IncrediblePBX – Page 50

Incredible Fax: Free Faxing Returns to Incredible PBX 1.8

Monday, May 2, 2011 / 9 Comments on Incredible Fax: Free Faxing Returns to Incredible PBX 1.8

It’s been a rocky road getting an open source (free) faxing alternative to work reliably with Asterisk® 1.8. To further complicate things, CentOS 5.6 was finally released which brought us a few more Asterisk 1.8 headaches and updates finally leading up to an all-new and nearly perfect PBX in a Flash 1.7.5.6 thanks in large part to Tom King. The new release also forced some under-the-covers modifications in Incredible PBX. Now you’re caught up on last week’s news. But what have we done for you lately?

Well, one alternative was to shift gears to the commercial Fax for Asterisk from Digium® which is supported in FreePBX 2.8 and 2.9 and includes one free license. But we’re open source fans and, of course, nothing beats free. Thanks to the efforts of a number of folks on the PBX in a Flash forums including our old pal, Joe Roper, there is an alternative that folks have been wrestling with for over two years. The combination of Hylafax, Avantfax, and IAXmodem is a compelling open source solution if you don’t need T.38-compatible faxing.¹ The drawback has been the learning curve to install all the components and get them working reliably together. Well, for those using Incredible PBX 1.8 with PIAF-Purple and Asterisk 1.8, today we have a newly minted installation script that is simple enough that even a monkey can use it. If you know your own email address and your local area code AND you can find the Enter key on your keyboard, you are fully qualified to perform today’s installation. It’ll take you under 5 minutes! We’ve also got a nice little surprise for you toward the end of this article.

Prerequisites. You’ll first need to install the latest version of PBX in a Flash with the PIAF-Purple (Asterisk 1.8) payload. Then sign up for a free Google Voice account and install Incredible PBX 1.8. You’ll find complete installation instructions for everything here. Can you just wing it and run this installation script on a garden-variety Asterisk 1.8 machine? No. And the reason is that all of these components have dependencies which are too complex to cover in a 5-minute article. You might want to have a look at the A-Fax Project which is where we started. Suffice it to say, the combination of PIAF-Purple and Incredible PBX 1.8 provides the ideal platform on which to install Incredible Fax. If you prefer to do-it-yourself, by all means have at it. We lost about 10 years worth of hair even starting with the work of a dozen very talented Linux gurus who have been wrestling with this for over two years! But, hey, YMMV! We never claimed to be the sharpest tool in the shed. 😉

Installing Incredible Fax. Once you have your Incredible PBX 1.8 platform up and running, adding Incredible Fax is a stroll in the park. Just log into your server as root and issue the following commands. If you’ve downloaded Incredible PBX in the last few days, the script may already be on your system. In this case, just type /root/incrediblefax.sh to run it.

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblefax.sh
chmod +x incrediblefax.sh
./incrediblefax.sh

After checking to make sure Incredible PBX 1.8 is installed, the script will prompt you to enter an email address where incoming faxes should be delivered. Then all of the necessary components will be installed after which the Avantfax install script will be run. With the exception of entering your local area code when prompted to do so, the correct response to every other question is to press the Enter key if you live in the U.S. or Canada. Don’t "improve" anything if you expect the end product to work reliably. For those outside North America, you’ll need to also make the usual adjustments to account for your country and city codes.

Avantfax has its own security model, but we’ve grown to appreciate the Apache authentication model which is built into PBX in a Flash so it’s been incorporated into Incredible Fax as well. When the install completes, just reboot your server to get everything working. On the PBX in a Flash web GUI, there will be a new Admin icon for Faxing. Or you can access Avantfax with a browser by going to http://serverIPaddress/avantfax. When prompted for your username and password, use maint and whatever your maint password happens to be. These can be reset with passwd-master. Literally everything has been preconfigured in Avantfax to get you going. Here’s a 3-minute video to show you how easy it is. Just don’t forget to reboot once the install completes.

If you want to be able to print to fax from Windows-based machines, then you’ll need to make one addition. Click on the small Toolbar icon in the upper right corner of the AvantFax home screen and choose New User from the pull-down Menu. For the user, enter Fax for the Name, fax for the Username, a secure password for Password, and an email address that is DIFFERENT from the one you used to set up Incredible Fax. Check the boxes for User Can Delete Faxes and User Can Fax From Any Modem. Finally, check the boxes for all four IAXmodems. Then click the Save button to add this new user.

A Word About Reliable Faxing. Suffice it to say that analog faxing over VoIP trunks is something less than ideal. If you want reliable analog faxing, then you’ll need a PSTN line from your favorite local telephone company. It doesn’t need any fancy add-ons like CallerID which doubles the price in many cities. Then you’ll need a properly configured analog telephone adapter (ATA) with at least one FXO port to support your Ma Bell phone line. Our favorite is the OBi110 which also can double as an additional Google Voice trunk for your PBX. But an SPA3102 will work equally well. It just costs more and gives you less.

Now that we’ve covered the obligatory warnings… will Incredible Fax work with a pure VoIP connection? Absolutely. We do it all the time. Is it flawless? No. Are there certain providers that are better than others? You bet. Do some providers not support faxing at all? Correct. Based on our 5+ years wrestling with this, here’s our recommendation. First, you’ll need a DID (i.e. phone number) from one of our recommended providers to handle inbound faxes. With the latest release of Asterisk 1.8, you no longer need a DID dedicated to faxing. In other words, you can use the same DID to receive incoming voice calls as well. The good news is that pay-as-you-go DIDs are dirt cheap. Some providers such as voip.ms offer DIDs for under $1 a month with 1¢ per minute calls. VoIP.ms also has unlimited inbound calling DIDs for under $4 a month. Other providers whose trunks we have found work reliably for VoIP faxing include Vitelity (see our special sign up deal below), Axvoice, Teliax, VoIPMyWay ($45 for first year with unlimited outbound and inbound calling with a local DID), and Future-Nine². Google Voice trunks are hit and miss. We’re batting about .250 in our testing with Google Voice lines. Bottom Line: If VoIP faxing doesn’t work after you complete the install, it’s probably the fault of your VoIP trunk, not the setup. To make absolutely sure, connect a standard fax machine to an extension using an FXS telephone adapter and send a fax to that extension from the Avantfax web interface. You’ll find it works every time!

Configuring FreePBX for Incredible Fax. Here are the steps you’ll need to complete to get analog faxing working reliably with FreePBX. First, set up an account with one of the companies we’ve mentioned above. With voip.ms, create a subaccount on their site with credentials to use with the DID you purchased to link to that subaccount.

Unless you’re using today’s release of Incredible PBX, you’ll need to activate FreePBX’s Fax Configuration Module if you want to take advantage of Asterisk 1.8’s fax detection capabilities. It didn’t work reliably in previous Asterisk 1.8 releases. This module already is either available or already installed on your server. In the FreePBX GUI using a browser, choose Tools, Module Admin and then click on Fax Configuration. A drop-down list will provide several choices. Choose either Install or Enable depending upon the version of Incredible PBX you currently are running. Then click the Process button and finally Reload the settings when prompted.

Unless you installed Incredible PBX today, you’ll need to create a SIP trunk for your new provider in FreePBX using the credentials you set up on the provider’s web site. The VoIP.ms template now is included in Incredible PBX so you can just edit the existing one to add your credentials. And, at least with VoIP.ms, you can set the outbound CallerID to anything you like (as long as it’s legal). Unless you want a knock at your door, we wouldn’t recommend using the main number at the White House. Then put all of the settings below in the Outgoing Settings PEER Details where 1234567 is your main account number, subacctname is the name of the subaccount you created, and atlanta is your closest voip.ms server location:

username=1234567_subacctname
type=friend
trustrpid=yes
sendrpid=yes
secret=subacctpassword
nat=yes
insecure=port,invite
host=atlanta.voip.ms
fromuser=1234567_subacctname
disallow=all
context=from-trunk
canreinvite=nonat
allow=ulaw

For the registration string, it should look like the following. If you’re planning to only use the trunk for outbound faxing, then you can leave off the trailing DID number.

username:password@atlanta.voip.ms:5060/10-digit-DID

In addition to setting up the Trunk for your provider, you’ll also need to create an Outbound Route for sending faxes out through this trunk AND an Inbound Route to receive incoming faxes on the DID you purchased from your provider.

For the Outbound Route, we recommend setting the Dial Pattern with a prefix not otherwise used on your Incredible PBX so that you can make fax calls easily by dialing this prefix. For example, on our sample system, we used 7 so that fax calls could be made by dialing 7 plus a 10-digit number in the U.S. and Canada. Here’s how our Outbound Route for VoIP.ms looks in FreePBX, and the latest Incredible PBX release already has it in place as shown below:

For the Inbound Route, you want to specify the DID from your provider which must match the 10-digit number you affixed to the end of the trunk registration string above. If you don’t want to share this number for voice and fax calls, then simply direct these inbound fax calls to the Fax Custom Destination. Extension (329 spells F-A-X) also can be used to process incoming faxes and route them to your email address as well as the Avantfax web GUI.

Our experience suggests that using a single trunk for both voice and fax delivery is hit and miss so you may wish to consider adding an additional trunk just to support faxing. You’ll find the templates for adding a second Google Voice trunk in the /tmp directory, and complete instructions are available on the PIAF Forums. We’ve also provided preconfigured trunk settings for both Vitelity and VoIP.ms if you’d like to try those options as well. Just plug in your credentials and configure an inbound route to map incoming faxes to the Fax Custom Destination.

AvantFax in a Nutshell. Here’s a quick summary of the main features in the AvantFax web GUI. You can access the GUI by pointing a browser to the IP address of your server + /avantfax. After you enter your maint account name and maint password, the following screen will display with your Inbox. As noted, all of these incoming faxes also will be emailed to the account you set up when you ran the Incredible Fax install script.

The icons to the right of each thumbnail fax let you View, Rotate, Download PDF, Reply to Fax, Email PDF, Add a Note, Archive the Fax, and Permanently Delete the Fax.

