (Broadway Joe)
What planes are flying overhead now?
Ham and cheese sandwich (nutritional information)
Holidays 2015 (summary of all holidays for 2015 with dates and DOW)
Medical University of South Carolina (history of MUSC)
Star Trek (show history, air dates, number of episodes, and more)
Apollo 11 (everything you ever wanted to know)
Cheapest Toaster (brand and price)
Battle of Gettysburg (sad day 🙂 )
Daylight Savings Time 2015 (date ranges and how to set your clocks)
Tablets by Samsung (pricing, models, and specs)
Doughnut (you don’t wanna know)
Snickers bar (ditto)
Weather (local weather at your server’s location)
4. Automatic Update Utility for Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
A key security component of Incredible PBX is its Automatic Update Utility. Each time you log into your server as root, the Automatic Update Utility is run. It installs the latest fixes and security patches for your server. Don’t disable it! In fact, don’t delete anything from the /root folder. You’ll need all of it sooner or later.
We recommend you log into your server as root at least once a week to keep your server current. Ditto for the web interface to Incredible PBX. Insofar as security is concerned, we make a best effort to keep the components of Incredible PBX up to date. The Linux operating system was installed by you before the Incredible PBX install began. That’s a nice way of saying Linux security is primarily your responsibility. When an egregious Linux vulnerability comes along that we know about, we will try to notify you of the issue on the PIAF Forum and on the RSS Feed that is part of the Incredible PBX web GUI. Check the RSS Feed on the web GUI at least once a week as well. As a condition of use of the free Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI product, you accepted ultimate responsibility for the security and reliability of your server. None of this discussion changes any of that.
5. Asterisk 11 Upgrade Utility for Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
We’ve included a script to upgrade Asterisk 11 to the latest version whenever you feel the urge. Before beginning the upgrade, log into your server as root using SSH and maximize the window. Otherwise, Asterisk may not compile properly. Then run the script: /root/upgrade-asterisk-to-current
6. Implementing Apache Authentication with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
With the exception of Asterisk-GUI and WebMin, all web-based applications included in Incredible PBX (including your trunk setups!) require successful Apache authentication to gain access. When you installed Incredible PBX, you should have created an admin account. If not, issue the following command using a secure password after logging in as root:
htpasswd -b /etc/pbx/wwwpasswd admin newpassword
With the exception of AsteriDex and Reminders, you gain access to other Incredible PBX applications with the admin Apache account. For the remaining apps, you may wish to (but don’t have to) assign different account names and passwords to various departments in your organization. To set up these accounts, use the syntax above substituting the name of the department for "admin" and the department password for "newpassword."
7. Managing the IPtables Linux Firewall and WhiteList
As installed, Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI includes a preconfigured, locked-down Linux firewall that restricts incoming IPv6 traffic to localhost and, via a WhiteList, limits incoming IPv4 traffic to your server’s public and private IP addresses, your desktop computer’s IP address (that was used for the install), private LAN and NeoRouter VPN traffic, and a collection of our favorite SIP providers. You can WhiteList additional IP addresses for additional providers or for SIP and IAX phones located outside your firewall. The following firewall management scripts are mostly installed in the /root directory:
- ./add-ip — WhiteList an additional IP address or IP address range (CIDR)
- ./add-fqdn — WhiteList a site using a fully-qualified domain name (FQDN)
- ./del-acct — Remove previously designated entry from the WhiteList
- ./ipchecker — Check whether specified FQDNs have changed & update IPtables
- iptables-restart — Used exclusively to restart IPtables and test for failed FQDNs
- iptables -nL — Check the current status of your IPtables firewall
IPtables can be manually configured (if you know what you’re doing) by editing iptables and ip6tables in /etc/sysconfig (CentOS) or rules.v4 and rules.v6 in /etc/iptables (Debian/Ubuntu). NEVER use traditional iptables commands such as iptables save to update your IPtables configuration, or you will permanently delete all of your FQDN entries! Instead, edit the files directly and then restart IPtables using iptables-restart. This protects the FQDN entries in your setup while also checking for invalid FQDN entries and removing them temporarily so that IPtables will successfully restart. If you use service iptables restart to restart IPtables and there happens to be an FQDN entry for a host that is either down or has disappeared, IPtables will fail to restart and your server will be left with NO firewall protection! The reason for this is the IPtables design which converts all FQDN entries to fixed IP addresses when it starts up. It’s also the reason we have to periodically check for changed FQDN entries using the ipchecker script with cron. For this to work properly, you will need to manually add your FQDN setups to the top of /etc/ipchecker by inserting the filenames of any add-fqdn entries you have created. For additional details, read our Travelin’ Man 3 tutorial.
8. PortKnocker Remote Access to Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
IPtables is a powerful firewall that keeps the bad guys out. It also will keep legitimate users (including you) from gaining remote access to your server unless you had the forethought to WhiteList your remote IP address before you left on that family vacation. Unfortunately, you don’t always know your IP address in advance. And dynamic IP addresses assigned with hotel WiFi frequently change. To address this problem, Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI includes a preconfigured PortKnocker utility. This lets you send three secret "knocks" on random TCP ports to your server to tell it to let you in temporarily (until IPtables is again restarted).
For PortKnocker to work, you obviously need to know the secret knocks. You’ll find them in /root/knock.FAQ. Record them in your wallet or inside your suitcase for that rainy day! There are PortKnocker apps for almost all smartphones as well as for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. Install your favorite AND test access before you leave town.
Finally, be aware that PortKnocker does not need any special access to your server to work; however, if your server is behind a hardware-based firewall, then you must map the three PortKnocker TCP ports to the private IP address of your server, or the knocks obviously will never get delivered to your server.
Review our PortKnocker tutorial for additional configuration tips.
9. Travelin’ Man 4 Remote Access to Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI (Dial TM4)
In addition to PortKnocker, Incredible PBX also includes a telephone-based solution to temporarily gain remote access to your server. This does require a bit of preplanning since you must create account credentials for the person to whom you wish to give remote access via a phone call. The complete tutorial for Travelin’ Man 4 is available on the PIAF Forum. All of the pieces already are in place on your server so skip down to the Configuration & Operation sections for details on implementation. The tutorial also covers the Administrator Utilities in /root/tm4 which let you set up remote user accounts.
10. Using the Conference Bridge in Incredible PBX (Dial C-O-N-F)
A new turnkey Asterisk 11 Conference Bridge has been added to Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI. A conference bridge allows a group of people to participate in a joint phone call. Typically, participants dial into a virtual meeting room from their own phone. This virtual meeting room supports dozens or even hundreds of participants depending upon server capacity.
You do not need a timing source for conferencing with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI! Old-style Asterisk-GUI Conference Rooms which required a timing source are disabled.
To access the Conference Bridge, dial C-O-N-F (2663) from any phone connected to your server. Remote users can be added to a conference by providing a DID that points to an IVR which includes Conference Bridge access. Once connected to the conference bridge, a caller is prompted for the Conference Bridge PIN and his or her name. The user and admin passwords to access the Conference Bridge are randomized during the install.
To display Conference Bridge PINs, open Asterisk-GUI, choose Incredible PBX Apps, and click on Anveo Direct. The Miscellaneous Credentials Settings will all be displayed at the bottom of the screen including your Conference Bridge PINs.
To change Conference Bridge PINs, log into your server as root and edit the entries for CONF_USER_PIN and CONF_ADMIN_PIN: nano -w /etc/asterisk/credentials.conf. Then reload Asterisk: asterisk-reload.
11. CallerID Name (CNAM) Lookups with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
By default, Incredible PBX is configured to automatically provide OpenCNAM CallerID name lookups for the first ten calls received each hour. These lookups are only from cached entries in the OpenCNAM database; however, you can enable the commercial lookup service if desired. The cost is four tenths of a cent per successful query.
To enable the OpenCNAM Professional Tier, set up an account at OpenCNAM.com. Once you’ve obtained your credentials, edit the [cidlookup] context in /etc/asterisk/extensions_additional.conf. The second line includes this CURL command:
${CURL(https://api.opencnam.com/v2/phone/${CALLERID(num)}?format=pbx&ref=incrediblepbx)})
Add the following immediately after "incrediblepbx" replacing ACCOUNT_SID and AUTH_TOKEN with your actual credentials: &account_sid=ACCOUNT_SID&auth_token=AUTH_TOKEN
Finally, comment out the next 8 lines that begin with "exten => cidlookup_1,n" by inserting a semicolon at the start of each line. DO NOT comment out: exten => cidlookup_1,n,Return(). Save your changes and reload Asterisk: asterisk-reload.
;exten => cidlookup_1,n,Set(current_hour=${STRFTIME(,,%Y-%m-%d %H)})
;exten => cidlookup_1,n,Set(last_query_hour=${DB(cidlookup/opencnam_last_query_hour)})
;exten => cidlookup_1,n,Set(total_hourly_queries=${DB(cidlookup/opencnam_total_hourly_queries)})
;exten => cidlookup_1,n,ExecIf($["${last_query_hour}" != "${current_hour}"]?Set(DB(cidlookup/opencnam_total_hourly_queries)=0))
;exten => cidlookup_1,n,ExecIf($["${total_hourly_queries}" = ""]?Set(DB(cidlookup/opencnam_total_hourly_queries)=0))
;exten => cidlookup_1,n,Set(DB(cidlookup/opencnam_total_hourly_queries)=${MATH(${DB(cidlookup/opencnam_total_hourly_queries)}+1,i)})
;exten => cidlookup_1,n,ExecIf($[${DB(cidlookup/opencnam_total_hourly_queries)} >= 10]?System(${ASTVARLIBDIR}/bin/opencnam-alert.php))
;exten => cidlookup_1,n,Set(DB(cidlookup/opencnam_last_query_hour)=${current_hour})
exten => cidlookup_1,n,Return()
12. Faxing with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
If you added Incredible Fax to your server by running incrediblefax11-GUI.sh in the /root folder, then you’re in for a treat. As part of the install, you provided an email address for delivery of incoming faxes. That’s all the setup that is required to have incoming faxes sent to most of your DIDs delivered via SendMail in PDF format. The best way to figure out whether a particular provider supports fax technology on their DIDs is to send a test fax to yourself. FaxZERO lets you send 5 free faxes of up to 3 pages every day. Give it a whirl.
You also can send faxes using standard document types with the AvantFax web application. Log into AvantFax from the main Incredible PBX page by clicking on the AvantFax icon. Choose the Send a Fax option from the main menu, fill in the blanks, and attach your document. AvantFax uses the default dialplan documented in last week’s article so use the prefix desired to send the fax using your preferred provider. HINT: Google Voice does an excellent job with both incoming and outgoing faxes, and the calls are free in the U.S. and Canada.
Copies of all incoming faxes also are available for retrieval within AvantFax.
13. Voicemail 101 for Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
Voicemail functionality is enabled on an extension-by-extension basis as part of the extension setup under the Users tab in Asterisk-GUI. Once enabled, you can set up your mailbox and retrieve your messages by dialing *98. You can leave a message for any extension without actually calling the extension. Just prepend * to any extension number before dialing, e.g. *6002. A number of the system settings for voicemail can be tweaked under the Voicemail tab in Asterisk-GUI. You also can automatically delete voicemails once they have been delivered by email under the Email Settings tab. Just follow your nose.
14. Email Delivery of MP3 Voicemails with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
Speaking of email delivery, your voicemails also can be delivered to any email address of your choosing. For every extension under the Users tab in Asterisk-GUI, simply add an Email Address in the Voicemail section of the form. With Incredible PBX, the voicemail message will be attached to the email in MP3 format so it’s suitable for playback with most email clients on desktop PCs, Macs, and smartphones. Be advised that some Internet service providers (such as Comcast) block downstream SMTP servers. You can check whether your outbound email is flowing by accessing WebMin (below) and choosing Servers -> SendMail Mail Server -> Mail Queue. If you find outbound mail is accumulating, then you’ll need to add your ISP’s SMTP server address as a SmartHost for SendMail as documented in the next section.
15. Reconfiguring SendMail for SmartHost SMTP Delivery Of Outgoing Emails
Many residential Internet service providers block downstream SMTP servers such as the SendMail server running with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI. If you’re sending emails but they never arrive and you’ve checked your SPAM folder, then chances are your ISP is the culprit. The simple solution is to add your ISP’s SMTP server as a SmartHost for SendMail. This means outbound emails will be forwarded to your ISP for actual email transmission over the Internet. Here’s how. Edit /etc/mail/sendmail.cf and search for DS. Immediately after DS, add the FQDN of your ISP’s SMTP server, e.g. DSsmtp.comcrap.net (no spaces!). Save the file and then restart SendMail: service sendmail restart. Your email and voicemail messages with attachments should begin flowing without further delay.
Email from: Asterisk PBX asterisk@pbx.local... "Nerd Vittles" at 8001234567 left a new voicemail message 1 for extension 6002 on Thursday, January 29, 2015 at 01:42:33 PM.
You can test email delivery by sending yourself a message from the Linux CLI:
echo "test" | mail -s testmessage yourname@somedomain.com
16. SMS Blasting with Google Voice and Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
Out of the box, Incredible PBX supports SMS Message Blasting if you have a functioning Google Voice account set up. Before first use, you must add your credentials, address list, and text message to the SMS Blaster scripts in the /root folder.
In smsblast, insert your credentials:
GVACCT="yourname@gmail.com" GVPASS="yourpassword" MSGSUBJECT="Little League Alert"
In smslist.txt, insert one or more recipients for your message. These can be a combination of SMS addresses and email addresses and will be delivered accordingly.
NOTE: For most cellphone providers, you also can send an email message for SMS delivery by the provider. The complete list of providers is available here. Email messaging for SMS requires that you know the cellphone provider for your recipient while standard SMS messaging does not.
# In lieu of SMS number, email is also OK 8431234567 Doe John mary@doe.com Doe Mary 8435551212@txt.att.net Mr T
In smsmsg.txt, enter the text message to be sent.
Once you have all three files configured, run the script: /root/smsblast.
17. Voice-Activated SMS Messaging with Incredible PBX (Dial S-M-S)
In addition to message blasting, you also can dial 767 from any extension and dictate an SMS message to send through your Google Voice account. When prompted for the destination, simply enter the 10-digit SMS number of the recipient.
18. SMS Messaging with VoIP.ms and Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI also supports SMS messaging through VoIP.ms if you have an account and an SMS-enabled DID. See the VoIP.ms wiki for setup info on the VoIP.ms side.
To install the VoIP.ms SMS scripts, follow these steps:
cd /root mkdir sms-voip.ms cd sms-voip.ms wget http://incrediblepbx.com/voipms-SMS.tar.gz tar zxvf voipms-SMS.tar.gz
Edit voipms-sms.php and insert your VoIP.ms number that supports SMS messaging (no spoofing allowed!):
$SMSsender="8005551212";
Edit class.voipms.php and insert your VoIP.ms API credentials:
/*******************************************\
* VoIPms - API Credentials
\*******************************************/
var $api_username = 'yourname@youremail.com';
var $api_password = 'yourpassword';
Send an SMS message through VoIP.ms with the following command where smsnumber is the 10-digit number of the SMS recipient and "sms message" is the text message surrounded by quotes:
/root/sms-voip.ms/voipms-sms.php smsnumber "sms message"
NOTE: VoIP.ms has indicated that sooner or later there will be a penny per message charge for SMS messages; however, as of today, they’re still free.
19. SIP URI Calling with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI (Demo: Dial L-E-N-N-Y)
With one line of dialplan code, you can add Speed Dials for free SIP URI calling worldwide. The dialplan code is stored in the [CallingRule_SIP_URI] context in extensions_custom.conf. Just clone one of the existing entries, designate an extension to dial to connect to the SIP URI, and enter the SIP URI for the destination. Numerous SIP providers support assignment of SIP URI’s to DIDs for unlimited free calling from anywhere in the world. Here’s a sample using a speed dial code of 53669 that connects you to SIP URI 2233435945@sip2sip.info: exten = 53669,1,Dial(SIP/2233435945@sip2sip.info)
20. IVR Demo of Incredible PBX Applications (Dial 7001)
The easiest way to try out a number of the Incredible PBX applications is to take the IVR Demo for a spin. Just pick up any phone and dial 7001. The sample code for the IVR is available for review and modification in extensions.conf. Just search for 7001. You can create your own IVRs and AutoAttendants under the Voice Menus tab in Asterisk-GUI. There’s also a sample Stealth AutoAttendant available by dialing 7000. This plays a brief greeting and then rings Ring Group #1. During the greeting, you could configure the application to allow button presses to branch to other applications on your PBX, hence the Stealth name since the codes are not disclosed to callers.
21. Incredible Backup & Restore with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
Incredible Backup and Restore scripts are included in the /root folder. These scripts make and restore snapshots of the settings on your server and should be used in conjunction with a full system backup solution. Asterisk-GUI includes its own backup snapshots under the Backup tab.
22. AsteriDex – The Poor Man’s Rolodex
AsteriDex is a web-based phonebook application for Incredible PBX. You can access it from the main web menu. Scripts are also available to import your contacts from Outlook and Google Contacts.
23. Voice Dialing with AsteriDex (Dial 411)
If you have voice recognition enabled on your server, you can call anyone in your AsteriDex database by dialing 411.
24. Speed Dialing with AsteriDex (Dial 412 or 000+)
For those without voice recognition, Incredible PBX includes two speed dialing utilities. The first is accessed by dialing 412. Then enter any 3-digit dialcode from your AsteriDex database to complete the call. If you’d prefer to skip the intermediate step, dial 000 + the 3-digit speed dial code desired. The call will be placed immediately using your default outbound routes. For those using a version of Incredible PBX before February 2015, see this link for the 000 Speed Dial patch.
For a complete listing of your AsteriDex dial codes, execute this query:
mysql -u root -ppassw0rd asteridex -e "select name,dialcode from user1 order by name"
25. Telephone Reminders (Dial 123)
Incredible PBX includes a sophisticated reminders system that lets you schedule individual or recurring reminders using your phone by dialing 123 or a web browser. A complete tutorial is available here. For phone reminders, a password is required to access the reminder system. You’ll find your password in /root/passwords.FAQ. It can be changed in /etc/asterisk/credentials.conf. Typically, these reminders set up a return call at a scheduled time that then plays back either a recorded message or a TTS message generated from the text you entered in the browser application. Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI also includes a new addition that lets you schedule web reminders that are delivered by email or SMS message. Links to the web-based reminders applications are in the main Incredible PBX web menu.
26. DISA Access with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI (Dial D-I-S-A)
Direct Inward System Access (aka DISA) is one of the great PBX inventions of the last 50 years. It’s also one of the most dangerous. It lets someone connect to your PBX and obtain dial tone to place an outbound call using your trunks… on your nickel. Typically, it is offered as an option with an IVR or AutoAttendant. The DISA extension is preconfigured with Incredible PBX on extension 3472 (D-I-S-A). Use requires a password. Your randomized password can be found in /root/passwords.FAQ. It can be changed in /etc/asterisk/credentials.conf. Make it very secure before exposing DISA access to the outside world!
27. Yahoo! News (Dial 951)
Yahoo! news headlines are available by dialing 951. The news option also is included in the sample IVR application.
28. Weather Forecasts by Phone (Dial 949 or Z-I-P)
If you have voice recognition enabled on your server, you can retrieve a weather report for most cities in the world by dialing 949 and saying the name of the city plus the state, province, or country. For PBXs without voice recognition, you can obtain a weather forecast for most zip codes by dialing 947 (Z-I-P) and entering the 5-digit zip code.
29. ODBC Application Support for Asterisk
If you’ve recently logged into your server as root, Automatic Update #4 added ODBC/MySQL application support for Asterisk. You can try out a few sample applications that are included to get you started. Dial 222 and enter 12345 for the employee number. This retrieves an employee name from the MySQL timeclock database using Asterisk. Dial 223 to retrieve an AsteriDex name and phone number by entering the 3-character dialcode. You then have the option of placing the call by pressing 1. Once you have created accounts for Travelin’ Man 4, you can dial 864 (T-M-4) to WhiteList an IP address for that account after entering the account number and matching PIN. Use the * key for periods in the IP address. The code for all of the samples is in the following files in /etc/asterisk: odbc.conf and func_odbc.conf. If you create new MySQL databases, remember to add corresponding entries in res_odbc.conf and /etc/odbc.ini. Then restart Asterisk: asterisk-restart.
30. Today in History (Dial T-O-D-A-Y)
It’s always interesting to find out what happened Today in History. And Incredible PBX now delivers it by phone. Just dial 86329 (T-O-D-A-Y) for a walk down memory lane.
31. Time of Day
Speaking of yesteryear, if you grew up dialing TI-4-1212 for the time of day, Ma Bell may have discontinued the service, but we haven’t. Now you can do it on your very own PBX. Just dial into the IVR (7001) and choose option 4.
But suppose you want your users to be able to dial in for the time directly by dialing extension 8463 (T-I-M-E). Well it’s easy. Just add one line to your Incredible PBX dialplan and then reload the dialplan.
sed -i '/CallingRule_extensions_custom/a exten => 8463,1,Goto(new-time,s,1)' /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf asterisk-reload
NOTE: Those with a Feb. 2015 or later version of Incredible PBX already have this feature.
Introducing WebMin: The Linux Swiss Army Knife
There is no finer Linux application than WebMin. There is no more dangerous Linux application than WebMin. You’ve been warned. We heartily recommend WebMin as a tool to LOOK at your server’s settings. We strongly discourage changing anything in WebMin unless you totally know what you are doing. This is especially true with management of Linux applications that make up the core of Incredible PBX: the Linux kernel, SendMail, IPtables, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and…
To access WebMin, click on the WebMin link in the main Incredible PBX web menu. The username is root. The password is your root password. WebMin has root privileges to your server. Reread paragraph 1 and act accordingly.
For an exhaustive tutorial on WebMin, download The Book of WebMin by Joe Cooper. For a more recent commercial offering, take a look at Michal Karzyński’s WebMin Administrator’s Cookbook.
Introducing phpMyAdmin: The MySQL Swiss Army Knife
The same caveats we expressed regarding WebMin apply to phpMyAdmin. It is a powerful tool for managing MySQL databases in the right hands. It is a dangerous tool in the wrong hands. Fortunately, Asterisk-GUI does not rely upon MySQL for anything, and we are phasing out the remaining Incredible PBX applications that still rely upon it. So there should be little need to use phpMyAdmin unless you are developing a customized database solution for your business. We’ve included phpMyAdmin just in case.
To access phpMyAdmin, click on the phpMyAdmin link in the main Incredible PBX web menu. For tutorials on phpMyAdmin, see the phpMyAdmin wiki. For an excellent commercial offering focused on the version of phpMyAdmin installed on your server, consider Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.4 for Effective MySQL Management by Marc Delisle.
Introducing SIP Gateways for Secure (and Free) Google Voice Calling
If you have difficulty finding the Google Chat option after setting up a new Google Voice account, follow this tutorial.
Enjoy your new Gotcha-Free PBX, and… Happy Groundhog’s Day! It’s always been one of the happiest days of the year around our house. It’s my mom’s birthday.
Originally published: Monday, February 2, 2015
Coming Next Week (with a little luck): The Gotcha-Free PBX Ubuntu Edition
Coming Soon: The Gotcha-Free PBX for the Raspberry Pi 2. Better hurry if you want one!
Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.
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…
The Gotcha-Free PBX: Introducing Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI (CentOS)
[iframe-popup id="5″]
To celebrate ITEXPO® this week, we’re back in the gift-giving mood. So today we’re pleased to introduce the first of several new turnkey VoIP solutions for the Asterisk® platform. Incredible PBX™ for Asterisk-GUI provides virtually the same feature set of applications for Asterisk as our previous releases. But this time around, you get a Gotcha-Free PBX with pure and honest open source GPL code. No patent, trademark, or copyright minefields to trip you up. Just abide by the clear GPL licensing terms and copy, embellish, and redistribute to your heart’s content. Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI is truly a lean, mean implementation designed to be frugal with memory and extremely versatile in terms of configuration.
One of our favorite Twitter detractors recently compared us to a fast food worker.1 We’ve been called worse so thanks. Keeping up with Five Guys ain’t easy. Leveraging the best open source components available and putting them together in such a way that the end result far exceeds the sum of its parts is the name of the game. We started by assembling the very best components for Asterisk we could find. Take it from a fast food worker, Mark Spencer’s Asterisk and Asterisk-GUI creations are anything but second-rate products. The GUI may not have made good business sense for Digium, but making money wasn’t the objective this time around. Our focus was building a better VoIP mousetrap and a Gotcha-Free PBX.
We began by dusting off Mark Spencer’s terrific GUI and giving it a facelift. We tweaked it for use with Asterisk 11 and Google Voice and ConfBridge. Then we preconfigured some SIP trunks from our favorite providers, added the best open source text-to-speech and voice recognition tools available from Lefteris Zafiris, and produced a VoIP solution and set of applications for home and SOHO businesses that’s ready to take and make calls in less time than refueling your vehicle. But why drive a Lincoln (and we’re being charitable) when an F-150 will get the job done? Unlike some other distros, you get the very latest version of Asterisk and Asterisk-GUI. Both are compiled from source on your hardware platform to maximize performance. The end result is the VoIP Trifecta… better, cheaper, and faster.
Since the early Windows® days, we haven’t been big fans of GUI-only interfaces. Let’s face it. Some things can be configured more efficiently with less chance for error using other tools. Incredible PBX takes advantage of this hybrid technology by offering the best of all worlds. Administrators can use a GUI where it makes sense and use a text editor or simple web form where it doesn’t. You can configure 8 VoIP trunks from 8 great providers in under 5 minutes. And there’s so much more…
|
Target Audience: Home or SOHO/SBO in need of a turnkey, Gotcha-Free PBX Default Configuration: Asterisk 11 with enhanced Asterisk-GUI, Kennonsoft GUI, and NANPA dialplan Platform: CentOS 6.5/6.6 running on Dedicated Server, Cloud-Based Server, or Virtual Machine Minimum Memory: 512MB Recommended Disk: 20GB+ Default Trunks: Google Voice, CallCentric, DIDlogic, Future-Nine, IPcomms, Les.net, Vitelity, VoIP.ms2 Feature Set: Fax, SMS messaging, VPN, Reminders, ConfBridge Conferencing, AsteriDex, Voicemail, Email, IVR, News, Weather, Voice Dialer, Wolfram Alpha, Today in History, TM3 Firewall WhiteList, Speed Dialer, iNUM and SIP URI (free) worldwide calling, OpenCNAM CallerID lookups, DISA, Call Forwarding, CSV CDRs Administrator Utilities: Incredible Backup/Restore, Automatic Updater, Asterisk Upgrader, phpMyAdmin, Timezone Config, Plug-and-Play Trunk Configurator, WebMin, External IP Setup, Firewall WhiteList Tools |
Getting Started with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI (CentOS Edition)
Here’s a quick overview of the installation and setup process for Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI:
- Choose a Hardware Platform – Dedicated PC, Cloud Provider, or Virtual Machine
- Install a Linux Flavor – 32-bit or 64-bit CentOS 6.5 or Scientific Linux Minimal ISO (so far!)
- Download and Install Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
- Install Incredible Fax for Asterisk-GUI (optional)
- Set Up Passwords for Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
- Configure Trunks with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
- Connect a Softphone to Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
1. Choose a Platform for Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI works equally well on dedicated hardware, a cloud-based server, or a virtual machine. Just be sure you’ve met the minimum requirements outlined above and that you have a sufficiently robust Internet connection to support 100Kb of download and upload bandwidth for each simultaneous call you wish to handle with your new PBX.
For Dedicated Hardware, we recommend an Atom-based PC of recent vintage with at least a 30GB drive and 4GB of RAM. That will take care of an office with 10-20 extensions and a half dozen or more simultaneous calls if you have the Internet bandwidth to support it.
For Cloud-Based Servers, we recommend RentPBX, one of our financial supporters who also happens to size servers properly and restrict usage solely to VoIP. This avoids performance bottlenecks that cause problems with VoIP calls. If you’re just experimenting, then a 512MB Digital Ocean droplet is a cost-effective option at a cost of less than a penny an hour. In addition to a little referral revenue for Nerd Vittles, the nicest features of Digital Ocean are the availability of preconfigured CentOS images and a platform on which you can install Incredible PBX and be ready to start making calls very, very quickly. If you make a serious mistake during the install or setup, it’s a 30-second task to delete your droplet and create a new one. You’re only out a penny! And reloading Incredible PBX from scratch is never more than a 20-minute task. Remember to run the create-swapfile-DO script included in the Incredible PBX tarball before beginning your install to avoid out-of-memory conditions.
For Virtual Machine Installs, we recommend Oracle’s VirtualBox platform which runs atop almost any operating system including Windows, Macs, Linux, and Solaris. Here’s a link to our original VirtualBox tutorial to get you started. We suggest allocating 1GB of RAM and at least a 20GB disk image to your virtual machine for best performance.