At the top of the screen just to the right of Inbox is the option to Send a Fax. Here you’d specify the phone number to dial. Don’t forget the 7 and then a 10-digit number. Next you can attach a document from your local disk. Finally, fill in the blanks for the Fax Cover Sheet, and then click Send. Your fax will be on its way. You can monitor the progress of the fax transmission by clicking on Outbox. It’s also a good idea to fire up an SSH session to your server and run asterisk -rvvvvvvvvvv to monitor the first few calls to be sure all is well in Incredible FaxLand.

Where to Go Next. HylaFax and AvantFax are very mature open source products with a huge international following. We apologize for focusing primarily on U.S. and Canadian users today, but anything is possible with this software. The first piece you probably will want to tackle is adding Print to Fax capability on your Windows machine. The software you’ll need can be downloaded here. You’ll find excellent documentation on the setup by visiting the PBX in a Flash Forum. One little footnote for those using Windows 7. Microsoft and Apple are back to their old tricks so there are no Apple postscript print drivers in Windows 7. We’ve had equally good results using Dell’s 3100cn PS driver. Incidentally, there’s a similar print-to-fax utility for Mac OS X, but it’ll set you back $36. Here’s the link. HylaFax also maintains a terrific resource list for those that want additional goodies for PCs, Macs and Linux systems.

Originally published: Monday, May 2, 2011

Changes in PBX in a Flash Distribution. In light of the events outlined in our recent Nerd Vittles article and the issues with Asterisk 1.8.4, the PIAF Dev Team has made some changes in our distribution methodology. As many of you know, PBX in a Flash is the only distribution that compiles Asterisk from source code during the install. This has provided us enormous flexibility to distribute new releases with the latest Asterisk code. Unfortunately, Asterisk 1.8 is still a work in progress to put it charitably. We also feel some responsibility to insulate our users from show-stopping Asterisk releases. Going forward, the plan is to reserve the PIAF-Purple default install for the most stable version of Asterisk 1.8. As of June 1, Asterisk 1.8.4.1 is the new PIAF-Purple default install. Other versions of Asterisk 1.8 (newer and older) will be available through a new configuration utility which now is incorporated into the PIAF 1.7.5.6.2 ISO.

Here’s how it works. Begin the install of a new PIAF system in the usual way by booting from your USB flash drive and pressing Enter to load the most current version of CentOS 5.6. When the CentOS install finishes, your system will reboot. Accept the license agreement, and choose the PIAF-Purple option to load the latest stable version of Asterisk 1.8. Or exit to the Linux CLI if you want a different version. Log into CentOS as root. Then issue a command like this: piafdl -p beta_1841 (loads Asterisk 1.8.4.1), piafdl -p 184 (loads Asterisk 1.8.4), piafdl -p 1833 (loads Asterisk 1.8.3.3), or piafdl -p 1832 (loads Asterisk 1.8.3.2). If there should ever be an outage on one of the PBX in a Flash mirrors, you can optionally choose a different mirror for the payload download by adding piafdl -c for the .com site, piafdl -d for the .org site, or piafdl -e for the .net site. Then add the payload switch, e.g. piafdl -c -p beta_1841.

Bottom Line: If you use the piafdl utility to choose a particular version of Asterisk 1.8, you are making a conscious decision to accept the consequences of your particular choice. We would have preferred implementation of a testing methodology at Digium before distribution of new Asterisk releases; however, that doesn’t appear to be in the cards. So, as new Asterisk 1.8 releases hit the street, they will be made available through the piafdl utility until such time as our PIAF Pioneers independently establish their reliability.

Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum or Wiki.
Or Try the New, Free PBX in a Flash Conference Bridge.

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

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…

Yes, we’re aware that HylaFax theoretically supports T.38 with the right hardware. Feel free to point us to someone who has it actually working with Asterisk 1.8. 🙄 [↩]
Vitelity, Teliax, VoIPMyWay, and Future-Nine trunks require the following additional entries in your Inbound trunk settings: t38pt_rtp=no, t38pt_tcp=no, t38pt_udptl=no [↩]

FreePBX Backdoor Passwords Pose Asterisk Security Threat

Friday, April 15, 2011 / 7 Comments on FreePBX Backdoor Passwords Pose Asterisk Security Threat

Whether it’s forgetting to change a default password or not removing an additional password that you didn’t even know existed, some new revelations this week about FreePBX security are worth a minute of your time. There’s more disappointing news. The bad guys are getting smarter and much more dangerous.

If you’re new to Asterisk®, FreePBX® is the terrific, web-based graphical user interface that turns Asterisk into a user-friendly PBX that even mere mortals can use. It is bundled as part of every Asterisk aggregation including PBX in a Flash, trixbox, Elastix, and Asterisk Now. With the exception of PBX in a Flash, you may not know it’s there, but it is.

Years ago when FreePBX was in its infancy, the developers set up a way that administrators could still get into their system even if they forgot their administrator password. Typing admin:admin as the username:password combination basically gave you the keys to the castle in the default FreePBX install. That worked great in the days before folks exposed their systems to direct Internet web access which is a really BAD IDEA by the way.

Some of the aggregations shipped with a default username and password combination of maint and password. And for visually-impaired users, an automatic installer was crafted which set a default password of passworm. While users were encouraged to change these default passwords, many unfortunately didn’t heed the advice. According to one unnamed provider that recently saw a spike in illegal calling activity, his attempt to log in to some of his customer’s systems using password as the administrator password yielded a list of 50 vulnerable systems in under an hour!

And then there was this week’s Elastix revelation that the developers had embedded an additional backdoor password in their distribution that very few knew about… except the bad guys unfortunately. According to Xorcom:

It recently came to our attention that it is possible to login to the Elastix server unembedded FreePBX Web interface (http://address/admin) with user name ‘asteriskuser’ and password ‘eLaStIx.asteriskuser.2oo7’. The user name and password are the same user name and password used by FreePBX to access the ‘asterisk’ MySQL database. They are defined in the parameters AMPDBUSER and AMPDBPASS in the /etc/amportal.conf file.

What could possibly go wrong? Well, everything! Over the past few years, what typically happened with these vulnerable systems was that the buy guys obtained an extension password and began making free calls on your nickel until you checked your FreePBX call log or received your phone bill. That was then.

Here’s the latest bad guy scenario. The intruder logs into your FreePBX GUI using the default administrator password using a very sophisticated script which extracts all of your extension numbers, all of your trunk credentials, and, of course, all of your passwords. The script then hides a BOT on your server that "phones home" whenever any change is made in your account names or passwords. Finally, rather than using your server to make calls, the bad guys now use their own servers with your provider credentials to make free calls. So the first notice you receive of the intrusion is when your credit card is maxed out because you stupidly chose credit card auto-replenishment when you set up your VoIP account with your favorite provider.

SO… how do you fix it? Well, first you need to check whether your system is vulnerable. Using a browser, attempt to log into FreePBX at http://yourIPaddress/admin and use the following username:password combinations:

admin:admin
admin:password
admin:passworm
maint:admin
maint:maint
maint:password
maint:passworm
wwwadmin:password
wwwadmin:wwwadmin
wwwadmin:admin
asteriskuser:eLaStIx.asteriskuser.2oo7

Be aware that on some systems using Fail2Ban such as PBX in a Flash, three consecutive failed logins may lock you out of your system for a lengthy period of time. On these systems, we recommend you first stop Fail2Ban: service fail2ban stop. Don’t forget to restart it after your testing: service fail2ban start.

If you gain access to your system using any of the above credentials and the web interface your server is exposed to the Internet, then you’ve got a problem. Do NOT just change your password thinking all is well. As mentioned, your new credentials are likely being transmitted to the bad guys before you can say "I’m S-C-R-E-W-E-D." Instead, you should reformat your drive, contact all of your trunk providers and change your credentials. Then reinstall a NEW system using your new credentials AND new extension passwords. DON’T FORGET TO CHANGE YOUR DEFAULT PASSWORD! On PBX in a Flash and Incredible PBX systems, it’s easy. Just log into your server as root, enter the command passwd-master, and answer the prompts. Think up a very secure password… as if your bank account depended on it. It does! Finally, read our Primer on Asterisk Security. Be safe!

Originally published: Friday, April 15, 2011

Changes in PBX in a Flash Distribution. In light of the events outlined in our recent Nerd Vittles article and the issues with Asterisk 1.8.4, the PIAF Dev Team has made some changes in our distribution methodology. As many of you know, PBX in a Flash is the only distribution that compiles Asterisk from source code during the install. This has provided us enormous flexibility to distribute new releases with the latest Asterisk code. Unfortunately, Asterisk 1.8 is still a work in progress to put it charitably. We also feel some responsibility to insulate our users from show-stopping Asterisk releases. Going forward, the plan is to reserve the PIAF-Purple default install for the most stable version of Asterisk 1.8. Currently, we think that dubious title belongs to Asterisk 1.8.3.3 even though it has its own share of surprises. Other versions of Asterisk 1.8 (newer and older) will be available through a new configuration utility which now is incorporated into the PIAF 1.7.5.6.2 ISO.

Here’s how it works. Begin the install of a new PIAF system in the usual way by booting from the CD and pressing Enter to load the most current version of CentOS 5.6. When the CentOS install finishes, your system will reboot. Remove the CD, accept the license agreement, and choose the PIAF-Purple option to load the default version of Asterisk 1.8. Or exit to the Linux CLI if you want a different version. Log into CentOS as root with your root password. Then issue a command like this: piafdl -p 184 (loads Asterisk 1.8.4), piafdl -p 1833 (loads Asterisk 1.8.3.3), or piafdl -p 1832 (loads Asterisk 1.8.3.2). If there should ever be an outage on one of the PBX in a Flash mirrors, you can optionally choose a different mirror for the payload download by adding piafdl -c for the .com site, piafdl -d for the .org site, or piafdl -e for the .net site. Then add the payload switch of your choice, e.g. piafdl -c -p 184.