2. Install a Linux Flavor for Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
To be clear, we plan to support many Linux flavors other than RedHat. But Rome wasn’t built in a day so hang in there. We’re flippin’ burgers as fast as we can. For today, you’ll need a 32-bit or 64-bit version of CentOS or Scientific Linux 6.5/6.6. On some platforms, you install 6.5. After the initial update and upgrade steps, you’ll end up with 6.6. There are many flavors of CentOS and Scientific Linux. For Incredible PBX, a minimal install is all you need.
NOTICE: Core dumps reportedly are being experienced loading Asterisk on the 32-bit platform. We’re investigating. For the moment, stick with 64-bit installs until this message disappears.
With dedicated hardware, begin by downloading the 32-bit or 64-bit CentOS 6.6 minimal ISO. Boot your server with the ISO, and begin the install. Here are the simplest installation steps:
Choose Language and Click Continue
Click: Install Destination (do not change anything!)
Click: Done
Click: Network & Hostname
Click: ON
Click: Done
Click: Begin Installation
Click: Root Password: password, password, Click Done twice
Wait for Minimal Software Install and Setup to finish
Click: Reboot
With most cloud-based providers, you simply choose the CentOS 6.5 platform in creating your initial image. 512MB of RAM is plenty so long as you have a swap file. Within a minute or two, you’re ready to boot up the server.
For VirtualBox, download the Scientific Linux 6.6 minimal install .ova image from SourceForge. Then double-click on the image to load it into VirtualBox. Enable Audio and configure Network with Bridge Adapter in Settings. Then start the virtual machine. Default password for root is password.
With VirtualBox, you can skip this step. For everyone else, log into your server as root and issue the following commands to put the basic pieces in place and to reconfigure your Ethernet port as eth0. On some platforms, some of the commands may generate errors. Don’t worry about it! Just make a note of your IP address so you can log back in with SSH from a desktop computer to begin the Incredible PBX install.
For CentOS/Scientific Linux 6.5 minimal install:
setenforce 0 yum -y upgrade yum -y install net-tools nano wget ifconfig sed -i 's|quiet|quiet net.ifnames=0 biosdevdame=0|' /etc/default/grub grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg wget http://incrediblepbx.com/update-kernel-devel chmod +x update-kernel-devel ./update-kernel-devel reboot
For CentOS/Scientific Linux 6.6 minimal install:
setenforce 0 yum -y upgrade yum -y install net-tools nano wget ifconfig reboot
3. Download and Install Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
Before beginning the install, make sure your terminal window size is at least 80 characters wide and 27 lines high.
Otherwise, Asterisk will not compile properly. UPDATE: This has been resolved in the latest Incredible PBX installer so terminal window expansion is no longer required.
cd /root yum -y install wget wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx11gui.tar.gz tar zxvf incrediblepbx11gui.tar.gz #./create-swapfile-DO #add this step for Digital Ocean droplets rm -f incrediblepbx11gui.tar.gz sed -i 's|pbxinaflash.com|incrediblepbx.com|' IncrediblePBX11-GUI.sh sed -i 's|pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-release|incrediblepbx.com|' IncrediblePBX11-GUI.sh sed -i 's|https://iksemel.googlecode.com/files|http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/repo/pkgs/iksemel/iksemel-1.4.tar.gz/532e77181694f87ad5eb59435d11c1ca|' IncrediblePBX11-GUI.sh ./IncrediblePBX11-GUI.sh ./IncrediblePBX11-GUI.sh sed -i 's|myip.pbxinaflash.com|myip.incrediblepbx.com|' /usr/local/sbin/status
4. Install Incredible Fax for Asterisk-GUI (optional)
Administrators have been trying to stomp out faxing for at least two decades. Here’s a hint. It ain’t gonna happen. So go with the flow and add Gotcha-Free Faxing to your server. It’ll be there when you need it. And sooner or later, you’ll need it. This install script is simple enough for any monkey to complete. Run the script and enter the email address for delivery of your faxes. Then, if you’re in the U.S. or Canada, press the Enter key to accept every default entry during the HylaFax and AvantFax installation steps. For other countries, read the prompts and answer accordingly. When the installation finishes, reboot your server to bring faxing on line. Be sure to change your AvantFax admin password. By default, it is password. You can use the script included in the /root folder: avantfax-pw-change. REMINDER: Don’t forget to reboot your server!
cd /root ./incrediblefax11-GUI.sh ./avantfax-pw-change reboot
Troubleshooting: If your IAXmodems don’t display with a green IDLE notation in the AvantFax GUI, you may need to restart them once more. After a second reboot, all should be well. The restart command is /root/iaxmodem-restart.
5. Initial Configuration of Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
Incredible PBX is installed with the preconfigured IPtables Linux firewall already in place. It implements WhiteList Security to limit server access to connected LANs, your server’s IP address, your desktop computer’s IP address, and a few of our favorite SIP providers. You can add additional entries to this WhiteList whenever you like using the add-ip and add-fqdn tools in /root. There’s also an Apache security layer for our web applications. And, of course, Asterisk-GUI has its own security methodology using Asterisk’s manager.conf. Finally, we randomize extension and DISA passwords as part of the initial install process. Out of the starting gate, you won’t find a more secure VoIP server implementation anywhere. After all, it’s your phone bill.
Even with all of these layers of security, here are 10 Quick Steps to better safeguard your server. You only do this once, but failing to do it may lead to security issues you don’t want to have to deal with down the road. So DO IT NOW!
First, log into your server as root with your root password and do the following:
Make your root password very secure: passwd
Set your correct time zone: ./timezone-setup
Create admin password for web apps: htpasswd -b /etc/pbx/wwwpasswd admin newpassword
Make a copy of your other passwords: cat passwords.FAQ
Make a copy of your Knock codes: cat knock.FAQ
Decipher IP address and other info about your server: status
Second, log into your server as admin using a web browser pointed to your server’s IP address:
Click USERS tab in Incredible PBX GUI
Click Asterisk-GUI Administration
Log in as user: admin with password: password
Immediately change your admin password and login again
Log in to Asterisk-GUI again with your new password. Expand the options available in the GUI:
Options -> Advanced Options -> Show Advanced Options
Last but not least, Incredible PBX includes an automatic update utility which downloads important updates whenever you log into your server as root. We recommend you log in once a week to keep your server current. Now would be a good time to log out and back into your server at the Linux command line to bring your server up to current specs.
6. Configure Trunks with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
Now for the fun part. If this is your first VoIP adventure, be advised that this ain’t your grandma’s phone system. You need not and should not put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to telephone providers. In order to connect to Plain Old Telephones, you still need at least one provider. But there is nothing wrong with having several. And a provider that handles an outbound call (termination) need not be the same one that handles an incoming call (origination) and provides your phone number (DID). We cannot recommend Vitelity highly enough, and it’s not just because they have financially supported our projects for almost a decade. They’re as good as VoIP providers get, and we use lots of them. If you’re lucky enough to live in the U.S., you’d be crazy not to set up a Google Voice account. It’s free as are all phone calls to anywhere in the U.S. and Canada. The remaining preconfigured providers included in Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI are equally good, and we’ve used and continue to use almost all of them. So pick a few and sign up. You only pay for the calls you make with each provider so you have little to lose by choosing several. The PIAF Forum includes dozens of recommendations on VoIP providers if you want additional information.
With the preconfigured trunks in Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI, all you need are your credentials for each provider and the FQDN of their server. Log into Asterisk-GUI Administration as admin using a browser. From the System Status screen, click Incredible PBX Apps. Click on each provider you have chosen and fill in the blanks with your credentials. When you’ve saved all of your settings, log into your server as root via SSH and type: service asterisk restart or asterisk-restart. You can also issue the command in the Asterisk-GUI by choosing the Asterisk CLI tab3 in the left column. Doesn’t get any simpler!
Update: It should be noted that Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI also supports Anveo Direct trunks; however, they are configured differently because of the way Anveo handles the calls. You’ll need the PIN provided by Anveo to set up your trunk, and Anveo supports CallerID spoofing so you can enter any CallerID number for the trunk that you are authorized to use. You’ll find the Anveo Direct setup link in the Incredible PBX Apps tab. To route an outgoing call through Anveo trunk, dial 2 + any desired 10-digit number.
Here is the complete list of dialing prefixes and the trunks to which they are associated:
- 1 – Google Voice
- 2 – Anveo Direct
- 3 – Future Nine
- 4 – CallCentric
- 5 – DIDlogic
- 6 – IPcomms
- 7 – Les.net
- 8 – Vitelity
- 9 – VoIP.ms
For free iNUM calling worldwide, the following dialing prefixes are supported in conjunction with the last seven digits of any destination iNUM DID. Free iNUM DIDs for your own PBX are available from both of these providers as well.
- 0XXXXXXX – CallCentric
- 90XXXXXXX – VoIP.ms
7. Configure a Softphone with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
We’re in the home stretch now. You can connect virtually any kind of telephone to your new Gotcha-Free PBX. Plain Old Phones require an analog telephone adapter (ATA) which can be a separate board in your computer from a company such as Digium. Or it can be a standalone SIP device such as ObiHai’s OBi100 or OBi110 (if you have a phone line from Ma Bell to hook up as well). SIP phones can be connected directly so long as they have an IP address. These could be hardware devices or software devices such as the YateClient softphone. We’ll start with a free one today so you can begin making calls. You can find dozens of recommendations for hardware-based SIP phones both on Nerd Vittles and the PIAF Forum when you’re ready to get serious about VoIP telephony.
We recommend YateClient which is free. Download it from here. Run YateClient once you’ve installed it and enter the credentials for the 6002 extension on Incredible PBX. You’ll need the IP address of your server plus your extension 6002 password. Choose Users -> 6002 and write down your SIP/IAX Password. You can also find it in /root/passwords.FAQ. Fill in the blanks using the IP address of your server, 6002 for your account name, and whatever password is assigned to the extension. Click OK to save your entries.
Once you are registered to extension 6002, close the Account window. Then click on YATE’s Telephony Tab and place some test calls to the numerous apps that are preconfigured on Incredible PBX. Dial a few of these to get started:
7001 - IVR Demo
123 - Reminders
947 - Weather by ZIP Code
951 - Yahoo News
*61 - Time of Day
TODAY - Today in History
If you are a Mac user, another great no-frills softphone is Telephone. Just download and install it from the Mac App Store.
Configuring Google Voice
If you want to use Google Voice, you’ll need a dedicated Google Voice account to support Incredible PBX. 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!
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. Good News! You’re in luck. Google has apparently had a change of heart on discontinuing Google Chat support so it’s enabled by default in all new Google Voice accounts. Once you’ve created a Gmail and Google Voice account, go to Google Voice Settings and 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’ve adjusted 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!
Now you’re ready to configure your Google Voice account in Incredible PBX. You can do it from within Asterisk-GUI by choosing Google Voice within the Incredible PBX Apps tab. Once you entered your credentials, don’t forget to restart Asterisk, or Google Voice calls will fail. If you still have trouble placing or receiving calls, try these tips.
OK, Smarty Pants: Show Me the Beef!
We know what some of you are thinking. "What does a fast food worker really know about VoIP and Gotcha-Free PBXs?? Before I waste a bunch of time on this, show me the beef!" Fair enough. Sit by your phone and click the Call Me icon below. Type in a fake name and your real phone number. Click the Connect button, answer your phone when it rings, and press 1. You’ll be connected to the Incredible PBX IVR for Asterisk-GUI. Pick an option from the menu of choices and take the Incredible PBX apps for a spin on our dime… actually it’s Google’s dime. Everything you see and hear is part of what you get with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI including the ability to set up your own click-to-dial web interface exactly like this one. The demo just happens to be running on our Mac desktop instead of yours. So… what are you waiting for? Click away and try Incredible PBX for yourself. And, by the way, nobody besides the NSA and Google will be monitoring your call. 😉
Nerd Vittles Demo IVR Options
1 – Call by Name (say “Delta Airlines” or “American Airlines” to try it out)
2 – MeetMe Conference (password is 1234)
3 – Wolfram Alpha (say “What planes are overhead?”)
4 – Lenny (The Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare)
5 – Today’s News Headlines
6 – Weather Forecast (say the city and state, province, or country)
7 – Today in History
8 – Speak to a Real Person (or maybe just voicemail if we’re out)
Homework Assignment: Mastering the Asterisk-GUI
We’ll have more to say about the Incredible PBX applications next week. In the meantime, you have some homework. You need to learn all about Asterisk-GUI and how to make the best use of its powerful feature set. Here’s one word of warning. We mentioned that Incredible PBX was a hybrid system that combines some customized settings with the standard Asterisk-GUI interface. Before modifying existing settings for the default trunks, extensions, and default routes, take a look at the credentials* files in /etc/asterisk. If you modify any of these trunk entries or the Outgoing or Incoming Call Rules in Asterisk-GUI, you may break the Incredible PBX setup. So steer clear of that minefield until you know what you’re doing. Adding new extensions and additional trunks is perfectly fine and will not break anything.
Rather than reinvent the wheel, we’ll point you to some excellent tutorials that already have been written. Start with Chapter 3 of Digium’s Asterisk Appliance™ Administrator Manual. Next, review Chapter 11 of The Asterisk Book (Second Edition). Finally, take a look at a couple of the tutorials that have been written by other companies that incorporated Asterisk-GUI into their hardware products, e.g. Yeastar’s MyPBX SOHO User Manual and Grandstream’s UCM6100 User Manual. Then check back with us next week for Chapter 2.
In the meantime, if you have questions, join the PBX in a Flash Forums and take advantage of our awesome collection of gurus. There’s an expert available on virtually any topic, and the price is right. As with Incredible PBX, it’s absolutely free.
We also are quickly building a collection of tutorials tailored specifically for Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI:
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Scripts 101
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Inbound Call Routing
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Outbound Call Routing
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Add-a-Trunk
- Gotcha-Free PBX: SMTP Mail Relay with SendMail or PostFix
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Music on Hold
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Changing TTS Engine
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Voicemail with Email Attachments
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Telephone and Web Reminders
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Sending Faxes
- Gotcha-Free PBX: VMobile Extension
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Anveo Direct
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Google Voice
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Voice Menus Setup
- Gotcha-Free PBX: Harnessing SIP URIs for Free Worldwide Calling
Enjoy your new Gotcha-Free PBX!