Bottom Line: If you use the piafdl utility to choose a particular version of Asterisk 1.8, you are making a conscious decision to accept the consequences of your particular choice. We would have preferred implementation of a testing methodology at Digium® before distribution of new Asterisk releases; however, that doesn’t appear to be in the cards. So, as new Asterisk 1.8 releases hit the street, they will be made available through the piafdl utility until such time as our PIAF Pioneers independently establish their reliability.

Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum or Wiki.
Or Try the New, Free PBX in a Flash Conference Bridge.

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

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…

Tips, Tricks & Apps to Get the Most Out of Your iPad 2

Monday, March 14, 2011 / 4 Comments on Tips, Tricks & Apps to Get the Most Out of Your iPad 2

Rather than providing another glowing review of the iPad 2®, we thought it might be more helpful to sketch out the daily use potential of this incredible device based upon our experience and that of our 10-year old daughter. Yes, we’re one of the 30% who purchased an iPad 2 having already owned a number of first generation iPads. With double the RAM and nearly double the processing power of the first generation device, the one cautionary note that potential purchasers should heed is don’t buy the $499 model. Our daughter has survived a year with a $499 iPad only to find it completely full when she attempted to load Garage Band. And you will want Garage Band which is a storage hog by iPad standards. That’s not to suggest that Katherine’s iPad hasn’t served her well. She has almost 150 applications plus substantial collections of photos and music. What she doesn’t have is movies and video clips. With the addition of two cameras on the iPad 2 as well as Camera, AutoStitch, Movie, and Photo Booth apps and once you see what’s possible with iMovie, you’ll be begging for more storage capacity. Keep in mind that your storage capacity choice is irrevocable! There’s no way to add more storage later unless you buy a new device. And there’s no external storage other than removing apps and data through the iTunes interface. Perhaps more than anything else, that’s why the absence of a microSD slot on the iPad 2 is both a significant shortcoming and a huge disappointment.

The other suggestion we would offer to first-time iPad 2 purchasers is this. Get organized early. What we mean is decide early on how you’re going to use the 10 screens to organize your applications. Before the year is out, you will use all 10 screens assuming your bank account survives. At least now you can also create folders within a screen if you run out of room. Here’s our methodology, and it has served us pretty well. Screen 1 is reserved for the apps we use every day. The other screens are reserved for categories of applications: business, news and books, social, drawing and graphics, music, games, location-based services, and system/network management. If you’re a big gamer, artist, or musician, you may want to reserve two screens for your favorite category. The point is to spend a little time up front deciding how to organize applications. And, fortunately, you can move things around with the iTunes interface down the road so long as you leave one screen available for reorganizing.

You can also place six apps at the bottom of the display, and these are accessible from all 10 screens. Here’s where you’d want your browser, email or Gmail buttons, App Store, and Settings. That leaves you two more must-have apps. If you play music all the time, you’d probably want the iPod app. If you look at Photos all the time, you’d want the Photo app. But you get the idea, use Screen 1 for Daily Use Apps and the 6 bottom slots for your must-have at all times apps. If you don’t heed this advice, then you’ll find yourself having to search for apps on Screen 0 every time you want to use an application.

Favorite Apps. That brings us to our favorite apps. For ease of reference, we’ll cover these in the same way they are organized on our iPad 2. And, we’d love to hear about your favorite apps, too. Just post a comment. In the Daily Use category, here’s our list:

Calendar
Contacts
Mail
Maps
Videos
FaceTime
Camera
Photo Booth
EyeTV
YouTube
Hulu Plus
SlingPlayer
NetFlix
Bria
Travelin’ Man
OBiON
Pandora
Pulse News
Flipboard
iSWiFTER

Most of the above applications are self-explanatory, but we’ll mention a few. If you have a Mac, then EyeTV is a must-have addition. It lets you play and record all your favorite TV shows. Removing commercials from a one-hour show is about a 2-minute click-and-drag operation. And it’s incredibly easy to export your favorite recordings in either iPhone or iPad format. So long as iTunes is running on your Mac desktop, you can play your recordings or live TV at any time using either a WiFi or 3G network connection. SlingPlayer does much the same thing (only worse) with no recording capability, but it works with Windows machines as well as Macs, and it’s a standalone device. The Netflix app lets you stream movies and TV shows to your iPad for $7.99 a month, and it supports 6 simultaneous devices including many current generation HDTVs. OBiON is the VoIP app that lets you make free Google Voice calls in the U.S. and Canada using your $49 OBi device. You can read all about it here. If you have an Asterisk® PBX, then you’ll want Bria and our Travelin’ Man app for secure, remote, and free SIP communications. Finally, there’s the new iSWiFTER app which brings Flash video back from the dead on the iPad platform. It’s free for a limited time and, believe it or not, it’s available in the App Store.

Books & News. We spend every morning at the breakfast table with the Books & News page on our iPad. Here’s our list:

Kindle
iBooks
Friendly (Facebook)
Twitterific
AccuWeather
ABC News
ABC Player
CBS News
CNBC RT
CNN
Huff Post
Newsy
NYTimes
News Pro
USA Today
WSJ
Wash Post
The Daily
TV Guide
Tweetdeck

We don’t watch much Faux News which has become more akin to Incitement TV. We really hoped The Daily would be different. It’s not. But… to each his own.

Business Apps. This is kind of a catch-all page for stuff we use frequently as well as some apps we’ll probably never use again. Here’s our list:

iMovie
Keynote
Pages
Notes
Bento
Sorted
2Do
Todo
Zenbe Lists
Voice Memos
aNote Lite
Dictation
Due
FlipTime XL
MobileNoter
Pad Info
PaperDesk LT
News Rack
GoodReader
textPlus

Of all the ToDo applications that are available (and we’ve tried most of them), we like Todo the best. But, for quick reminders, you can’t beat Due. GoodReader, Keynote, and Pages are must have business apps, and iMovie is every bit as good as the app on the Mac. It’s about perfect for an on-the-go, need-it-in-a-hurry project.

Navigation & Wi-Fi Apps. When we’re on the road or looking for a WiFi Hot Spot or good place to eat, here’s our list:

CoPilot HD
Charts & Tides
Navionics Marines
ShipFinder HD
GPS Drive HD
GPS HD
Hurricane HD
UrbanSpoon
Epicurious
Where To Eat
ZAGAT
Zillow.com
WiFiGet HD
Dash Four
Mifi
World Atlas
Skobbler
SpeedBox
WiFon
Trapster

GPS navigation on the roads is hit and miss on the iPad. Nothing comes close to Google Maps navigation. CoPilot could be a contender except for the outdated maps and copy protection paranoia. On the water, both Charts & TIdes and Navionics Marine are fantastic. We compared both of them to a $10,000 Nav system on a very fine boat only yesterday. There was virtually no difference in the information available with the exception of the radar-enhanced features. If you’re always shopping for real estate, there is no finer app than Zillow, period. If you’re in to fast cars, there is no finer app than Trapster.

Games. Last but not least, everybody needs a diversion once in a while. Here’s a list of some of our favorite iPad games:

Game Center
GearedHD
Frogger
Foosball HD
AirCoaster
Angry Birds
Asphalt 5
JirboBreak
Doons HD
ElectroRacer
FarmVille (WAF)
Hit Tennis 2
iFooty
Pac-Man
Pinball HD
RealRacing HD
RealRacing GTI
Snowboarding
Checkers HD
Wacky Circus HD

This will probably be the category that changes the quickest with the new lightening-fast graphics and dual core processor on the iPad 2. Stay tuned!

Originally published: Monday, March 14, 2011

Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum or Wiki.
Or Try the New, Free PBX in a Flash Conference Bridge.

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

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…

Google Dips Its Toes in the Icy SIP Waters… and Retreats

Monday, March 7, 2011 / 18 Comments on Google Dips Its Toes in the Icy SIP Waters… and Retreats

In case you missed it, Google announced at the end of last week that it will discontinue support of Gizmo5 on April 3. Many of us suspected this was the death knell for Google support of SIP given the popularity of its recent Gtalk enhancements to Google Voice. Well, not so fast! As Todd Vierling pointed out on his blog this past Saturday, Google has quietly added outbound SIP support to reach any Google Voice number. So, assuming your Google Voice number is 678-123-4567, anyone in the world can now call you via SIP by dialing +16781234567@sip.voice.google.com.

For those using Asterisk® and FreeSwitch systems , here’s what you need to do immediately. Register all of your Google Voice numbers in the ENUM systems so that other Asterisk and FreeSwitch systems worldwide can connect with you using your new Google SIP URI without any communications charges. This also means that SIP phones such as the Nortel 1535 Color Videophone using services such as sip2sip.info can call you for free. And all they’ll need to do is dial your 10-digit Google Voice number!

To sign up for ENUM service, go to both e164.org and enumplus.org and register your 10-digit Google Voice number. Be sure to use the syntax shown above for the SIP URI (including the + symbol), or the calls will fail. It only takes a minute to register. ENUM is implemented for outbound calls by default in all Incredible PBX and Orgasmatron builds. So, just by registering your Google Voice number with these two sites, it means every ENUM-enabled server can place free SIP calls to your Google Voice number via ENUM before using any other outbound trunk for which there might be a charge.

Of course, everyone won’t register their Google Voice number with the ENUM services. So how do you call those folks via SIP without incurring charges for the call? For those that install Incredible PBX (beginning yesterday), it’s automagic. Just dial any 10-digit number, and Incredible PBX will attempt to place the call via SIP before falling back to Google Voice. The call processing is instantaneous so don’t worry about call delay. Remember, we’re living in a Digital World.

FreePBX Setup. If you have an existing FreePBX-based Asterisk system or an earlier release of Incredible PBX, here’s how to retrofit your system to support free SIP calling to Google Voice numbers. Whenever an Asterisk server attempts to place a SIP call, it sends a SIP Invite packet to the receiving server. In the case of Google, if the number is not one of theirs, you’ll immediately get a Congestion message from FreePBX. In the FreePBX design, this means that the attempt to place the outbound call will drop down to the next available trunk in the current Outbound Route. So the trick here is to create a custom trunk to handle the SIP calls to Google. And then we’ll add that trunk above your existing trunks in the Outbound Route that handles calls matching 1NXXNXXXXXX and NXXNXXXXXX. So the recommended Trunk Sequence in your Default Outbound Route would look like this:

1. ENUM
2. google-sip
3. gvoice
4. vitel-outbound
5. OtherProvider

Using a web browser, open FreePBX and choose Setup, Trunks, Add Custom Trunk. Create the new Google-SIP Trunk so that it looks like the following. Don’t forget the 1 Prepend and + Dial Prefix entries!

Click Submit Changes to save your entries and then reload FreePBX when prompted.

Now choose Setup, Outbound Routes, and choose your Default outbound route. Modify the Trunk Sequence so that it matches what was outlined above. Click Submit Changes to save your entries and then reload FreePBX when prompted.

You’re done. Enjoy your new SIP-based Google Voice calling addition.

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 Google Voice number. Enjoy!

March 8 Update. Well, that was a quick dip. Beware the Ides of March! It was almost exactly two years ago that Google shut down SIP connectivity the first time. Hopefully, we’re not in for another two year wait. Read our original article about this and have a chuckle. But it looks like they’ve done it again. To restore your system to normal functionality, remove the Google-SIP trunk from your Outbound Route and be sure to delete your Google Voice numbers from the SIP registries at e164.org and enumplus.org. To suggest this is short-sighted (not to mention monetarily wasteful) would be an understatement. But perhaps Google wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of delighted users. Let’s hope so. 🙄

March 16 Update. It’s working again this morning! But now it’s not morning, and we’re dead in the water once more. Did we mention this might qualify as E-X-P-E-R-I-M-E-N-T-A-L?? See the comments below for up-to-the-minute updates.

Security Reminder. We mentioned this two years ago, but it’s worth repeating since it still has not been addressed. Google protects phone access to your Google Voice account with only a 4-digit PIN. When unanswered calls roll over to their voicemail system, anyone has the option of pressing * to be prompted for this PIN. It only takes 10,000 calls at most to guess any PIN, and that doesn’t take very long with SIP and an automated dialer. Once someone has your PIN, in addition to listening to your voicmail messages, they also can press 2 to place an outbound call to anywhere in the world… on your nickel. So… don’t load up your account with your entire life savings unless you don’t mind losing it. 🙄

Originally published: Monday, March 7, 2011

Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum or Wiki.
Or Try the New, Free PBX in a Flash Conference Bridge.

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

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…

Incredible PBX 1.8: New OpenVZ and Cloud Editions

Monday, January 17, 2011 / 8 Comments on Incredible PBX 1.8: New OpenVZ and Cloud Editions

Another exciting week in the Asterisk® community with the introduction of Asterisk 1.8.2 last Friday. It's now the official PIAF-Purple payload so you can simply download the current ISO to take it for a spin. Most of the pesky bugs in Asterisk 1.8.0 and 1.8.1 now have been addressed. Let us know if you find some new ones.

While the Asterisk Dev Team has been hard at work on Asterisk 1.8.2, we've turned our attention to the cloud and VoIP virtualization. We have three new products to introduce today. The first lets you install PIAF-Purple with Asterisk 1.8.2 using a new OpenVZ template. The second lets you run Incredible PBX 1.8 as a virtual machine using the new PIAF-Purple 1.8.2 OpenVZ template. Finally, we'll show you how to run Incredible PBX 1.8 in the cloud with hosted VoIP service from RentPBX.com for $15 a month with a free local phone number and free Google Voice calling in the U.S. and Canada. So let's get started.

Using the OpenVZ PIAF-Purple Template. If you haven't heard of OpenVZ templates before, you've missed one of the real technological breakthroughs of the last decade. Rather than wading through the usual 30-minute ISO installation drill, with an OpenVZ template, all of the work is done for you. And it's quick. You can build a dozen PIAF-Purple systems using an OpenVZ template in about 15 minutes with a per system cost of less than $50. See Comment #2 below for an extra special Dell half-price server deal this week. And it's incredibly easy to then tie all of these systems together using either SIP or IAX trunks. Just follow our previous tutorial. For resellers and developers that want to try various Asterisk configurations before implementation and for trainers and others that want to host dedicated Asterisk systems for customers, the OpenVZ platform is a perfect fit. Read our original two-part article to get up to speed on Proxmox, virtualization, and IPtables with OpenVZ. Then continue on here.

Thanks to Darrell Dillman (aka dad311 on the PIAF Forums), there already is a 64-bit OpenVZ template of PIAF-Purple with Asterisk 1.8.2. Just download the template to your Desktop and then, using the Proxmox console, choose Appliance Templates, Upload File to upload the OpenVZ template into your Proxmox server platform. Once installed, you can build Asterisk 1.8.2 virtual machines to your heart's content... in less than a minute apiece. Just choose Virtual Machine, Create to create a new virtual machine using the OpenVZ template you just uploaded. In the Configuration section, choose OpenVZ for the Type and pick your new OpenVZ template from the pulldown list. Fill in a Host Name, Disk Space maximum (in GB), and (root) Password. The other defaults should be fine. In the Network section of the form, change to the Bridged Ethernet (veth) option which means the VM will obtain its IP address from your DHCP server. Make sure your DNS settings are correct for your LAN. Here's how a typical OpenVZ creation form will look:

Once the image is created, start up the virtual machine, wait about 70 seconds for the system to load, and then click on Open VNC Console. Asterisk will be loaded and running. You can verify this on the status display. You can safely ignore the status messages pertaining to IPtables assuming iptables -nL shows that IPtables is functioning properly. With the exception of text-to-speech (TTS), you now have a PIAF-Purple base platform running Asterisk 1.8.2 and FreePBX 2.8. Be sure you always run it behind a hardware-based firewall with no port exposure to the Internet.

Before you do anything else, run passwd-master to secure the passwords for FreePBX GUI access to your system. Don't forget!

If you're planning to install Incredible PBX below or if you don't need text-to-speech on your system, you can skip this next step which gets 64-bit TTS installed. Otherwise, here are the commands to get it working:

cd /root
./install-flite

Note to Our Pioneers. To those that tested the new OpenVZ template this past week, THANK YOU! Be advised that we now have incorporated several of the recommended tweaks which were documented in the PIAF Forums. The install procedure outlined above explains the new behavior of the slightly improved OpenVZ template which now is available for download. We recommend you switch.

Asterisk CLI Change. Finally, just a heads up that (once again) the Asterisk Dev Team appears to have changed the default behavior of the Asterisk CLI. With Asterisk 1.8.2, if you make outbound calls after loading the CLI, you will notice that call progress no longer appears in the CLI. To restore the standard behavior (since Moses), issue the following command: core set verbose 3. 🙄

Installing Incredible PBX on OpenVZ Systems. We won't repeat the entire Incredible PBX article here. If you want the background on the product, read the latest article. To get everything working with an OpenVZ system, there are only three steps:

1. Set Up Your Google Voice Account
2. Run the Incredible PBX VM Installer
3. Configure a Softphone

Configuring Google Voice. You'll need a dedicated Google Voice account to support The 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 why take the chance. Keep this account a secret!

We've tested this extensively using an existing Gmail account, and inbound calling is just not reliable. The reason seems to be that Google always chooses Gmail chat as the inbound call destination if there are multiple registrations from the same IP address. So, be reasonable. Do it our way! Set up a dedicated Gmail and Google Voice account, and use it exclusively with The Incredible PBX. Google Voice no longer is by invitation only so, if you're in the U.S. or have a friend that is, head over to the Google Voice site and register. If you're living on another continent, see MisterQ's posting for some tips on getting set up.

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

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

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

Call Screening - OFF
Call Presentation - OFF
Caller ID (In) - Display Caller's Number
Caller ID (Out) - Don't Change Anything
Do Not Disturb - OFF

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.

Running The Incredible PBX Installer. Log into your server as root and issue the following commands to set up The Incredible PBX:

cd /root
rm incrediblepbx18-vm.x
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx18-vm.x
chmod +x incredible*
./incrediblepbx18-vm.x
passwd-master

When The Incredible PBX install begins, you'll be prompted for the following:

Google Voice Account Name
Google Voice Password
Google Voice 10-digit Phone Number
Gmail Notification Address
FreePBX maint Password

The Google Voice Account Name is the Gmail address for your new dedicated account, e.g. joeschmo@gmail.com. Don't forget @gmail.com! The Google Voice Password is the password for this dedicated account. The Google Voice Phone Number is the 10-digit DID for this dedicated account. We need this if we ever need to go back to the return call methodology for outbound calling. For now, it's not necessary. But who knows what the future holds. 🙄 The Gmail Notification Address is the email address where you wish to receive alerts when incoming and outgoing Google Voice calls are placed using The Incredible PBX. And your FreePBX maint Password is the password you'll use to access FreePBX. You'll actually set it by running passwd-master after The Incredible PBX completes. We need this password to properly configure the CallerID Superfecta for you. By the way, none of this confidential information ever leaves your machine... just in case you were wondering.

Now have another 5-minute cup of coffee, and consider a modest donation to Nerd Vittles... for all of our hard work. 😉 You'll find a link at the top of the page. While you're waiting (and so you don't forget), go ahead and configure your hardware-based firewall to support Google Voice. See the next section for what's required. Without completing this firewall configuration step, no calls will work! When the installer finishes, READ THE SCREEN just for grins.

Here's a short video demonstration of the original Incredible PBX installer process. It still works just about the same way except there's no longer a second step to get things working.

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!

Before you do anything else, run passwd-master again to resecure the passwords for FreePBX GUI access to your system. Don't forget!

Firewall Configuration. We hope you've taken our advice and installed a hardware-based firewall in front of The Incredible PBX. It's your phone bill. You'll need to make one adjustment on the firewall. Map UDP 5222 traffic to the internal IP address of The Incredible PBX. This is the port that Google Voice uses for phone calls and Google chat. You can decipher the IP address of your server by logging into the server as root and typing status.