Just Released: The Gotcha-Free Incredible PBX Application User’s Guide
Originally published: Monday, January 26, 2015
Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.
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…
- What made the comment all the more humorous was the fact that it was made by a person who has bounced from company to company to company in the VoIP industry, not unlike the plight of many fast food workers. Takes one to know one, I suppose. [↩]
- Vitelity and Google provide financial support to Nerd Vittles and the Incredible PBX project. [↩]
- If, for some reason, the Asterisk CLI tab does not appear on your server, click Options -> Advanced Options -> Show Advanced Options. [↩]
30 Minutes to Paradise: Incredible PBX for Ubuntu 14.04 is Ready for Primetime
A few months ago, we introduced a preview of Incredible PBX for Ubuntu 14. And now we’re pleased to release the latest production-ready version with all the bells and whistles including Incredible Fax featuring HylaFax and AvantFax.
Introducing Incredible PBX 11 for Ubuntu 14.04
Today’s plan is to build a production-ready version of Incredible PBX with Ubuntu 14.04 that mimics the functionality of our previous builds with literally dozens of turnkey applications that show off the very best features of Asterisk®. If you believe in the open source community, this build is for you. No strings, no gotchas, and no quirky licenses!
Six months ago, we could barely spell Ubuntu. Then an enterprising young programmer named Eric Teeter shot us a script to install Ubuntu with Asterisk and FreePBX® and encouraged us to embellish it and to share the results with our Nerd Vittles audience. Having rarely met an operating system we didn’t like, we jumped at the opportunity knowing full well that Billy Chia at Digium and Tony Lewis at Schmooze Com had reported impressive results with Ubuntu years ago. It seemed like a good fit for Incredible PBX as well. Unlike CentOS, Ubuntu also was a platform that was easily transferable to the new $50 BeagleBone Black and the CuBox-i.
Our special thanks to Lefteris Zafiris for cleaning up all of the text-to-speech incompatibilities with Ubuntu. Within minutes from the other side of the world, Lefteris had logged into our Ubuntu Server in the Cloud and tamed the TTS beast. If ever there was an unsung hero in the Asterisk community, it’s Lefteris Zafiris. He has single-handedly kept all of the speech applications humming along through countless versions of Asterisk. We would have quit long ago without his untiring assistance. Thank you (again), Lefteris, for coming to the rescue.
Building an Ubuntu 14.04 Platform for Incredible PBX
As a result of the trademark and copyright morass, we’ve steered away from the bundled operating system in favor of a methodology that relies upon you to put in place the operating system platform on which to run PBX in a Flash or Incredible PBX. The good news is it’s easy! With many cloud-based providers1, you can simply click a button to choose your favorite OS flavor and within minutes, you’re ready to go. With many virtual machine platforms such as VirtualBox, it’s equally simple to find a pre-built Ubuntu 14.04 image or roll your own.
If you’re new to VoIP or to Nerd Vittles, here’s our best piece of advice. Don’t take our word for anything! Try it for yourself in the Cloud! You can build an Ubuntu 14.04 image on Digital Ocean in under one minute and install Incredible PBX for Ubuntu 14.04 in about 15 minutes. Then try it out for two full months. It won’t cost you a dime. Use our referral link to sign up for an account. Enter a valid credit card to verify you’re who you say you are. Create an Ubuntu 14.04 (not 14.10!) 512MB droplet of the cheapest flavor ($5/mo.). Go to the Billing section of the site, and enter the following promo code: UBUNTUDROPLET. That’s all there is to it. A $10 credit will be added to your account, and you can play to your heart’s content. Delete droplets, add droplets, and enjoy the free ride!
For today, we’ll walk you through building your own stand-alone server using the Ubuntu 14.04 mini.iso. If you’re using Digital Ocean in the Cloud, skip down to Installing Incredible PBX 11. If you’re using your own hardware, to get started, download the 32-bit or 64-bit Ubuntu 14.04 "Trusty Tahr" Minimal ISO from here. Then burn it to a CD/DVD or thumb drive and boot your dedicated server from the image. Remember, you’ll be reformatting the drive in your server so pick a machine you don’t need for other purposes.
For those that would prefer to build your Ubuntu 14.04 Wonder Machine using VirtualBox on any Windows, Mac, or existing Linux Desktop, here are the simple steps. Create a new virtual machine specifying either the 32-bit or 64-bit version of Ubuntu. Allocate 1024MB of RAM (512MB also works fine!) and at least 20GB of disk space using the default hard drive setup in all three steps. In Settings, click System and check Enable I/O APIC and uncheck Hardware Clock in UTC Time. Click Audio and Specify then Enable your sound card. Click Network and Enable Network Adapter for Adapter 1 and choose Bridged Adapter. Finally, in Storage, add the Ubuntu 14.04 mini.iso to your VirtualBox Storage Tree as shown below. Then click OK and start up your new virtual machine. Simple!
Here are the steps to get Ubuntu 14.04 humming on your new server or virtual machine once you’ve booted up. If you can bake cookies from a recipe, you can do this:
UBUNTU mini.iso install:
Choose language
Choose timezone
Detect keyboard
Hostname: incrediblepbx < continue >
Choose mirror for downloads
Confirm archive mirror
Leave proxy blank unless you need it < continue >
** couple minutes of whirring as initial components are loaded **
New user name: incredible < continue >
Account username: incredible < continue >
Account password: makeitsecure
Encrypt home directory < no >
Confirm time zone < yes >
Partition disks: Guided - use entire disk and set up LVM
Confirm disk to partition
Write changes to disks and configure LVM
Whole volume? < continue>
Write changes to disks < yes> < -- last chance to preserve your disk drive!
** about 15 minutes of whirring during base system install ** < no touchy anything>
** another 5 minutes of whirring during base software install ** < no touchy anything>
Upgrades? Install security updates automatically
** another 5 minutes of whirring during more software installs ** < no touchy anything>
Software selection: *Basic Ubuntu server (only!)
** another couple minutes of whirring during software installs ** < no touchy anything>
Grub boot loader: < yes>
UTC for system clock: < no>
Installation complete: < continue> after removing installation media
** on VirtualBox, PowerOff after reboot and remove [-] mini.iso from Storage Tree & restart VM
login as user: incredible
** enter user incredible's password **
sudo passwd
** enter incredible password again and then create secure root user password **
su root
** enter root password **
apt-get update
apt-get install ssh -y
sed -i 's|without-password|yes|' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|yes"|without-password"|' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|"quiet"|"quiet text"|' /etc/default/grub
update-grub
ifconfig
** write down the IP address of your server from ifconfig results
reboot
** login via SSH to continue **
Installing Incredible PBX on Your Ubuntu 14.04 Server
Adding Incredible PBX to a running Ubuntu 14.04 server is a walk in the park. To restate the obvious, your server needs a reliable Internet connection to proceed. Using SSH (or Putty on a Windows machine), log into your new server as root at the IP address you deciphered in the ifconfig step at the end of the Ubuntu install procedure above. First, make sure to run the update step for Ubuntu before you begin the install. This is especially important if using a cloud-based Ubuntu 14 server.
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y && reboot
WARNING: If you’re using a 512MB droplet at Digital Ocean, be advised that their Ubuntu setup does NOT include a swap file. This may cause serious problems when you run out of RAM. Uncomment ./create-swapfile-DO line below to create a 1GB swap file which will be activated whenever you exceed 90% RAM usage on Digital Ocean.
Now let’s begin the Incredible PBX install. Log back in as root and issue the following commands:
cd /root wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx11.4.ubuntu14.tar.gz tar zxvf incrediblepbx* #./create-swapfile-DO ./Incredible*
Once you have agreed to the license agreement and terms of use, press Enter and go have a 30-minute cup of coffee. The Incredible PBX installer runs unattended so find something to do for a bit unless you just like watching code compile. When you see "Have a nice day", your installation is complete. Write down your admin password for FreePBX as well as your three "knock" ports for PortKnocker. If you forget them, you can reset your admin password by running /root/admin-pw-change. And you can retrieve your PortKnocker setup like this: cat /root/knock.FAQ.
Log out and back in as root and you should be greeted with a status display that looks something like this:
You can access the Asterisk CLI by typing: asterisk -rvvvvvvvvvv
You can access the FreePBX GUI using your favorite web browser to configure your server. Just enter the IP address shown in the status display. The default username is admin with the randomized password you wrote down above. If desired, you can change them in FreePBX Administration by clicking Admin -> Administrators -> admin. Enter a new password and click Submit Changes then Apply Config. Now edit extension 701 so you can figure out (or change) the randomized passwords that were set up for default 701 extension and voicemail: Applications -> Extensions -> 701.
Setting Up a Soft Phone to Use with Incredible PBX
Now you’re ready to set up a telephone so that you can play with Incredible PBX. We recommend YateClient which is free. Download it from here. Run YateClient once you’ve installed it and enter the credentials for the 701 extension on Incredible PBX. You’ll need the IP address of your server plus your extension 701 password. Choose Settings -> Accounts and click the New button. Fill in the blanks using the IP address of your server, 701 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 some test calls to the numerous apps that are preconfigured on Incredible PBX. Dial a few of these to get started:
123 - Reminders
222 - ODBC Demo (use acct: 12345)
947 - Weather by ZIP Code
951 - Yahoo News
*61 - Time of Day
*68 - Wakeup Call
TODAY - Today in History
Now you’re ready to connect to the telephones in the rest of the world. If you live in the U.S., the easiest way (at least for now) is to use an existing (free) Google Voice account. Google has threatened to shut this down but as this is written, it still works with previously set up Google Voice accounts. The more desirable long-term solution is to choose several SIP providers and set up redundant trunks for your incoming and outbound calls. The PIAF Forum includes dozens of recommendations to get you started.
Configuring Google Voice
If you want to use Google Voice, you’ll need a dedicated Google Voice account to support Incredible PBX. 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 Google Voice 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! Use a previously configured and dedicated Gmail and Google Voice account, and use it exclusively with Incredible PBX 11.
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’re probably out of luck. Google has disabled the option in newly created accounts as well as some old ones that had Google Chat disabled. Now 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!
Now you’re ready to set up your Google Voice trunk in 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!
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.
If you have trouble getting Google Voice to work (especially if you have previously used your Google Voice account from a different IP address), try this Google Voice Reset Procedure. It usually fixes connectivity problems. If it still doesn’t work, enable Less Secure Apps using this Google tool.
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.
Adding Speech Recognition to Incredible PBX
To support many of our applications, Incredible PBX has included Google’s speech recognition service for years. These applications include Weather Reports by City (949), AsteriDex Voice Dialing by Name (411), and Wolfram Alpha for Asterisk (4747), all of which use Lefteris Zafiris’ terrific speech-recog AGI script. Unfortunately (for some), Google now has tightened up the terms of use for their free speech recognition service. Now you can only use it for "personal and development use." If you meet those criteria, keep reading. Here’s how to activate speech recognition on Incredible PBX. Don’t skip any steps!
1. Using an existing Google/Gmail account to join the Chrome-Dev Group.
2. Using the same account, create a new Speech Recognition Project.
3. Click on your newly created project and choose APIs & auth.
4. Turn ON Speech API by clicking on its Status button in the far right margin.
5. Click on Credentials in APIs & auth and choose Create New Key -> Server key. Leave the IP address restriction blank!
6. Write down your new API key or copy it to the clipboard.
7. Log into your server as root and issue the following commands:
# for Ubuntu and Debian platforms apt-get clean apt-get install libjson-perl flac -y # for RedHat and CentOS platforms yum -y install perl-JSON # for all Linux platforms cd /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin mv speech-recog.agi speech-recog.last.agi wget --no-check-certificate https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zaf/asterisk-speech-recog/master/speech-recog.agi chown asterisk:asterisk speech* chmod 775 speech* nano -w speech-recog.agi
8. When the nano editor opens, go to line 70 of speech-recog.agi: my $key = "". Insert your API key from Step #6 above between the quotation marks and save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then Enter.
Now you’re ready to try out the speech recognition apps. Dial 949 and say the name of a city and state/province/country to get a current weather forecast from Yahoo. Dial 411 and say "American Airlines" to be connected to American.
To use Wolfram Alpha by phone, you first must install it. Obtain your free Wolfram Alpha APP-ID here. Then run the one-click installer: /root/wolfram/wolframalpha-oneclick.sh. Insert your APP-ID when prompted. Now dial 4747 to access Wolfram Alpha by phone and enter your query, e.g. "What planes are overhead." Read the Nerd Vittles tutorial for additional examples and tips.
A Few Words about the Incredible PBX Security Model for Ubuntu
Incredible PBX for Ubuntu 14 is our most secure turnkey PBX implementation, ever. As configured, it is protected by both Fail2Ban and a hardened configuration of the IPtables Linux firewall. As configured, nobody can access your PBX without your credentials AND an IP address that is either on your private network or that matches the IP address of your server or the PC from which you installed Incredible PBX. Incredible PBX is preconfigured to let you connect to many of the leading SIP hosting providers without additional firewall tweaking.
You can whitelist additional IP addresses for remote access in several ways. First, you can use the command-line utilities: /root/add-ip and /root/add-fqdn. You can also remove whitelisted IP addresses by running /root/del-acct. Second, you can dial into extension 864 (or use a DID pointed to extension 864 aka TM4) and enter an IP address to whitelist. Before Travelin’ Man 4 will work, you’ll need to add credentials for each caller using the tools in /root/tm4. You must add at least one account before dial-in whitelisting will be enabled. Third, you can temporarily whitelist an IP address by successfully executing the PortKnocker 3-knock code established for your server. You’ll find the details and the codes in /root/knock.FAQ. Be advised that IP addresses whitelisted with PortKnocker (only!) go away whenever your server is rebooted or the IPtables firewall is restarted. For further information on the PortKnocker technology and available clients for iOS and Android devices, review the Nerd Vittles tutorial.
HINT: The reason that storing your PortKnocker codes in a safe place is essential is because it may be your only available way to gain access to your server if your IP address changes. You obviously can’t use the command-line tools to whitelist a new IP address if you cannot gain access to your server at the new IP address.
We always recommend you also add an extra layer of protection by running your server behind a hardware-based firewall with no Internet port exposure, but that’s your call. If you use a hardware-based firewall, be sure to map the three PortKnocker ports to the internal IP address of your server!
The NeoRouter VPN client also is included for rock-solid, secure connectivity for remote users. Read our previous tutorial for setup instructions.
As one would expect, the IPtables firewall is a complex piece of software. If you need assistance configuring it, visit the PIAF Forum for some friendly assistance.
Adding Incredible Fax 11 to Your Server
Once you’ve completed the Incredible PBX install, log out and log back in to load the latest automatic updates. Then reboot. Now you’re ready to continue your adventure by installing Incredible Fax 11 for Ubuntu. Special thanks to Josh North for all his hard work on this! The latest download includes the Incredible Fax 11 installer. So just run the script:
cd /root ./incrediblefax11_ubuntu14.sh
Accept all of the defaults during the installation process. IMPORTANT: Once you complete the install, reboot your server. After rebooting, log into FreePBX -> Module Admin and enable the AvantFax module. When you log out of FreePBX, there now will be an option for AvantFax on the FreePBX login screen. Choose it and enter admin:password to login and change your default password. You also can set your AvantFax admin password by logging into the Linux CLI and… /root/avantfax-pw-change.
Incredible Backup and Restore
We’re pleased to introduce our latest backup and restore utilities for Incredible PBX. Running /root/incrediblebackup will create a backup image of your server in /tmp. This backup image then can be copied to any other medium desired for storage. To restore it to another Incredible PBX 11 server, simply copy the image to a server running Asterisk 11 and FreePBX 2.11 and run /root/incrediblerestore. Doesn’t get much simpler than that.
NEWS FLASH: More good news. If you decide you’d prefer another Linux platform, Incredible Backup and Restore will now let you migrate from one operating system to another. For details on the procedure, see this message thread.
Incredible PBX Automatic Update Utility
Every time you log into your server as root, Incredible PBX will ping the IncrediblePBX.com web site to determine whether one or more updates are available to bring your server up to current specs. We recommend you log in at least once a week just in case some new security vulnerability should come along.
In the meantime, we encourage you to sign up for an account on the PIAF Forum and join the discussion. In addition to providing first-class, free support, we think you’ll enjoy the camaraderie. Come join us!
Originally published: Monday, June 30, 2014 Updated: Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.
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…
- With some providers including ones linked in this article, Nerd Vittles receives referral fees which assist in keeping the Nerd Vittles lights burning brightly. [↩]
Incredible PBX on Steroids: The Asterisk-GUI Project Rolls On (Chapter 3)
We’re big fans of the new hybrid vehicles especially the Cadillac ELR. It combines an electric motor with a gas generator to give you the best of both worlds. For in-town driving, you get terrific performance at 1.5¢/mile using pure electric power. But you’re not hamstrung from venturing out to anywhere you choose using a traditional gas engine that can be refueled quickly at any time. In a nutshell, that’s the design philosophy that’s inspired development of Incredible PBX for the Asterisk-GUI.
This is the third installment in our series. You can catch up with the Overview as well as Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 here.
With Incredible PBX for the Asterisk-GUI, you get a terrific GUI to manage Asterisk® while taking advantage of all the neat features that Incredible PBX brings to the table using traditional dialplan design. Stated another way, you’re not being forced to always use a GUI to manage your Asterisk server when command-line utilities are more functional or efficient. Previous approaches to GUI-only management of Asterisk forced you to always jump through the GUI hoops to do much of anything. Unfortunately, what you lost in that scenario was a lot of the native functionality of Asterisk.
That’s not to say there wasn’t a lot to like about our GUI heritage with Asterisk. These open source projects brought a wealth of features to the table for beginners without having to learn much about the way Asterisk actually worked. The downside was you didn’t learn much about the way Asterisk actually worked. On the one hand, it kept folks from making serious programming errors that could result in major phone bills when security issues crept into a dialplan. The drawback was you never learned why. When something came unglued and things do come unglued, you were up the proverbial creek without a paddle. In fact, many never knew they had a paddle much less what it looked like.
I wish I had a nickel for every user that’s complained over the years that Asterisk won’t start. The last time we checked Google was showing 963,000 of them. It turns out that many of these weren’t failures with Asterisk at all but rather shortcomings in the interaction of one particular graphical user interface with MySQL. If you don’t believe it, shut down MySQL on your existing Asterisk server and then try to restart Asterisk. You’ll never see this with Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI. Why? Because the reliability of Asterisk isn’t tied to the reliability of MySQL, Apache, Perl, Asterisk-GUI, or any other foreign application.
**** WARNING: ERROR IN CONFIGURATION **** astrundir in '/etc/asterisk' is set to but the directory does not exists. Attempting to create it with: 'mkdir -p ' mkdir: missing operand Try 'mkdir --help' for more information. **** ERROR: COULD NOT CREATE **** Attempt to execute 'mkdir -p ' failed with an exit code of 1 You must create this directory and the try again.
In the new Incredible PBX design, we haven’t forgotten about security either. In this day and age, it’s the single most important feature of any PBX that is connected to the Internet. We always recommend running your server behind a hardware-based firewall with no Internet port exposure, but we appreciate that’s not always possible particularly with Cloud-based servers. Incredible PBX is delivered with the Linux IPtables firewall preconfigured. It allows access from your server’s IP address, from the IP address used to install Incredible PBX, from private IP addresses on your local area network, and from a very limited set of trusted providers so that you can connect your trunks to make and receive phone calls. The tools to add and delete whitelist entries on your firewall are also included. In addition, we’ve included the PortKnocker utility which lets remote users with the three port knock codes gain access until their IP addresses can be whitelisted by an administrator. In addition to IPtables security, there’s another layer of protection for web-based applications. Asterisk-GUI, of course, has its own security system that’s tied to the Asterisk manager.conf setup. All of the remaining web applications require Apache authentication. For Reminders and AsteriDex, you can create multiple Apache passwords for individual users or groups of users. For administrator applications, you set an admin password that’s only known by administrators.
We couldn’t help chuckling recently when one of the security sites found a vulnerability in one of the Incredible PBX applications but noted that administrator access was required to get to the application to launch the attack. That’s akin to saying your system is vulnerable if you hand out your root user credentials AND whitelist the IP addresses of the bad guys. Literally, what was documented was true, but finding security issues in software that requires root permissions for access is getting a little desperate, wouldn’t you say? Of course, one of our "competitors" wasted little time splashing it all over their web site. The vulnerability was fixed the same day it was disclosed, by the way. And it was automatically pushed out to every Incredible PBX server, all of which run industry-standard Linux operating systems. That’s the approach to system design and support our users have come to expect. Feel free to compare it to the offerings you’ll find elsewhere, commercial or otherwise. That, my friends, is what freedom of choice is all about.
The Lean, Mean (Pure) Asterisk Machine
The roadmap for the future direction of Incredible PBX continues to evolve, but let us take a moment and share our current thinking. We’ve previously mentioned that the target audience for Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI is hobbyists. That’s not a dirty word in our book. Nor does it mean the platform won’t be as robust and reliable as previous releases of Incredible PBX. It just has a smaller memory footprint and much faster performance. Yes, we’re using Asterisk-GUI which Digium no longer supports. But that was a marketing decision that had nothing to do with the quality of the product. It was written by some of the best brains in the Asterisk business so we’re comfortable using it as a platform. We’ve found only two bugs in beating on the software relentlessly. Outbound Caller ID on a per extension basis can be quirky. Trunk-based CallerID whether assigned at the provider end or on Incredible PBX works just fine including CallerID spoofing where permitted by the provider. The other wrinkle was Asterisk-GUI’s failure to support the [context](+) feature of Asterisk. We’ve found an easy workaround for that one as well. We just won’t use it.
The plan is to roll this out first on the CentOS 6.5 (now 6.6) platform because we view it as the most stable. Scientific Linux 6.6 works equally well. Once we get any kinks out of the code, we’ll turn our attention to Ubuntu 14 and then on to the small hardware: Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, CuBox, and PogoPlug. There’s also been interest in a more internationally-friendly version, and that’s on the drawing board as well. During the rollout, we hope to complete work on moving a few MySQL-based utilities to SQLite3. We will leave MySQL in the installation mix but will turn it off to further reduce the memory overhead of the install. We also will scale back the number of simultaneous Apache sessions running since the purpose of Apache is primarily to support administrator utilities on the server. Actually, you can run Asterisk-GUI using either the native Asterisk http server or with Apache. Thanks to Bill Simon of Simon Telephonics, you’ll have both options. With simple modifications, we think we can improve the performance on memory-constrained platforms dramatically while providing a robust, high performance platform if you have the hardware to support it. We’ve also initiated discussions with Amazon to roll out a phone service using this platform for the new Amazon Echo product. So 2015 is shaping up to be another banner year in the VoIP world. We hope you’ll come join us.
This week we continue the march. We want to review some of the open source features being incorporated into Incredible PBX from the open source code base minus some of the superfluous GUI modules. For example, you can manage blacklisting of callers using nothing more than your telephone. The same is true for SMS messaging. If you can dictate an SMS message, then why type it? Bash scripts are a well-tested feature of Incredible PBX, and you’ll still find a healthy collection of them in the /root folder of your server after you complete the install. But today’s focus is what can be accomplished with Incredible PBX using nothing more than your telephone.
Blacklisting Callers with Incredible PBX
One of our old PBX favorites dating back to the Asterisk@Home days was blacklisting. This means that old girlfriends and telemarketers get routed to Zapateller with a message that your number is not in service. By default, Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI will automatically blacklist incoming calls without a CallerID number. You can modify this behavior if desired:
asterisk -rx "database del blacklist blocked"
If you change your mind and want to turn anonymous call blocking back on, use this command:
asterisk -rx "database put blacklist blocked 1"
We’ve retained the same feature codes to manage blacklisting of specific numbers from any phone on your system:
- *30 – Add a number to Blacklist
- *31 – Remove number from Blacklist
- *32 – Blacklist last number that called
Blacklisting was all smoke and mirrors in the old GUI days. But we want you to understand how this actually works so that you can change it if you’d like. For example, instead of the Zapateller tone, you might prefer to route callers on your blacklist to Lenny (53669 on your phone) so that you waste some of the caller’s time instead of the other way around.
In the extensions_additional.conf file, find the [app-blacklist-check] context. The last four lines in that context look like this:
;exten => s,n,Goto(DLPN_DialPlanMain,53669,1) exten => s,n,Zapateller() exten => s,n,Playback(ss-noservice) exten => s,n,Hangup
To route blacklisted callers to Lenny, just uncomment the top line shown and add semicolons to the next two lines:
exten => s,n,Goto(DLPN_DialPlanMain,53669,1) ;exten => s,n,Zapateller() ;exten => s,n,Playback(ss-noservice) exten => s,n,Hangup
Wasn’t that easy? Now just save your changes and reload your dialplan: asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"
You may prefer to manually add numbers to your blacklist. You can do this from the Linux command prompt like this. Don’t forget the 1.
asterisk -rx "database put blacklist 8005551212 1"
From the Asterisk CLI (asterisk -rvvvvvvvvvv), do it like this:
database put blacklist 8005551212 1
To display all of your blacklist entries, try this:
database show blacklist
To remove an entry from the blacklist, use this syntax:
database del blacklist 8005551212
MP3 Voicemail Messaging for Cellphone Playback
One of the most requested features on our forums has been the ability to forward voicemails in MP3 format so that they play back correctly on cellphones and desktop mail clients. As with many of the Incredible PBX features, we wouldn’t know where to start to thank all of the folks that helped make this happen. You can review the thread on the PIAF Forum for background. This is yet another great example of how the open source community should work. Thanks to everyone that participated in bringing this development to fruition. On the new Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI platform it’s automatic. All you have to do is assign an email address to any voice mailbox on your server in the Users setup, and incoming voicemail messages will be delivered by email in the proper format for playback. The message thread explains how for those with an interest.
Accessing Voicemail Messages with Incredible PBX
Speaking of voicemail, we’ve tried to maintain the same feature codes that many have become accustomed to over the years. Here’s a recap of the codes in case you ever forget:
- *98 – Check Voicemail Messages from Any Phone
- *extension – Leave a Voicemail for Dialed Extension
- * after voicemail connect – Access Voicemail Retrieval
Migrating the Google Speech Feature Set to Incredible PBX for Asterisk-GUI
We previously mentioned that Google Voice wasn’t around when Asterisk-GUI was developed. Not to worry. We’ve added it. And that’s just the beginning. All of the Google features that have made Incredible PBX so popular will be included in the Asterisk-GUI edition. That includes text-to-speech and speech recognition thanks to Lefteris Zafiris. It also includes SMS messaging with your same Google Voice credentials. Pick up a phone and dial S-M-S to dictate and send an SMS message to any recipient in the U.S. or Canada. Pick up a phone and dial 949 to listen to a weather forecast for any major city in the world. Just say the name of the city and state or country. Pick up a phone and dial 951 to listen to the latest News Headlines. Or dial T-O-D-A-Y to listen to Today in History. Sign up for a free Wolfram Alpha key, dial 4747, and you’ve got a voice-enabled encyclopedia at your fingertips. Eat your heart out, Siri. Our extra special thanks to Google for still supporting the open source community. Did we mention… It’s all still free.
Google has changed the rules a bit on using their speech recognition engine. So you now need an API Key to use the Speech Recognition AGI script for Asterisk. Assuming you’ll be using the functionality for “personal and development use,” here’s how to obtain your API key:
1. IMPORTANT FIRST STEP: Use an existing Google/Gmail account to join the Chrome-Dev Group.
2. Using the same account, create a new Speech Recognition Project.
3. Click on your newly created project and choose APIs & auth.
4. Turn ON Speech API by clicking on its Status button in the far right margin.
5. Click on Credentials in APIs & auth and choose Create New Key -> Server key. Leave the IP address restriction blank!
6. Write down your new API key or copy it to the clipboard.
7. Once you’ve installed Incredible PBX, log into your server as root and edit speech-recog.agi in /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin.
8. Go to line 70 of speech-recog.agi: my $key = "". Insert your API key from Step #6 above between the quotation marks and save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then Enter.
This will activate all of the Speech Recognition applications in Incredible PBX as described above.
Activating Wolfram Alpha with Speech Recognition in Incredible PBX
If you’re not familiar with Wolfram Alpha, it’s an encyclopedia and almanac on steroids. It’s driven by a supercomputer. There’s not much it doesn’t know. We’ve written an exhaustive article on Wolfram Alpha for Asterisk so start there. With Incredible PBX, everything is preconfigured for you. All you need to do is obtain a (free) API key.
To get started, sign up for a free Wolfram Alpha API account. Just provide your email address and set up a password. It takes less than a minute. Log into your account and click on Get An App ID. Make up a name for your application and write down (and keep secret) your APP-ID code. That’s all there is to getting set up with Wolfram Alpha. If you want to explore costs for commercial use, there are links to let you get more information.