Extension Password Discovery. If you're too lazy to look up your extension 701 password using the FreePBX GUI, you can log into your server as root and issue the following command to obtain the password for extension 701 which we'll need to configure your softphone or color videophone in the next step:

mysql -uroot -ppassw0rd -e"select id,data from asterisk.sip where id='701' and keyword='secret'"

The result will look something like the following where 701 is the extension and 18016 is the randomly-generated extension password exclusively for your Incredible PBX:

+-----+-------+
id data
+-----+-------+
701 18016
+-----+-------+

Configuring a SIP Phone. There are hundreds of terrific SIP telephones and softphones for Asterisk-based systems. Once you get things humming along, you'll want a real SIP telephone such as the $50 Nortel color videophone we've recommended above. You'll also find lots of additional recommendations on Nerd Vittles and in the PBX in a Flash Forum. If you're like us, we want to make damn sure this stuff works before you shell out any money. So, for today, let's download a terrific (free) softphone to get you started. We recommend X-Lite because there are versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux. So download your favorite from this link. Install and run X-Lite on your Desktop. At the top of the phone, click on the Down Arrow and choose SIP Account Settings, Add. Enter the following information using your actual password for extension 701 and the actual IP address of your Incredible PBX server instead of 192.168.0.251. Click OK when finished. Your softphone should now show: Available.

Incredible PBX Test Flight. The proof is in the pudding as they say. So let's try two simple tests. First, let's place an outbound call. Using the softphone, dial your 10-digit cellphone number. Google Voice should transparently connect you. Answer the call and make sure you can send and receive voice on both phones. Second, from another phone, call the Google Voice number that you've dedicated to The Incredible PBX. Your softphone should begin ringing shortly. If not, make certain you are not logged into Google Chat on a Gmail account with these same credentials. If everything is working, congratulations!

Here's a brief video demonstration showing how to set up a softphone to use with your Incredible PBX, and it also walks you through several of the dozens of Asterisk applications included in your system.

Solving One-Way Audio Problems. If you experience one-way audio on some of your phone calls, you may need to adjust the settings in /etc/asterisk/sip_custom.conf. Just uncomment the first two lines by removing the semicolons. Then replace 173.15.238.123 with your public IP address, and replace 192.168.0.0 with the subnet address of your private network. There are similar settings in gtalk.conf that can be activated although we've never had to use them. In fact, we've never had to use any of these settings. After making these changes, save the file(s) and restart Asterisk: amportal restart.

Running Incredible PBX in the Cloud. We've saved the best for last today. For many folks, you may want to experiment with VoIP technology without making a hardware investment and without having to master the intricacies of managing your own server and network. That's what Cloud Computing is all about. And we've searched far and wide to find you the perfect platform. As with many of you, one of our top priorities is always cost. While many providers were willing to provide Nerd Vittles with a few sheckles for pitching their product, only one stepped forward with a price point that we think is irresistible. And, for the record, we waived any compensation other than a few test accounts to get things working properly, so that all of the savings could be passed on to you! So here's the deal. $15 a month gets you your own PIAF-Purple server in the cloud at RentPBX.com. Just use this coupon code: BACK10, pick an east coast or west coast server to host your new system, choose the PIAF-Purple 1.7.5.5.4 install option, set up a username and very secure password, and you're off to the races. Once your account is established, here's the 5-minute procedure to install the special RentPBX-edition of Incredible PBX to begin making free calls in the U.S. and Canada through Google Voice.

Begin by Configuring Google Voice as outlined above. Then log into your RentPBX account using SSH and the port assigned to your account. For Windows users, download Putty from here. The SSH command will look something like this:

ssh -p 21422 root@209.249.149.108

Issue the following commands to download and run The Incredible PBX installer for RentPBX:

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx18-rentpbx.x
chmod +x incrediblepbx18-rentpbx.x
./incrediblepbx18-rentpbx.x
passwd-master

Now just follow along in the Incredible PBX virtual machine tutorial which we've included above. Remember that your new Incredible PBX is sitting directly on the Internet! So don't forget to run passwd-master when you finish the install, or your system is vulnerable. Ours was attacked within minutes!

Securing Your RentPBX Server. With the exception of our WhiteList application, everything is working on your RentPBX server. While we continue to work on the WhiteList component (reread this section of the article in a week or so to get the latest updates), you need to secure your system to avoid endless hack attempts on your SIP resources. Here's how. First, write down the IP addresses of your RentPBX server and your home network. Second, print out your existing IPtables configuration. The file to print is /etc/sysconfig/iptables. Third, make a backup copy of the file. While logged into your server with SSH, the easiest way is like this:

cd /etc/sysconfig
cp iptables iptables.bak

Now we need to edit the iptables file itself: nano -w iptables. Then search for the line that contains 5060: Ctrl-W, 5060, Enter. At the beginning of this line, add # to comment out the line. With the cursor still on this line, press Ctrl-K then Ctrl-U twice. This will duplicate the line. Move to the second commented line and remove #. Use the right cursor to move across the line to --dport. Then insert the following using the IP address of your RentPBX server, e.g.

-s 229.149.129.248

Be sure there's at least one space before and after the new text. Now duplicate that line with Ctrl-K and Ctrl-U twice. Change the IP address on the second line to the public IP address of your home or office network. Repeat this process for every IP address where you intend to use a SIP phone connected to your RentPBX server. Make additional entries for your SIP providers as well. If you want to sleep better, you can make similar changes to the SSH port entry to restrict it to your home/office IP address. It's the line immediately above the 5060 entry. Ditto for port 80 which is web access. Be very careful here. A typo will lock you out of your own server! When you're finished, save the changes: Ctrl-X, Y, Enter. Then restart IPtables: service iptables restart.

As always, we strongly recommend that you not put all of your VoIP eggs in one basket. Google Voice does go down from time to time. Vitelity is a perfect complement because the costs are low and you only pay for the service you use. A discount sign up link is below. And Vitelity has contributed generously to both the Nerd Vittles and PBX in a Flash projects. So please support them. Enjoy!

Originally published: Monday, January 17, 2011

Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.
Or Try the New, Free PBX in a Flash Conference Bridge.

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

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...

Introducing: New PBX in a Flash Installer for USB Flash Drives

Tuesday, December 21, 2010 / 5 Comments on Introducing: New PBX in a Flash Installer for USB Flash Drives

Since inception, one of the goals of the PBX in a Flash project has been to provide an install option that works reliably from a USB Flash Drive. This has become even more important as many of the newer netbooks have dropped CD/DVD drive support to conserve space and reduce cost. Just in time for Santa, we’re pleased to announce that, thanks to the Herculean efforts of bmore on the PIAF Forums, a USB Flash Drive installer is now available. This new build obviously is E-X-P-E-R-I-M-E-N-T-A-L. As with all PIAF 1.7.5.5 installs, you get your choice of Asterisk® and FreePBX® payloads with this new installer:

Gold – Asterisk 1.4.21.2 with FreePBX 2.6
Silver – Latest Asterisk 1.4 Release with FreePBX 2.6
Bronze – Latest Asterisk 1.6 Release with FreePBX 2.6
Purple – Latest Asterisk 1.8 Release with FreePBX 2.8

Here’s the 5-minute drill to get your bootable USB flash drive loaded with the PIAF installer. Once you get that far, hop over to the Nerd Vittles Installation Tutorial for PIAF 1.7.5.5 or The Incredible PBX for details on the install process.

Prerequisites. To get everything installed on your USB Flash Drive, you’ll obviously need at least a 1GB Flash Drive. HINT: 2GB flash drives may actually be cheaper! And we can tell you that Kingston DataTraveler models may be problematic. Reportedly, the Corsair GT and Kingston 102 models work fine. YMMV! Please report your results in a comment below. Next you’ll need to download the latest, greatest version of UNetbootin from SourceForge. There are versions for Windows and a number of flavors of Linux. Finally, you’ll need to download the Flash-Only ISO of PIAF 1.7.5.5.5 from SourceForge.

Creating USB Flash Drive. Step #1 is to partition and format your USB flash drive as a FAT32 device. On Windows 7 and Vista machines, you can format the drive as a DOS device, and it will automatically format it as FAT32. Once the device is properly formatted, run UNetbootin and select the Disk Image option. Then, with the ISO on your Desktop, choose the PIAF-17555-flashonly.iso from the pull-down menu. Make certain that the destination device is your USB flash drive. Then choose OK to begin. Do NOT reboot your machine when prompted to do so. You don’t really want to install PIAF on this same computer! Remember to Eject the flash drive on Windows machines before removing it.

If your Windows machine happens to crash at the end of the USB Flash install process (ask us how we know 🙂 ), all may not be lost. Restart your Windows PC, insert the flash drive again, go through the Windows error fixup procedure when prompted, and then open the drive with Windows explorer. If the only file missing from the root folder is syslinux.cfg, you’re in luck. Just download the file from here and copy the file into the top directory of your flash drive. Done!

Using the USB Flash Installer. When using the new flash installer, remember that we need to boot your new machine from the flash drive. On most newer Atom-based computers, you accomplish this by inserting the flash drive, turning the machine on, and then pressing F12 during the boot sequence to choose the boot device. You’ll just have to watch the screen of your new computer to see if some other key is used to pull up the boot selection screen. If all else fails, you can adjust the boot sequence in the BIOS settings to boot first from the USB device. If you change your BIOS boot sequence, just remember to remove the device when the initial install of CentOS completes and the reboot sequence is initiated. If instead you again see the initial PIAF install screen warning you that your disk is about to be erased, then remove the flash drive and reboot the machine once again. Then choose the PIAF payload you’d like to install. Enjoy!

And Merry Christmas!

Originally published: Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.
Or Try the New, Free PBX in a Flash Conference Bridge.

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

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…

Incredible PBX for Asterisk 1.8: Back from the Brink

Monday, December 13, 2010 / 25 Comments on Incredible PBX for Asterisk 1.8: Back from the Brink

Photo courtesy of
Blou_Aap. Artist unknown but terrific. Ever had one of those weeks? It was a wild ride these past 7 days with the introduction of Asterisk® 1.8.1 and some new Google Voice twists. And then there was our DNS provider Omnis.com that trashed name resolution for our primary domain, pbxinaflash.net, while claiming with a straight face that they didn't provide tech support for their own stupidity. Yikes! But where there's a will, there's always a way. And by Friday night, not only were all the issues sorted out but the Google Voice Gtalk interface in Asterisk 1.8 for free calling in the U.S. and Canada is now better than ever. Our special thanks to the Asterisk Dev Team and Tom King of the PIAF Dev Team for restoring peace in the valley. No more callback hoops for outbound calling. Free DIDs in most area codes. Instantaneous connections. Crystal clear calls. You can almost hear a pin drop. And Incredible PBX now brings you all this magic in a turnkey install that even a monkey could handle.

As if we needed another one, our other surprise last week was the Ebay appearance of a Nortel SIP Videophone labeled as a 1535, but it had no WiFi in either the hardware or in the particular software build. The merchant was as surprised as we were to discover the missing WiFi component and now has corrected the ad. But that won't make the WiFi reappear. For those of you still purchasing these phones (and they're worth it), read the fine print if WiFi or firmware upgrades matter to you. The Turkish models have neither. As anyone that tracks Ebay auctions will tell you, the law of supply and demand controls the price. These began in the $30 range and as recently as two weeks ago were selling for almost $80. They've now dropped back into the $50-$60 range. You're usually better off calling the merchant, and the more you buy, the better the price. Five Stars Telecom usually stocks the U.S. models. But ask to be sure.

So here's the drill today. Just download the brand new PBX in a Flash 1.7.5.5.4 ISO with the newly patched Asterisk 1.8 Purple payload. Then burn the ISO to a CD and boot your server from the PIAF CD. Choose the Purple Edition after CentOS installs which will load Asterisk 1.8.1 with FreePBX 2.8. Finally, run through the 5-minute install of Incredible PBX for Asterisk 1.8.1. In less than an hour, you'll have a turnkey, secure PBX with a local phone number and free calling in the U.S. and Canada via your own Google Voice account plus dozens and dozens of terrific Asterisk applications to keep your head spinning for months. Not only can you start enjoying free phone service immediately, but you'll have a robust PBX platform that will keep your eyes popping for months learning about all the features that would have cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars less than a decade ago. Did we mention that all of this telephone goodness is absolutely FREE!

Thanks to its Zero Internet Footprint™ design, The Incredible PBX also remains the most secure Asterisk-based PBX around. What this means is The Incredible PBX™ has been engineered to sit safely behind a NAT-based, hardware firewall with minimal port exposure to your actual server. And you won't find a more full-featured Personal Branch Exchange™ at any price.

The Incredible PBX Inventory. For those that have never heard of The Incredible PBX, here's a feature list of components you get in addition to the base install of PBX in a Flash with CentOS 5.5, Asterisk 1.8, FreePBX 2.8, and Apache, SendMail, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, IPtables Linux firewall, Fail2Ban, and WebMin. Cepstral TTS, Hamachi VPN, and Mondo Backups are just one command away and may be installed using some of the PBX in a Flash-provided scripts.

Amazon S3 Cloud Computing
AsteriDex
Baseball Scores & Schedules
CallerID Superfecta (FreePBX Module adds Names to CID Numbers)
SIP Color Videophone Support
CallWho for Asterisk
Cepstral TTS for 32-bit, Asterisk 1.8 1 (/root/nv/install-cepstral)
Preconfigured Email That Works with SendMail
ENUMPLUS (Use FreePBX to configure)
Extensions (16 preconfigured with random passwords)
FAX with HylaFax & AvantFax (/root/incrediblefax.sh)
Festival Server and Festival TTS for Asterisk (festival --server &)
Flite TTS for Asterisk
FONmail
FreePBX Backups
Gizmo5 (Free Calls to Gizmo5 users worldwide: 1747xxxxxxx*1089)
Google Voice (preconfigured)
Free Hamachi VPN (install-hamachi)
Hotel-Style Wakeup Calls (FreePBX Module)
ISN: FreeNum SIP Calling from Any Phone
MeetMe Conference Bridge (just dial C-O-N-F)
Mondo Full System Backups (install-diskbackup)
Incremental Daily Backups (install-dailybackup)
Munin Reports (install-munin)
NewsClips from Yahoo
ODBC Database Support
New PBX in a Flash Registry (show-registry)
PogoPlug Cloud Computing
Reminders by Phone and Web
SAMBA Windows Networking (setup-samba)
SIP URI Outbound Calling (call any SIP URI worldwide for free)
Free Skype Inbound & Outbound Calling (for personal use)
Stealth AutoAttendant
TeleYapper
TFTP Server (setup-tftp)
Tide Reports with xTide
Trunk Lister Script (/root/nv/trunks.sh)
Trunks (Vitelity, Gtalk, SIPgate, IPkall, and ENUM)
Twitter Interface (Make Free Calls and Send SMS Messages)
Weather by Airport Code
Weather by ZIP Code
Worldwide Weather

Prerequisites. Here's what we recommend to get started properly:

Broadband Internet connection
$250 Dual-Core Atom PC² on which to run The Incredible PBX
dLink Router/Firewall. Low Cost: $35 WBR-2310 Best: DGL-4500
Dedicated Google Voice account (not your main Gmail account!)

Installing The Incredible PBX. The installation process is simple and straight-forward. Here are the 5 Easy Steps to Free Calling, and The Incredible PBX will be ready to receive and make free U.S./Canada calls immediately:

1. Install PBX in a Flash 1.7.5.5.4 Purple Edition
2. Download & run The Incredible PBX 1.8 installer
3. Run passwd-master on your PIAF server
4. Map UDP 5222 on firewall to PIAF server
5. Configure a softphone or SIP telephone

Installing PBX in a Flash. Here's a quick tutorial to get PBX in a Flash installed. To use Incredible PBX for Asterisk 1.8, we recommend the very latest 32-bit version of PBX in a Flash 1.7.5.5.4.³ If you installed it last week, that's not new enough. The ISO hasn't changed, but the Purple payload is radically different since this morning! Unlike other Asterisk aggregations, PBX in a Flash utilizes a two-step install process. The ISO only installs the CentOS 5.5 operating system. That hasn't changed. But, once CentOS is installed, the server reboots and downloads a payload file that includes Asterisk, FreePBX, and many other VoIP and Linux utilities including all of the new Google Voice components. To get the patched version of Asterisk 1.8.1, use today's new 1.7.5.5.4 ISO. Choose the new Purple Payload, and our special Asterisk 1.8 patched release and all of the Google Voice goodies will be configured automatically. And you won't have to worry about the CDR crashing your new server either.

You can download the 32-bit PIAF 1.7.5.5.4 from SourceForge or one of our download mirrors. Burn the ISO to a CD. Then boot from the installation CD and press the Enter key to begin.

WARNING #1: This install will completely erase, repartition, and reformat EVERY DISK (including USB flash drives) connected to your system so disable any disk you wish to preserve! Press Ctrl-C to cancel the install.

WARNING #2: The PIAF Dev Team currently classifies PIAF-Purple and Asterisk 1.8 as E-X-P-E-R-I-M-E-N-T-A-L. Remember the Pioneers! If you have a low threshold for pain, if you depend upon your PBX to actually make and receive phone calls, or if you understand the WAF and prefer sleeping with both eyes closed, abort this install now and choose PIAF-Gold, PIAF-Silver, or PIAF-Bronze. Otherwise, enjoy the ride!

On some systems you may get a notice that CentOS can't find the kickstart file. Just tab to OK and press Enter. Don't change the name or location of the kickstart file! This will get you going. Think of it as a CentOS 'feature'. 🙂 If your system still won't boot, then you have an incompatible drive controller.

At the keyboard prompt, tab to OK and press Enter. At the time zone prompt, tab once, highlight your time zone, tab to OK and press Enter. At the password prompt, make up a VERY secure root password. Type it twice. Tab to OK, press Enter. Get a cup of coffee. Come back in about 5 minutes. When the system has installed CentOS, it will reboot. Remove the CD promptly. After the reboot, choose PIAF-Purple option. Have a 15-minute cup of coffee. After installation is complete, the machine will reboot a second time. You now have a PBX in a Flash base install. On a stand-alone machine, it takes about 30 minutes. On a virtual machine, it takes about half that time. Write down the IP address of your new PIAF server. You'll need it to configure your hardware-based firewall in a minute.

NOTE: For previous users of PBX in a Flash, be aware that this new version automatically runs update-programs and update-fixes for you. You still should set your FreePBX passwords by running passwd-master after The Incredible PBX installer finishes!

Configuring Google Voice. You'll need a dedicated Google Voice account to support The 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 why take the chance. Keep this account a secret!

We've tested this extensively using an existing Gmail account, and inbound calling is just not reliable. The reason seems to be that Google always chooses Gmail chat as the inbound call destination if there are multiple registrations from the same IP address. So, be reasonable. Do it our way! Set up a dedicated Gmail and Google Voice account, and use it exclusively with The Incredible PBX. Google Voice no longer is by invitation only so, if you're in the U.S. or have a friend that is, head over to the Google Voice site and register. If you're living on another continent, see MisterQ's posting for some tips on getting set up.

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

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

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

Call Screening - OFF
Call Presentation - OFF
Caller ID (In) - Display Caller's Number
Caller ID (Out) - Don't Change Anything
Do Not Disturb - OFF

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.

Running The Incredible PBX Installer. Log into your server as root and issue the following commands to download and run The Incredible PBX installer:

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx18.x
chmod +x incrediblepbx18.x
./incrediblepbx18.x
passwd-master

If you've installed the previous version of The Incredible PBX, you'll recall that there was a two-step install process after configuring another trunk with either SIPgate or IPkall. That's now a thing of the past. All you need to do after The Incredible PBX script completes is run passwd-master to set up your master password for FreePBX.