Now you’ll need to insert your API key into /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/4747. The first line of the file looks like this: APPID="Wolfram-Alpha-API-Key-Goes-Here". Insert your API key between the quotation marks and save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, then Enter.
You’re ready to try out Wolfram Alpha by dialing 4-7-4-7 from any phone connected to your server. Here are some sample queries to get you started:
Weather in Charleston South Carolina
Weather forecast for Washington D.C.
Next solar eclipse
Otis Redding
Define politician
Who won the 1969 Superbowl? (Broadway Joe)
What planes are overhead? (flying over your server’s location)
Ham and cheese sandwich (nutritional information)
Holidays 2015 (summary of all holidays for 2015 with dates and DOW)
Medical University of South Carolina (history of MUSC)
Star Trek (show history, air dates, number of episodes, and more)
Apollo 11 (everything you ever wanted to know)
Cheapest Toaster (brand and price)
Battle of Gettysburg (sad day 🙂 )
Daylight Savings Time 2015 Charleston South Carolina (date ranges and how to set your clocks)
iPads by Apple (pricing, models, and specs from Best Buy)
Doughnut (you don’t wanna know)
Snickers bar (ditto)
Weather (local weather at your server’s location)
Yahoo! Weather by ZIP Code Is Moving to SQLite 3
One of the more popular features of Incredible PBX has always been the ability to retrieve a Yahoo weather forecast by dialing Z-I-P and plugging in a 5-digit ZIP code for the weather report you wished to hear. This always required a MySQL zip code database to translate the zip code into a city and state for presentation to the various weather services. As part of our move to reduce the memory footprint of Incredible PBX, we are gradually removing our dependence on MySQL. In its place we’re deploying SQLite3 databases, and Weather by ZIP Code was our first successful migration. Moving the MySQL zip code database to SQLite was a snap using a terrific open source script that we highly recommend to developers. It lets you convert any MySQL database (with indexes) to SQLite 3 in seconds. Here’s the link if you ever have the need. About 5 lines of PHP code had to be modified to complete the migration from MySQL to SQLite. Not bad. For our purposes, you’ll never know the difference when you dial in for your next weather forecast.
Originally published: Monday, December 15, 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 Firsthand Look at Disaster Recovery: Tethering and IAX with Asterisk
One of the exciting challenges of building a swimming pool is knowing that it’s just a matter of time until your Internet connection dies. As you might imagine, swimming pools are major construction and involve a lot of digging. And digging usually means some oops moments when cables get cut. In our case, we had watched the folks digging the trenches for all of the pool plumbing to be sure they didn’t accidentally whack one of three coax cables coming into our house. And, when it came time to cover up the trenches, we pointed out the orange cables to the Bobcat driver knowing we were finally home free. Not so fast! Two minutes later, Mario had driven the Bobcat right over the primary Internet cable leaving the shredded remains sticking up through the dirt. Oops. Sorry. Shit happens!
Looking on the positive side, we chuckled, "What a perfect opportunity to test our backup Asterisk® system!" Our backup system is pretty clever if we do say so. It relies upon a Verizon WiFi HotSpot running on our Galaxy smartphone and a duplicate of our Asterisk-based PBX in a Flash™ server running as a virtual machine under VirtualBox on an iMac desktop. The entire setup takes less than a minute to activate. Well, that was the plan anyway.
It turns out that Verizon does SIP a little differently with a SIP ALG in the path so Asterisk couldn’t register with all but one of our dozen SIP providers. Congratulations, CallCentric! The workaround is to enable STUN. That is now possible with Asterisk 11. Short of that, you’re left with CallCentric. Unfortunately for us, we don’t do much SIP trunking with CallCentric, and none of our primary DIDs are connected through them. The other option is to add port=5080 to your trunk setup with any SIP trunks you register with VoIP.ms using a username and password. Our attention span was too short to tackle STUN in the middle of this crisis. But there’s good news. Verizon doesn’t mess with IAX network traffic at all. Since a couple of our primary DIDs are registered with VoIP.ms using IAX trunks, restoring these IAX trunks to full functionality took less than a minute. That is step one of a three-step process. You need inbound trunks, phones, and outbound trunks to get your redundant VoIP server back in business.
Getting phones to function on what is now a purely WiFi network (through the Verizon HotSpot) can be problematic unless you’ve done your homework and sprinkled a few WiFi-capable SIP phones around your home or office. In our case, we still have Grandstream’s GXP2200 Android phones scattered everywhere so it was just a matter of plugging in the WiFI adapters and rebooting. The newer GXV3240 would work just as well.1
All that remained was enabling several trunks for outbound calls. Since VoIP.ms IAX trunks support both incoming and outgoing calls, we were home free. And, with Google Voice trunks, it was simply a matter of jumping through Google’s security hoops to reenable the connections on a new IP address.
Lessons Learned. Here’s a quick checklist for those of you that think about disaster recovery for your home or for clients and businesses. Nothing beats some advance planning. If money is no object, then WiFi tethering from a smartphone with one of the major providers whose service works well in your home or office environment is the way to go. 4G is a must!
In our case, money was an object so we had the foresight to acquire a Verizon SIM card from eBay that included an unlimited data plan. With this setup, it costs only $1 a day extra to add WiFi tethering, and you can turn it off and on as often as you like without any additional fees or surcharges. There also are no additional charges for using boatloads of data! We’re actually writing this column with a tethered connection from a hotel in Washington (results above). To give you some idea of why an unlimited data plan is important, our home operation burned through 4 gigs of data in less than 24 hours once we activated WiFi tethering. Of course, there were people doing things other than making phones calls, but tethering enables 5 connections to function just about like the cable modem service you originally had in place. So expect the data usage to be substantial. Everybody likes 24/7 Internet service.
Loss of phone calls through a PBX is more of an annoyance than a crisis these days because almost everyone also has a smartphone. Even so, the SIP gotcha with Verizon Wireless was a surprise because we hadn’t really tested our super-duper emergency system in advance. That wasn’t too smart obviously. The old adage applies. Do as we say, not as we do. Unplug your cable modem or DSL connection and actually test your backup system before D-Day arrives.
On the VoIP provider end, now is the time to set up an account with a provider that offers both SIP and IAX connectivity. Step 2 is to actually configure an IAX trunk (as a subaccount to use VoIP.ms parlance) and test it. IAX trunks actually have fewer headaches with NAT, but there are only a handful of providers that still provide the service. Find one now and make certain that your primary DIDs will roll over to the IAX trunk in case of an outage. I’m always reminded that we have Mark Spencer to thank for IAX. It was his brainchild. Thank you, Mark! With VoIP.ms, you also can spoof your CallerID so that calls will still appear to originate from your primary Asterisk PBX.
Keep in mind that a VirtualBox-based Asterisk virtual machine and a Desktop computer both need an IP address and will have to be started on WLAN0 rather than ETH0. Remember, your wired connection is now dead.
You’re also going to want to acquire at least a couple of WiFi-capable SIP phones that can be connected with your Asterisk server using your WiFi HotSpot. Also make certain that you have a preconfigured IPtables firewall on your backup system. Remember, your hardware-based firewall connected to your cable modem won’t provide any protection once you switch to HotSpot operation. Lucky for you, Incredible PBX™ servers come preconfigured with a locked-down IPtables firewall and a WhiteList. Just add the new IP addresses of your server and phones, and you’re secure on the public Internet.
Finally, let’s do the HotSpot connection math. You’ll need an IP address for your desktop computer running VirtualBox. You’ll need a second IP address for the Asterisk virtual machine. Then you’ll need an IP address for every WiFi-enabled SIP phone. If the maximum number of connections is five on your HotSpot, that means you’ve got the necessary capacity for at most 3 WiFi SIP phones assuming you don’t enable a WiFi printer and if nobody else wants to use a computer during the outage. The other option is to add an inexpensive travel router with bridge mode to your mix of 5 devices. We always keep one handy for extended trips. A properly configured travel router provides an additional WiFi network with some extra WiFi connections. Good luck!
Security Alerts. Serious SSL and FreePBX security vulnerabilities have been discovered AND patched during the past week. If you have not patched your server and Asterisk, FreePBX, Apache, and/or WebMin are exposed to the public Internet, you have a serious problem on your hands. See this thread for details on the FreePBX vulnerability. And see this thread for the steps necessary to patch SSL in Asterisk, Apache, and Webmin. While Incredible PBX servers were automatically patched for the FreePBX vulnerability, the SSL issues require manual patching and an Asterisk upgrade. A script for upgrading Asterisk 11 servers is included in the message thread linked above. ALWAYS run your VoIP server behind a firewall with no Internet port exposure to Asterisk, FreePBX, SSH, or the Apache and Webmin web servers! And, if you think all of this security stuff is just a silly waste of your time, then read about the latest lucky recipient of a $166,000 phone bill.
Originally published: Monday, October 20, 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…
- Some of our links refer users to Amazon or other service providers when we find their prices are competitive for the recommended products. Nerd Vittles receives a small referral fee from these providers to help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate commissions. However, when pricing is comparable or availability is favorable, we support these providers because they support us. [↩]
The 5-Minute PBX: A Fresh Look at Oracle’s VirtualBox with Incredible PBX
Today we’re paying another visit to our favorite virtual machine platform and introducing four new VoIP images that let you compare features and performance of Asterisk® 11 running atop Ubuntu® 14 or Scientific Linux™ 6.5 with FreePBX® 2.11 or the just-released version 12 release candidate. Think of Incredible PBX™ as the VoIP glue stick that assembles all the necessary VoIP components and holds them together seamlessly. As with all Incredible PBX builds, you also get the full complement of goodies including dozens of text-to-speech apps, voice dialing, SMS messaging, fax support, reminders and wakeup calls, and SECURITY! The difference with the VirtualBox® platform is you get a turnkey install of everything on any desktop computer in less than 5 minutes! That includes Windows PCs, Macs, Linux desktops, and even Solaris machines.
Is VirtualBox merely a sandbox for experimentation? Absolutely not. With any of the beefier desktop computers available today, running Incredible PBX as a 24/7 VirtualBox image is every bit as feature rich with stellar performance that’s equivalent to using dedicated hardware. And there are some added advantages. Obviously, deploying a turnkey VoIP platform in under 5 minutes is a major plus. But, unlike using a dedicated Linux platform, you also get the ability to take snapshots of your system and do full backups in minutes instead of the hours required to bring down dedicated hardware, load a different backup application using a different operating system, perform a backup, and then reboot your VoIP server. And your backups won’t just run on the one server on which the backup was performed. You can restore the backup to any other computer that can run VirtualBox. For any of you that came from a network management background, you know what a big deal that really is. And there’s one more bonus. With Incredible Backup and Restore, you can move your image to dedicated hardware running the same operating system with Asterisk 11 and the same version of FreePBX in minutes.
Need to deploy VoIP servers at dozens of sites around the globe? Not a problem with VirtualBox. Just send a preconfigured VirtualBox image to each site and install VirtualBox on a local desktop computer. In 5 minutes, you have a functional VoIP server including interconnectivity to all of your other VoIP servers with a virtual private network already in place to provide secure VoIP connectivity between all of your sites.
Are there security compromises using the VirtualBox platform? Not at all. Incredible PBX still comes preconfigured with the Linux IPtables firewall that is locked down to a whitelist of local area networks, preferred providers, and your own IP addresses. You can expand the whitelist using the add-ip and add-fqdn scripts or use PortKnocker and Travelin’ Man 4 tools to let remote users gain instant access.
Why four different Incredible PBX images? Glad you asked. Ubuntu and Scientific Linux are a bit like French and Spanish. They’re both languages for communicating, but many of the words are different. Some prefer one or the other so now you have a choice. As for the FreePBX options, let us put in a plug for the FreePBX 12 release candidate. The FreePBX Dev Team has invested thousands of hours in this new software. It shows! Please take it for a spin and give the developers some feedback. To move to Asterisk 12 and 13, you’re going to need FreePBX 12 so you might as well start getting used to it. While there are many similarities in the user interface, the under-the-covers work that the FreePBX team has invested in this new product is nothing short of amazing. There’s very little of the FreePBX 2.11 code that hasn’t been either cleaned up or completely rewritten. We think you’ll like it so give it a try. Those that need a production environment probably should stick with FreePBX 2.11 for the time being. The new Virtual Box images also give you an opportunity to compare performance between the two operating systems and the two FreePBX versions. This isn’t 1999. Take advantage of the opportunity. It only takes a few minutes to spin up a new virtual machine and go for a test drive.
Getting Started. For today, we’ll provide a refresher course on loading VirtualBox and one of the Incredible PBX virtual images. Then we want to spend a little time explaining the secret sauce that goes into building these images so that you can do it yourself either to migrate to a different network or to deploy at multiple sites. When we’re finished, you’ll know everything we’ve learned about deploying VirtualBox machines and, unlike Grandma, we won’t leave an important ingredient out of the recipe just to be sure you never forget how good Grandma’s cookies really were. So let’s get started.
Installing Oracle VM VirtualBox
Oracle’s virtual machine platform inherited from Sun is amazing. 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 today is to download one or more of the VirtualBox installers from VirtualBox.org or Oracle.com. Our recommendation is to put all of the 100MB installers on a 4GB thumb drive.1 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.
Downloading the Incredible PBX Virtual Machines
A word of warning on the front end. Incredible PBX images featuring Asterisk 11 for VirtualBox are huge! The two Ubuntu images for FreePBX 2.11 and 12 are 1.5GB. The two Scientific Linux 6.5 images for FreePBX 2.11 and 12 are 2.3GB. We’ve added SourceForge hotlinks. So simply click on the desired images and download them to your desktop. Then go to lunch.
Importing & Configuring Incredible PBX Virtual Machines in VirtualBox
You only perform the import step one time. Once imported into VirtualBox, Incredible PBX is ready to use. There’s no further installation required, just like an OpenVZ template… only better. Double-click on the .ova file you downloaded to begin the procedure and load it into VirtualBox. When prompted, be sure to check the Reinitialize the Mac address of all network cards box and then click the Import button. Once the import is finished, you’ll see a new Incredible PBX virtual machine in your VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window. We need to make a couple of one-time adjustments to the Incredible PBX VM configuration to account for differences in sound and network cards on different host machines.
Click on the Incredible PBX 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. Finally, click Settings -> System, uncheck Hardware clock in UTC time, and click OK. That’s all the configuration that is necessary for your Incredible PBX Virtual Machine. The rest is automagic.