When The Incredible PBX install begins, you'll be prompted for the following:

Google Voice Account Name
Google Voice Password
Google Voice 10-digit Phone Number
Gmail Notification Address
FreePBX maint Password

The Google Voice Account Name is the Gmail address for your new dedicated account, e.g. joeschmo@gmail.com. Don't forget @gmail.com! The Google Voice Password is the password for this dedicated account. The Google Voice Phone Number is the 10-digit DID for this dedicated account. We need this if we ever need to go back to the return call methodology for outbound calling. For now, it's not necessary. But who knows what the future holds. 🙄 The Gmail Notification Address is the email address where you wish to receive alerts when incoming and outgoing Google Voice calls are placed using The Incredible PBX. And your FreePBX maint Password is the password you'll use to access FreePBX. You'll actually set it by running passwd-master after The Incredible PBX completes. We need this password to properly configure the CallerID Superfecta for you. By the way, none of this confidential information ever leaves your machine... just in case you were wondering.

Now have another 5-minute cup of coffee, and consider a modest donation to Nerd Vittles... for all of our hard work. 😉 You'll find a link at the top of the page. While you're waiting (and so you don't forget), go ahead and configure your hardware-based firewall to support Google Voice. See the next section for what's required. Without completing this firewall configuration step, no calls will work! When the installer finishes, READ THE SCREEN just for grins.

Here's a short video demonstration of the original Incredible PBX installer process. It still works just about the same way except there's no longer a second step to get things working.

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!

Firewall Configuration. We hope you've taken our advice and installed a hardware-based firewall in front of The Incredible PBX. It's your phone bill. You'll need to make one adjustment on the firewall. Map UDP 5222 traffic to the internal IP address of The Incredible PBX. This is the port that Google Voice uses for phone calls and Google chat. You can decipher the IP address of your server by logging into the server as root and typing status.

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

Extension Password Discovery. If you're too lazy to look up your extension 701 password using the FreePBX GUI, you can log into your server as root and issue the following command to obtain the password for extension 701 which we'll need to configure your softphone or color videophone in the next step:

mysql -uroot -ppassw0rd -e"select id,data from asterisk.sip where id='701' and keyword='secret'"

The result will look something like the following where 701 is the extension and 18016 is the randomly-generated extension password exclusively for your Incredible PBX:

+-----+-------+
id data
+-----+-------+
701 18016
+-----+-------+

Configuring a SIP Phone. There are hundreds of terrific SIP telephones and softphones for Asterisk-based systems. Once you get things humming along, you'll want a real SIP telephone such as the $50 Nortel color videophone we've recommended above. You'll also find lots of additional recommendations on Nerd Vittles and in the PBX in a Flash Forum. If you're like us, we want to make damn sure this stuff works before you shell out any money. So, for today, let's download a terrific (free) softphone to get you started. We recommend X-Lite because there are versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux. So download your favorite from this link. Install and run X-Lite on your Desktop. At the top of the phone, click on the Down Arrow and choose SIP Account Settings, Add. Enter the following information using your actual password for extension 701 and the actual IP address of your Incredible PBX server instead of 192.168.0.251. Click OK when finished. Your softphone should now show: Available.

Incredible PBX Test Flight. The proof is in the pudding as they say. So let's try two simple tests. First, let's place an outbound call. Using the softphone, dial your 10-digit cellphone number. Google Voice should transparently connect you. Answer the call and make sure you can send and receive voice on both phones. Second, from another phone, call the Google Voice number that you've dedicated to The Incredible PBX. Your softphone should begin ringing shortly. If not, make certain you are not logged into Google Chat on a Gmail account with these same credentials. If everything is working, congratulations!

Here's a brief video demonstration showing how to set up a softphone to use with your Incredible PBX, and it also walks you through several of the dozens of Asterisk applications included in your system.

Solving One-Way Audio Problems. If you experience one-way audio on some of your phone calls, you may need to adjust the settings in /etc/asterisk/sip_custom.conf. Just uncomment the first two lines by removing the semicolons. Then replace 173.15.238.123 with your public IP address, and replace 192.168.0.0 with the subnet address of your private network. There are similar settings in gtalk.conf that can be activated although we've never had to use them. In fact, we've never had to use any of these settings. After making these changes, save the file(s) and restart Asterisk with the command: amportal restart.

Learn First. Explore Second. Even though the installation process has been completed, we strongly recommend you do some reading before you begin your VoIP adventure. VoIP PBX systems have become a favorite target of the hackers and crackers around the world and, unless you have an unlimited bank account, you need to take some time learning where the minefields are in today's VoIP world. Start by reading our Primer on Asterisk Security. We've secured all of your passwords except your root password and your passwd-master password, and we're assuming you've put very secure passwords on those accounts as if your phone bill depended upon it. It does! Also read our PBX in a Flash and VPN in a Flash knols. If you're still not asleep, there's loads of additional documentation on the PBX in a Flash documentation web site.

Adding Multiple Google Voice Trunks. Thanks to rentpbx on our forums, adding support for multiple Google Voice trunks is now a five-minute operation. Once you have your initial setup running smoothly, hop on over to the forums and check out this Incredible solution.

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

Using ENUMPlus. Another terrific money-saving tool is ENUM. Your system comes with ENUMPlus installed. The advantage of ENUM is that numbers registered with any of the ENUM services such as e164.org can be called via SIP for free. You can read all about it in this Nerd Vittles' article. To activate ENUMPlus, you'll need to register and obtain an API Key at enumplus.org. It's free! Sign up, log in, and click on the Account tab to get your API key. Once you have your key, copy it to your clipboard and open FreePBX with your browser. Then choose SetUp, ENUMPlus and paste in your API Key. Save your entry, and you're all set. After entering your key, all outbound calls will be checked for a free ENUM calling path first before using other outbound trunks.

Stealth AutoAttendant. When incoming calls arrive, the caller is greeted with a welcoming message from Allison which says something like "Thanks for calling. Please hold a moment while I locate someone to take your call." To the caller, it's merely a greeting. To those "in the know," it's actually an autoattendant (aka IVR system) that gives you the opportunity to press a button during the message to trigger the running of some application on your Incredible PBX. As configured, the only option that works is 0 which fires up the Nerd Vittles Apps IVR. It's quite easy to add additional features such as voicemail retrieval or DISA for outbound calling. Just edit the MainIVR option in FreePBX under Setup, IVR. Keep in mind that anyone (anywhere in the world) can choose these options. So be extremely careful not to expose your system to security vulnerabilities by making certain that any options you add have very secure passwords! It's your phone bill. 😉

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

A Word About Security. Security matters to us, and it should matter to you. Not only is the safety of your system at stake but also your wallet and the safety of other folks' systems. Our only means of contacting you with security updates is through the RSS Feed that we maintain for the PBX in a Flash project. This feed is prominently displayed in the web GUI which you can access with any browser pointed to the IP address of your server. Check It Daily! Or add our RSS Feed to your favorite RSS Reader. We also recommend you follow @NerdUno on Twitter. We'll keep you entertained and provide immediate notification of security problems that we hear about. Be safe!

This latest version of Incredible PBX locks down your server to private networks and existing, registered Asterisk devices. Should you need to enable additional IP addresses for other devices or providers at a later date, simply add the new IP addresses to /etc/firewall.whitelist and then rerun /root/firewall-whitelist.sh. For additional background, read this article.

Enabling Google Voicemail. Some have requested a way to retain Google's voicemail system for unanswered calls in lieu of using Asterisk voicemail. The advantage is that Google offers a free transcription service for voicemail messages. To activate this, you'll need to edit the [googlein] context in extensions_custom.conf in /etc/asterisk. Just modify the last four lines in the context so that they look like this and then restart Asterisk: amportal restart

;exten => s,n(regcall),Answer
;exten => s,n,SendDTMF(1)
exten => s,n(regcall),Set(DIAL_OPTIONS=${DIAL_OPTIONS}aD(:1))
exten => s,n,Goto(from-trunk,gv-incoming,1)

Kicking the Tires. OK. That's enough tutorial for today. Let's play. Using your new softphone, begin your adventure by dialing these extensions:

D-E-M-O - Incredible PBX Demo (running on your PBX)
1234*1061 - Nerd Vittles Demo via ISN FreeNum connection to NV
17476009082*1089 - Nerd Vittles Demo via ISN to Google/Gizmo5
Z-I-P - Enter a five digit zip code for any U.S. weather report
6-1-1 - Enter a 3-character airport code for any U.S. weather report
5-1-1 - Get the latest news and sports headlines from Yahoo News
T-I-D-E - Get today's tides and lunar schedule for any U.S. port
F-A-X - Send a fax to an email address of your choice
4-1-2 - 3-character phonebook lookup/dialer with AsteriDex
M-A-I-L - Record a message and deliver it to any email address
C-O-N-F - Set up a MeetMe Conference on the fly
1-2-3 - Schedule regular/recurring reminder (PW: 12345678)
2-2-2 - ODBC/Timeclock Lookup Demo (Empl No: 12345)
2-2-3 - ODBC/AsteriDex Lookup Demo (Code: AME)
Dial *68 - Schedule a hotel-style wakeup call from any extension
1061*1061 - PIAF Support Conference Bridge (Conf#: 1061)
882*1061 - VoIP Users Conference every Friday at Noon (EST)

PBX in a Flash SQLite Registry. Last, but not least, we want to introduce you to the new PBX in a Flash Registry which uses SQLite, a zero-configuration SQL-compatible database engine. After logging into your server as root, just type show-registry for a listing of all of the applications, versions, and install dates of everything on your new server. Choosing the A option will generate registry.txt in the /root folder while the other options will let you review the applications by category on the screen. For example, the G option displays all of The Incredible PBX add-ons that have been installed. Here's the complete list of options:

A - Write the contents of the registry to registry.txt
B - PBX in a Flash install details
C - Extra programs install details
D - Update-fixes status and details
E - RPM install details
F - FreePBX modules install details
G - Incredible PBX install details
Q - Quit this program

And here's a sample from an install we just completed. We'll have more details and additional utilities for your use in coming weeks.