Running Incredible PBX Virtual Machines in VirtualBox
Once you’ve imported and configured the Incredible PBX Virtual Machine, you’re ready to go. Highlight IncrediblePBX Virtual Machine in the VM List on the VirtualBox Manager Window and click the Start button. The boot procedure with your chosen operating system will begin just as if you had installed Incredible PBX 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 virtual machine. Remember, you still have full access to your desktop computer. Incredible PBX is merely running as a task in a VirtualBox window. Always gracefully halt Incredible PBX just as you would on a dedicated computer.
Here’s what you need to know. To work in the Incredible PBX 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. To access the Linux CLI, login as root with the default password: password. To access FreePBX with a browser, point to the IP address of your virtual machine and login as admin with admin password set below. For the security of your server, we recommend that you log in to the Linux CLI at least once a week so that Incredible PBX updates get applied to your server regularly. This is critically important if you care about your phone bill.
When logging in for the first time, Incredible PBX will go through some setup steps and then reboot. Login again to complete the setup. status will always provide a snapshot of your system. To shut down Incredible PBX gracefully, click in the VM window with your mouse, log in as root, and type: halt. Be sure to complete the following setup steps from the Linux CLI:
- Change your root password: passwd
- Set your FreePBX admin password: /root/admin-pw-change
- Set your correct time zone: /root/timezone-setup
- Add WhiteList entries to firewall if needed: /root/add-ip or /root/add-fqdn
- Store PortKnocker credentials in a safe place: cat /root/knock.FAQ
- Enable SAMBA if desired: /root/samba-enable.sh
- Enable Incredible Fax support if desired: (script in /root)
- Login to your NeoRouter VPN server if desired: /root/nrclientcmd
Preparing Incredible PBX Virtual Machines for Migration
As the Linux operating systems have become more turnkey, one of the shortcuts that has been implemented on both the RedHat and Debian/Ubuntu platforms is storage of your network setup so that the server reboots more quickly. While that’s fine for rebooting on the same server, it’s a real problem if you attempt to move your setup to different hardware or a new network because eth0 will not load. That means no IP address! Here are two ways to assure that things will actually work after the move. Both assume that you will have a DHCP server at the new location just as you did at your existing site.
The Easy Way. If you have console access after the VM image is restored on the new platform (which means you don’t need a network IP address for the server in order to log in as root), then the easy way to prepare any of the Incredible PBX machines for relocation is to issue the following commands before you halt the system and make a VirtualBox backup:
touch /etc/update_hostconfig touch /etc/update_serverconfig
Once you have halted the server, edit both the sound card and network card settings and disable both of them in VirtualBox Manager. Then choose File -> Export Appliance from the VirtualBox title bar and create a .ova backup image on your desktop. You now have an image that is similar to the Incredible PBX image that you originally downloaded, except it has all of your data and settings. All you have to do is repeat the install drill above at the new location using the .ova image you created and log in with whatever your current root password happens to be. You’ll get a two-pass automatic setup just as you did when you began today’s adventure.
The only drawback to this procedure is the fact that the extension 701 and default DISA passwords will be initialized when you first boot from your .ova image at the other location. Aside from that, you’ll have a clean platform with new SSH and DUNDI credentials as well as mostly sanitized log files.
The Hard Way. The other alternative is to manually prepare your existing system for migration before you shut it down. The primary reason for doing this would be to assure that you can log in with an SSH client at the other end as soon as the server is booted. The steps differ a bit depending upon whether you’re on the Ubuntu or Scientific Linux platform. But on both platforms you need to enter the IP address from which you will log in at the new site unless it is on one of the private LAN subnets that already is whitelisted in IPtables. Just issue the command /root/add-ip and choose 0 option to enable all services for the new IP address. Then…
On the Ubuntu platform, issue the following commands:
touch /etc/update_hostconfig touch /etc/update_serverconfig rm -f /var/lib/dhcp/* rm -f /etc/udev/rules.d/70* halt
On the Scientific Linux platform, issue the following commands:
touch /etc/update_hostconfig touch /etc/update_serverconfig rm -f /var/lib/dhcpd/* rm -f /var/lib/dhclient/* rm -f /etc/udev/rules.d/70* halt
Once you have halted the server, edit both the sound card and network card settings and disable both of them in VirtualBox Manager. Then choose File -> Export Appliance from the VirtualBox title bar and create a .ova backup image on your desktop. Now you’re an expert. Enjoy!
Originally published: Monday, September 22, 2014
Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Our forum is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus.
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…
- 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. [↩]
VoIP Hardware Deal of the Year: Meet the $20 Pogoplug 4 with Incredible PBX
This week’s project is not for mere mortals. It’s for techies that also happen to be cheapskates frugal. You may recall the Pogoplug from yesteryear. Well, the Pogoplug 4 still is around and can be yours for under $20 with free 2-day shipping if you’re an Amazon Prime member. But the clock is ticking on these bad boys. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.1
UPDATE: There’s more good news. Now the cost with the Pogoplug Backup & Sharing model is just $10.95! For our purposes, the main difference is one less USB port, but it still has one which is all you need for wireless networking.
So we took the dare and decided to see whether the Pogoplug 4 could actually run Asterisk 11® and FreePBX® 2.11 and Incredible PBX™. And guess what? It may not be pretty, but it works. If you happen to have a Google Voice number and a kid away at school or a grandma in a distant city with an Internet connection or if you have a vacation home or rental property that needs phone service (but not often), then this $20 project may be for you. Configure the device, add a cheap SIP phone, and presto! You’ve got free calling in the U.S. and Canada with your very own phone number for as long as you have Internet service and Google chooses to keep paying your phone bill. 😉
Don’t take our word for it. Call our Pogoplug for a quick IVR demo compliments of Allison:
- Call by Name (just say "American Airlines" to try it out)
- Conference Call (enter 1234# to join the conference)
- Wolfram Alpha (try this: "What planes are overhead?")
- Lenny (the Telemarketers’ Worst Nightmare)
- Yahoo News Headlines
- Weather Forecasts (say a city and state or country)
- Today in History
- Ring the House Phones (sends you back to Lenny)
Our tip of the hat this week goes to Qui Hong without whom none of this would have been possible. His tutorial on transforming the Pogoplug 4 into a Debian server is a true masterpiece. And his blog is where we begin our adventure once you have the correct Pogoplug 4 in hand: POGO-V4-A3-01. Our link has the correct one, but double-check the Model Number just to be sure.
Converting the Pogoplug 4 into a Debian Platform
Once you have your Pogoplug, you’ll need to scurry over to Qui Hong’s blog and carefully work through his tutorial to convert your Pogoplug into a Debian server. As we’ve said many times before, if you can follow a cookie recipe and end up with edible cookies, then you can do this. Just be very careful of typos. One bad keystroke can turn your Pogoplug into a burnt cookie. Then it becomes a $40 project. 🙂
Installing Incredible PBX 11.12.0 on the Pogoplug 4
Once your Pogoplug has been Debianized, there are five simple steps to get Incredible PBX up and running on your Pogoplug 4:
- Purchase a storage device
- Download Incredible PBX image
- Untar the image on your desktop
- Burn the image to an SD card
- Insert the SD card in the Pogoplug and boot
Choosing a Storage Platform. The first step is to purchase a suitable SD card. We recommend at least a 16GB Class 10 card from Transcend, SanDisk, or Kingston. All of them are about $10 on Amazon and many include free 2-day shipping for Prime customers.
Downloading Incredible PBX for Pogoplug. From your favorite desktop computer, download the latest build of Incredible PBX from SourceForge. Depending upon your network connection and the SourceForge mirror, it can take awhile. It’s a whopping 1.5GB image!
Untarring Incredible PBX for Pogoplug. Depending upon your desktop platform, untarring incrediblepbx.4.pogoplug.D7.latest.tar.gz is as simple as double-clicking on it in the Downloads folder (on a Mac). On the Windows platform, here are 3 utilities that will do the job. On a Linux desktop, open a Terminal window and…
tar zxvf incrediblepbx.4.pogoplug.D7.latest.tar.gz
Burning the Incredible PBX image to SD card. Once you’ve untarred the file, you’ll find two scripts that make burning the image to an SD card simple if you’re on a Mac or Linux desktop. On a Windows machine, it’s a little more complicated. Most SD cards come preformatted with a DOS partition so your Windows machine should recognize the SD card when it’s inserted. If not, format the card using a utility such as SD Card Formatter. Next, you’ll need Win32 Disk Imager to burn pogoplug.img to your card. Once the image has been transferred, gracefully unmount the card from your desktop.
Booting Incredible PBX on the Pogoplug. Insert the SD card (electronics side down) into your Pogoplug 4. Then apply power to the device after connecting an Ethernet cable to a network with Internet connectivity that can also hand out DHCP addresses. Visit your router to decipher the IP address assigned to the Pogoplug and reserve the IP address so that it doesn’t suddenly change down the road. Log into Incredible PBX as root with pogoplug as your password. Your SSH credentials, Asterisk DUNDI secrets, logs, and network connection options will be initialized. When prompted, press Enter to reboot your server. With some SD cards, you may find yourself waiting an eternity for the promised reboot. After seeing the "rebooting" message, count to ten. If your server still hasn’t rebooted, remove and reapply power. This quirk goes away after the first reboot.
After the reboot, log in again as root with password: pogoplug. Your firewall setup will be initialized to lock down your whitelist to your server’s public and private IP addresses AND the IP address of the machine from which you’re logging in. All of your FreePBX passwords will be randomized as well. The whole process only takes a few seconds.
When the second pass configuration is complete, you will be greeted by a welcoming message. STOP and read it. It has loads of important information about your server’s configuration and your next steps. Press ENTER to review status:
The Next 10 Steps. Before you do anything else, complete the following steps. It only takes a minute to secure and properly configure your server:
- Change your root password: passwd
- Change your FreePBX admin password: /root/admin-pw-change
- Set your correct time zone: /root/timezone-setup
- Expand partition to match SD card size: /root/resize-partition
- Add any desired IP addresses to WhiteList: /root/add-ip
- Decipher the randomized password for extension 701. It’s in the data field:
mysql -uroot -ppassw0rd -e "select * from asterisk.sip where id=701 and keyword='secret'"
- Decipher the randomized voicemail password for extension 701. It’s the first entry:
cat /etc/asterisk/voicemail.conf | grep 701 | cut -f 3 -d " "
- Enable Windows Networking, if desired: /root/samba-enable.sh
- Configure PPTP Network, if desired: cat /root/pptp-faq
- Check status to be sure everything is working: status
A Few Important Tips. Every operating system and service provider has their quirks. Ask Bill Gates! Debian and especially Comcast are no different. Fortunately, with Debian, it’s a very short list.
1. Use the following commands (only!) to shutdown and restart your server: halt and reboot. These commands are reworked in Incredible PBX to gracefully shutdown important services so that files don’t get damaged. Please use them!
2. If you ever want to move your server to a different network, complete these steps before you leave your existing network. First, using add-ip or add-fqdn, add the new WhiteList addresses for your new location using Option 0 (all privileges). Otherwise, you won’t be able to access your server once you move. Then issue the commands below. This will trigger a new Phase I update (outlined above) on the default network (eth0) using DHCP the next time you boot your Pogoplug.
touch /etc/update_hostconfig halt
3. You really do need email connectivity to get the most out of Incredible PBX. It’s the way you receive important notifications from FreePBX, and it’s also how voicemail messages are delivered. From the Linux CLI, test your server to be sure you can send emails reliably:
echo "test" | mail -s testmessage yourname@gmail.com
After checking your spam folder, if you really didn’t get the email, it may be that your service provider is blocking downstream SMTP traffic. You can use your provider’s SMTP server as a smarthost to send out mail with Exim4. Just run the following program to reconfigure the Exim mail server: dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config. Choose the SmartHost option and enter your provider’s SMTP address, e.g. smtp.comcast.net or smtp.knology.net. Exim will restart.
4. If you’d like to activate ODBC support for Asterisk including our ODBC sample applications including Speed Dial, here are the steps. Log into your server as root and issue the following commands:
cd /root wget http://incrediblepbx.com/odbc-pogoplug.tar.gz tar zxvf odbc-pogoplug.tar.gz rm odbc-pogoplug.tar.gz ./mysql-sample ./mysql-odbc ./odbc-gen.sh
Now you can try things out by dialing 222 from a phone connected to your server. When prompted for the employee number, enter 12345. Or dial 223 and, when prompted for the AsteriDex Dial Code, enter 263 (the first 3 letters of the American Airlines entry).
5. Want a list of your completed calls without using FreePBX? It’s easy:
mysql -uroot -ppassw0rd -e "SELECT SUBSTRING(calldate,6,11) AS calldate,clid,src,dst,duration from asteriskcdrdb.cdr WHERE disposition='ANSWERED' ORDER BY calldate DESC"
6. There may be situations in which it is desirable to use wireless networking instead of a wired connection with your Pogoplug. For under $10, you now can add WiFi. Here’s our post on the PIAF Forum to show you how.
Managing FreePBX with Incredible Backup and Restore
Unlike other releases of Incredible PBX, the backup and restore tools can be helpful on the Pogoplug platform. Even though Asterisk runs smoothly, calls sound great, and performance is pretty amazing, the FreePBX GUI is usable but a bit sluggish on the Pogoplug platform. If the performance bothers you, there’s a workaround. Create an Incredible Backup image of your Pogoplug, restore that image on a more normal Ubuntu 14 platform with ample RAM, and then make your FreePBX changes there using the FreePBX GUI. When you’re finished, make a backup of the changes, and then restore that backup to your Pogoplug. It sounds more complicated than it actually is. In essence, you’ll be transforming FreePBX into an Asterisk code generator. In fact, once a backup is restored, you can shut down your web server, and almost everything will still work. We were able to perform the entire procedure including updating all of the FreePBX modules and adding a Google Voice trunk in about 15 minutes using a snapshot of an Incredible PBX for Ubuntu 14 droplet we previously had created. Here are the actual steps to perform the first time:
1. Take an image snapshot of your server with Incredible Backup: /root/incrediblebackup
HINT: No need to do it initially. One is included: /backup/DU-2014.09.07.19.46-A11.12.0-F2.11-I11.12.0.tar.gz
2. Create a 512MB Droplet on Digital Ocean using Ubuntu 14 and Incredible PBX for Ubuntu. Follow the Nerd Vittles tutorial which also has a signup link to assist our projects. Coupon code: ALLSSD10 gets you a $10 credit this month. Once you’re up and running, you may want to take a snapshot so that you can quickly recreate droplets while also avoiding hourly charges for the one you’ve previously built (whether running or not!). Digital Ocean 512MB droplets cost less than a penny an hour so this is not a big ticket item. When you finish with the droplet, just destroy it (once you’ve made a snapshot!). Then the money meter stops. First time build takes about 30 minutes.
3. After creating /backup folder on DO droplet, copy your backup image from step #1 to this folder.
4. Restore the image: /root/incrediblerestore /backup/DU-somefilename.tar.gz
5. Open FreePBX on DO with a browser and log in as admin with your admin password.
6. Make all the changes desired using the tutorial below. Reload FreePBX (red bar) when prompted before exiting!
7. Make a DO backup of your new setup: /root/incrediblebackup
8. Copy the DO backup file to /backup on your Pogoplug.
9. Restore the DO backup: /root/incrediblerestore /backup/DU-somefilename.tar.gz
10. Log out and back into your Pogoplug as root.
Getting Started with VoIP and FreePBX
To access FreePBX, just point to the IP address of the server. The main control panel looks like this:
As configured, the default user account for FreePBX administration is admin. The password is whatever you set in the initial setup above. If you ever forget it, you can reset it easily: /root/admin-pw-change.
For those new to Asterisk and FreePBX, here’s a brief primer on what needs to happen before you can make and receive calls. If you have an existing Google Voice account, lucky you. This gets you a phone number for your PBX so people can call you. And it provides a vehicle to place free calls to plain old telephones in the U.S. and Canada so long as Google continues to provide the free service.
If you don’t have a Google Voice account or a shiny new smartphone, then you will need to purchase a SIP trunk from one of the numerous vendors around the world. Our favorite (because they provide terrific service at a modest price AND provide financial support to the Nerd Vittles, PBX in a Flash, and Incredible PBX projects) is Vitelity. Their special rates and a link for a discount are included at the end of today’s article.
Unlike POTS phone service from Ma Bell, the SIP World is a little different. First, you don’t need to put all your eggs in one basket. A trunk that gets you a phone number for incoming calls need not be with the same vendor that provides a trunk to place outbound calls. In fact, you may want multiple trunks for outbound calls just to have some redundancy. A list of our favorites in the U.S. and Canada is available on the PIAF Forum. Of course, there also are providers that offer all-you-can-eat calling plans. Two of our favorites are Vestalink and Future-Nine.
You’ll also need a softphone or SIP phone to actually place and receive calls. YATE makes a free softphone for PCs, Macs, and Linux machines so download your favorite and install it on your desktop.
Phones connect to extensions in FreePBX to work with Incredible PBX. Extensions talk to trunks (like Google Voice) to make and receive calls. FreePBX uses outbound routes to direct outgoing calls from extensions to trunks, and FreePBX uses inbound routes to route incoming calls from trunks to extensions to make your phones ring. In a nutshell, that’s how a PBX works.
There are lots of bells and whistles that you can explore down the road including voicemail, conferencing, IVRs, autoattendants, paging, intercoms, CallerID lookups, announcements, DISA, call parking and pickup, queues, ring groups, and on and on. And then there’s all of the Incredible PBX applications which are covered separately in this Nerd Vittles article. Once you’re comfortable with one server, you or your company will want some more. This Nerd Vittles article will walk you through interconnecting them into a seamless mesh network so that you can call from one office to another transparently. Yes, those articles were written for the Raspberry Pi. But the beauty of Incredible PBX is that it runs (almost) identically on every server platform.
Here’s our 7-Step Checklist to Getting Started with FreePBX:
1. Setting Up Google Voice. If you want free calling in the U.S. and Canada, then you’ll need an existing Google Voice account that includes the Google Chat feature. You’ll need one dedicated to Incredible PBX, or it won’t work. Log out after setting up the new Google Voice account! Also note that Google Voice may cease to function at any time after May 15, 2014. You can read all about it here.
- Log into existing Google Voice account
- Enable Google Chat as Phone Destination
- Configure Google Voice Calls Settings:
- 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
- Place test call in and out using GMail Call Phone
- Log out of your Google Voice account
If this fails, then Google may have blocked your IP address. Here’s how to unblock it.
2. Activating a Google Voice Trunk. To create a Trunk in FreePBX to handle calls to and from Google Voice, you’ll need three pieces of information from the Google Voice account you set up above: the 10-digit Google Voice phone number, your Google Voice account name, and your Google Voice password. Choose Connectivity -> Google Voice (Motif) from the FreePBX GUI. The following form will appear:
Fill in the blanks with your information and check only the top 2 boxes. If your Google Voice account name ends in @gmail.com, leave that out. Otherwise, include the full email address. Then click Submit Changes and Apply Config.
To activate a Google Voice trunk, you must restart Asterisk on the Pogoplug platform: amportal restart.
3. Setting a Destination for Incoming Calls. Now that you’ve created your Google Voice Trunk, we need to tell FreePBX how to process inbound calls when someone dials your Google Voice number. There are any number of choices. You could simply ring an extension. Or you could ring multiple extensions by first creating a Ring Group which is just a list of extension numbers. Or you could direct incoming calls to an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. By default, Incredible PBX is configured to route all incoming calls to extension 701. You can change the setting whenever you like by choosing Connectivity -> Inbound Routes -> Default. In the Set Destination section of the form, change the target destination from the pull-down lists.
Always click Submit and then click Apply Config to save new settings in FreePBX. This is especially important on the Pogoplug platform because you cannot actually do it once you restore the backup image to the Pogoplug.
4. Activating Additional Trunks with FreePBX. As we mentioned, there are lots of SIP providers to choose from. Once you have signed up for service, configuring the trunk is easy. Here is a quick Cheat Sheet courtesy of Kristian Hare, who translated our original setups into a spreadsheet. Just click on the image below to open it in a new window. Then click on the redisplayed image to enlarge it. The left and right cursor keys will move you around in the image. Click on the image again to shrink it.
5. Changing Extension Passwords. From the main FreePBX GUI, choose Applications -> Extensions. Then click on 701 in the Extension List on the right side of your display. You’ll see a form that looks like this:
For now, we only need to make a few changes. First, you need a very secure password for both the extension itself and your voicemail account for this extension. The extension secret needs to be a combination of letters and numbers. The Voicemail Password needs to be all numbers, preferably six or more. Replace the existing password entries with your own (very secure) entries. You also need to lock down this extension so that it is only accessible from devices on your private LAN. You do that with the deny and permit entries which currently are filled with zeroes. Leave the deny entry the way it is which tells Incredible PBX to block everybody except those allowed in the permit entry below. For the permit, we need the first three octets of your private LAN address, e.g. if your LAN is 192.168.0.something then the permit entry will be 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0.
Finally, you need to plug in your actual email address in the Voicemail section so that voicemails can be delivered to you when someone leaves a message. You can also include a pager email address if you want a text message alert with incoming voicemails. If you want the voicemails to automatically be deleted from the server after they are emailed to you (a good idea considering the disk storage limitations of your microSD card), change the Delete Voicemail option from No to Yes. That’s it. Now save your settings by clicking the Submit button. Then reload the dialplan by clicking on the red prompt when it appears.
In case you’re curious, unless you’ve chosen to automatically delete voicemails after emailing them, you can retrieve your voicemails by dialing *98701 from any extension on your phone system. You’ll be prompted to enter the voicemail password you set up. In addition to managing your voicemails, you’ll also be given the opportunity to either return the call to the number of the person that called or to transfer the voicemail to another extension’s voicemail box. And you can always leave a voicemail for someone by dialing their extension number preceded by an asterisk, e.g. *701 would let someone leave you a voicemail without actually calling you.
6. Eliminating 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.
7. Configuring CallerID Superfecta. In order to match names with phone numbers, Incredible PBX includes a FreePBX application named CallerID Superfecta. Out of the box, Incredible PBX will work fine if you remember to activate CallerID Superfecta whenever you create a new Inbound Route. The CNAM entries also will be displayed in your CDR reports. For those not in the United States, you may prefer to use a lookup source for your numbers other than the ones preconfigured in CallerID Superfecta. You will find all of the available modules on the POSSA GitHub site. Just download the ones desired into /var/www/html/admin/superfecta/sources and then activate the desired sources in Admin -> CID Superfecta -> Default. You can test your results and the performance using the Debug facility that’s built into the module.
If you’re using FreePBX on an Ubuntu server in the Cloud, now is the time to drop down to the Linux command prompt, log in as root, and make a backup: /root/incrediblebackup. Copy the backup from /backup to the same folder on your Pogoplug and restore it: /root/incrediblerestore /backup/DU-somefilename.tar.gz. Then restart Asterisk on your Pogoplug: amportal restart. Finally, log out and back into your Pogoplug to assure that FreePBX will function properly on that platform.
Adding Speech Recognition for Incredible PBX Applications
We used to include Google’s Speech-to-Text service in earlier Incredible PBX builds. Unfortunately, Google has changed the rules a bit. Assuming your server still meets the "personal and development" standard, you can obtain an API key from Google and reactivate speech-to-text functionality for many of the Incredible PBX applications including Weather Reports by City (949), AsteriDex Voice Dialing by Name (411), SMS Dictator (767), and Wolfram Alpha for Asterisk (4747). To activate the STT service, just complete the steps in our tutorial. Then sign up for a Wolfram Alpha App ID (tutorial here), and run the following install scripts:
/root/wolfram/wolframalpha-oneclick.sh cp /root/pygooglevoice/bin/gvoice /usr/bin ln -s /usr/bin/gvoice /usr/local/sbin/gvoice cd /root/pygooglevoice python setup.py install /root/smsdictator/sms-dictator.sh
Configuring a YATE Softphone for Pogoplug
As we mentioned, the easiest way to get started with Incredible PBX is to set up a free 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 701 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 Incredible PBX on the Pogoplug, 701 for your account name, and whatever password you’re using 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!
Introducing Incredible PBX 11.12.0 for the Pogoplug
For those of you that missed last week’s article on the CuBox platform and are new to Asterisk and the world of VoIP telephony, let us take a moment and explain how Incredible PBX fits into the puzzle. For lack of a better term, Incredible PBX is a turnkey aggregation in a bootable image that is based upon a superset of Debian 7 packages plus Asterisk, the FreePBX GUI, and a sizable collection of applications for the Asterisk platform. You download a tarball, decompress it, write the image file to an SD card, insert the card into your Pogoplug 4, and presto! You’ve got a turnkey PBX. Add credentials for a trunk or two to make and receive calls, connect some phones, and your SOHO office or home will come alive with a versatile PBX platform that used to cost organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars. What’s included in Incredible PBX? Glad you asked. Here’s a 3-minute video showcasing a few of our favorite Incredible PBX text-to-speech applications:
The Incredible PBX 11 Inventory. Here’s the current feature set on the Pogoplug platform. In addition to its superset of hundreds of Debian 7 packages, Asterisk 11, and FreePBX 2.11 with the Lighttpd web server, Exim 4 mail server, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, and the IPtables Linux firewall, check out these additions:
- AsteriDex: The Poor Man’s Rolodex®
- Asterisk Upgrade Utility (/root/upgrade-asterisk-cubox-bt)
- CallerID Superfecta (FreePBX Module adds Names to CID Numbers)
- CallWho for Asterisk (Dial by Voice from AsteriDex: 411)
- Preconfigured Email That Works with Exim 4
- OSS Endpoint Manager (Phone Configuration FreePBX module)
- Extensions (1 preconfigured with voicemail and randomized passwords)
- Google Speech Recognition for Incredible PBX apps (follow setup tutorial)
- Flite TTS for Asterisk (text-to-speech with Igor)
- GoogleTTS for Asterisk (Lefteris Zafiris’ state-of-the-art TTS)
- Google Voice (FreePBX GV/Motif Module for free U.S./Canada calls)
- Hotel-Style Wakeup Calls (FreePBX Module to simulate your favorite Holiday Inn)
- Incredible Backups… and Restores (see /root)
- Automated Incredible PBX Update Utility
- Lenny: The Telemarketer’s Worst Nightmare (dial L-E-N-N-Y)
- ODBC Database Support (Dial 222 with Employee Number 12345 to see what’s possible)
- Parking Lot Attendant (dial ## then 70 to simulate key telephones)
- Partition Resizing Utility for SD card expansion (/root/resize-partition)
- Phone Conference Bridge (Dial C-O-N-F for Private Conferences)
- PPTP Virtual Private Network (interconnect with other computers in minutes)
- Reminders by Phone and Web (supports recurring reminders and TTS delivery)
- SAMBA Windows Networking (Windows Networking Made Easy)
- SMS Dictator with Google Voice (Dial S-M-S to dictate and send an SMS message)
- Speech-to-Text Directory Assistance (Dial 411)
- Speed Dialer with AsteriDex (Dial 223 and enter first 3 letters of AsteriDex entry)
- Stealth AutoAttendant
- TimeZone Setup Utility (see /root)
- Today in History (Dial T-O-D-A-Y for today’s major events)
- Travelin’ Man 3 (IPtables WhiteList for rock-solid network security)
- Voice Dictation by Phone (Dial 5678)
- Weather by ZIP Code (Dial Z-I-P and enter any 5-digit zip code)
- Worldwide Weather by Phone (Dial 949 and say the name of your favorite city)
- Wolfram Alpha by Phone (/root/wolfram to install the world’s best almanac)
- Yahoo News by Phone (Dial 951 for the latest news headlines)
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 Incredible PBX has been engineered to sit anywhere, either behind a NAT-based, hardware firewall or directly on the Internet. No device other than those on your private LAN, a few of the major (trusted) SIP providers around the world, and those that you authorize on your WhiteList can even see your server. Additional IP addresses can be added to the WhiteList by the administrator registering new IP addresses using add-ip or add-fqdn from the Linux CLI. Read about this $100,000 VoIP phone bill, and you’ll better appreciate 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 show up on the radar. Their only way to contact you is a POTS telephone using your published phone number. Our complete tutorial on Travelin’ Man 3 is available here. With Incredible PBX for the Pogoplug 4, it’s installed and preconfigured. Enjoy!
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.
Originally published: Monday, September 8, 2014
Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Our forum is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus. In fact, we already have a thread underway on the Pogoplug adventure.
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…
- Some of our links refer users to Amazon or other service providers when we find their prices are competitive for the recommended products. Nerd Vittles receives a small referral fee from these providers to help cover the costs of our blog. We never recommend particular products solely to generate commissions. However, when pricing is comparable or availability is favorable, we support these providers because they support us. [↩]
Free Asterisk Solutions