Click above. Enter your name and phone number. Press Connect to begin the call.

Special Thanks. It's hard to know where to start in expressing our gratitude for all of the participants that made today's incredibly simple-to-use product possible. Please bear with us. To Mark Spencer, Malcolm Davenport, and the rest of the Asterisk development team, thanks for a much improved Asterisk. To Philippe Sultan and his co-developers, thank you for getting the final kinks out of Jabber with Asterisk. To Philippe Lindheimer & Co., thanks for FreePBX 2.8 which really makes Asterisk shine. To Lefteris Zafiris, thank you for making Flite work with Asterisk 1.8 thereby preserving all of the Nerd Vittles text-to-speech applications. To Darren Sessions, thanks for whipping app_swift into shape and restoring Cepstral and commercial TTS applications to the land of the living with Asterisk 1.8. And to our pal, Tom King, we couldn't have done it without you. You rolled up your sleeves and really turned Asterisk 1.8.1 into something special. No one will quite understand what an endeavor that was until they try it themselves. And, finally, to our legion of beta testers, THANK YOU! We've implemented almost all of your suggestions.

Additional Goodies. Be sure to log into your server as root and look through the scripts added in the /root/nv folder. You'll find all sorts of goodies to keep you busy. The 32-bit install-cepstral script does just what it says. With Allison's Cepstral voice, you'll have the best TTS implementation for Asterisk available. ipscan is a little shell script that will tell you every working IP device on your LAN. trunks.sh tells you all of the Asterisk trunks configured on your system. purgeCIDcache.sh will clean out the CallerID cache in the Asterisk database. convert2gsm.sh shows you how to convert a .wav file to .gsm. munin.pbx will install Munin on your system while awstats.pbx installs AWstats. s3cmd.faq tells you how to quickly activate the Amazon S3 Cloud Computing service. All the other scripts and apps in /root/nv already have been installed for you so don't install them again.

If you've heeded our advice and purchased a PogoPlug, you can link to your home-grown cloud as well. Just add your credentials to /root/pogo-start.sh. Then run the script to enable the PogoPlug Cloud on your server. All of your cloud resources are instantly accessible in /mnt/pogoplug. It's perfect for off-site backups and is included as one of the backup options in the PBX in a Flash backup utilities.

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. Enjoy!

Originally published: Monday, December 13, 2010

Quirks & Bugs. Well, there aren't any that we know of. But we'll keep a running list here so you can check back from time to time if you don't participate in the PBX in a Flash Forums.

VoIP Virtualization with Incredible PBX: OpenVZ and Cloud Solutions

Safely Interconnecting Asterisk Servers for Free Calling

Adding Skype to The Incredible PBX

Adding Incredible Backup... and Restore to The Incredible PBX

Adding Remotes, Preserving Security with The Incredible PBX

Remote Phone Meets Travelin' Man with The Incredible PBX

Continue reading Part II.

Continue reading Part III.

Continue reading Part IV.

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! We maintain a thread with the latest Patches and Bug Fixes for Incredible PBX. Please have a look. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk gurus and thousands of ordinary users just like you. So you won't have to wait long for an answer to your questions.

Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.
Or Try the New, Free PBX in a Flash Conference Bridge.

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

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...

For 64-bit systems with Asterisk 1.8, use the Cepstral install procedures outlined in this Nerd Vittles article. [↩]
If you use the recommended Acer Aspire Revo, be advised that it does NOT include a CD/DVD drive. You will need an external USB drive to load the software. Some of these work with CentOS, and some don't. Most HP and Sony drives work; however, we strongly recommend you purchase an external DVD drive from a merchant that will accept returns, e.g. Best Buy, WalMart, Office Depot, Office Max, Staples. You also can run The Incredible PBX on a virtual machine such as the free Proxmox server. Another less costly (but untested) option might be this Shuttle from NewEgg: $185 with free shipping. Use Promo Code: EMCYTZT220 [↩]
HINT: Version 1.7.5.5.3 ISO also works just fine. [↩]

5 Steps to Paradise: It’s Incredible PBX for Asterisk 1.8

Friday, December 10, 2010 / 91 Comments on 5 Steps to Paradise: It’s Incredible PBX for Asterisk 1.8

Hard to believe it's been almost six months since we introduced The Incredible PBX, but that makes today even more special. With the release of Asterisk® 1.8, the PBX in a Flash Development Team headed up by Tom King burned the midnight oil to introduce the latest PBX in a Flash Purple Edition with Asterisk 1.8 in less than 24 hours.

News Flash: Incredible PBX 4.0 is now available with FreePBX 2.10 support!

Coming January 19: Incredible PBX 11 & Incredible Fax for Asterisk 11 and FreePBX 2.11

So we had all the tools necessary to reengineer, design and build the all-new Incredible PBX for Asterisk 1.8. What used to be a somewhat kludgey, dual-call, dual-provider Google Voice implementation to take advantage of Google's free PSTN calling in the U.S. and Canada with Asterisk 1.4 and 1.6 is now a zippy-quick, Gtalk-based calling platform that rivals the best SIP-to-SIP calls on the planet and provides virtually instantaneous PSTN connections to almost anybody, anywhere. Trust us! Except for the price which is now free, you'll never know you weren't connected via Ma Bell's overpriced long-distance lines and neither will the Little Mrs. And, yes, our recommended ~~$50~~ Nortel SIP videophone is plug-and-play on extensions 701 and 702.

Just download the latest PBX in a Flash ISO, burn to then boot from the PIAF CD, choose the Purple Edition to load Asterisk 1.8 and FreePBX 2.8, and then install the new Incredible PBX for Asterisk 1.8. In about an hour, you'll have a turnkey PBX with a local phone number and free calling in the U.S. and Canada via your own Google Voice account plus dozens and dozens of terrific Asterisk applications to keep your head spinning for months.

Thanks to its Zero Internet Footprint™ design, The Incredible PBX remains the most secure Asterisk-based PBX around. What this means is The Incredible PBX™ has been engineered to sit safely behind a NAT-based, hardware firewall with minimal port exposure to your actual server. And you won't find a more full-featured Personal Branch Exchange™ at any price.

Did we mention that all of this telephone goodness is still absolutely FREE!

The Incredible PBX Inventory. For those that have never heard of The Incredible PBX, here's a feature list of components you get in addition to the base install of PBX in a Flash the latest CentOS 5.x, Asterisk 1.8, FreePBX 2.8, and Apache, SendMail, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, IPtables Linux firewall, Fail2Ban, and WebMin. Cepstral TTS, Hamachi VPN, and Mondo Backups are just one command away and may be installed using some of the PBX in a Flash-provided scripts.

Amazon S3 Cloud Computing
AsteriDex
Baseball Scores & Schedules
CallerID Superfecta (FreePBX Module adds Names to CID Numbers)
SIP Color Videophone Support
CallWho for Asterisk
Cepstral TTS for 32-bit, Asterisk 1.8 1 (/root/nv/install-cepstral)
Preconfigured Email That Works with SendMail
ENUMPLUS (Use FreePBX to configure)
Extensions (16 preconfigured with random passwords)
FAX with HylaFax & AvantFax (/root/incrediblefax.sh)
Festival Server and Festival TTS for Asterisk (festival --server &)
Flite TTS for Asterisk
FONmail
FreePBX Backups
Gizmo5 (Free Calls to Gizmo5 users worldwide: 1747xxxxxxx*1089)
Google Voice (preconfigured)
Free Hamachi VPN (install-hamachi)
Hotel-Style Wakeup Calls (FreePBX Module)
ISN: FreeNum SIP Calling from Any Phone
MeetMe Conference Bridge (just dial C-O-N-F)
Mondo Full System Backups (install-diskbackup)
Incremental Daily Backups (install-dailybackup)
Munin Reports (install-munin)
NewsClips from Yahoo
ODBC Database Support
New PBX in a Flash Registry (show-registry)
PogoPlug Cloud Computing
Reminders by Phone and Web
SAMBA Windows Networking (setup-samba)
SIP URI Outbound Calling (call any SIP URI worldwide for free)
Free Skype Inbound & Outbound Calling (for personal use)
Stealth AutoAttendant
TeleYapper
TFTP Server (setup-tftp)
Tide Reports with xTide
Trunk Lister Script (/root/nv/trunks.sh)
Trunks (Vitelity, Gtalk, SIPgate, IPkall, and ENUM)
Twitter Interface (Make Free Calls and Send SMS Messages)
Weather by Airport Code
Weather by ZIP Code
Worldwide Weather

Prerequisites. Here's what we recommend to get started properly:

Broadband Internet connection
$250 Dual-Core Atom PC² on which to run The Incredible PBX
dLink Router/Firewall. Low Cost: $35 WBR-2310 Best: DGL-4500
Dedicated Google Voice account (not your main Gmail account!)

Installing The Incredible PBX. The installation process is simple and straight-forward. Here are the 5 Easy Steps to Free Calling, and The Incredible PBX will be ready to receive and make free U.S./Canada calls immediately:

1. Install PBX in a Flash Purple Edition
2. Download & run The Incredible PBX 1.8 installer
3. Run passwd-master on your PIAF server
4. Map UDP 5222 on firewall to PIAF server
5. Configure a softphone or SIP telephone

Installing PBX in a Flash. Here's a quick tutorial to get PBX in a Flash installed. To use Incredible PBX for Asterisk 1.8, you must install the latest 32-bit version of PBX in a Flash.³ Unlike other Asterisk aggregations, PBX in a Flash utilizes a two-step install process. The ISO only installs the CentOS operating system. That hasn't changed. But, once CentOS is installed, the server reboots and downloads a payload file that includes Asterisk, FreePBX, and many other VoIP and Linux utilities including all of the new Google Voice components. Just choose the new Purple Payload to get the latest Asterisk 1.8 release and all of the Google Voice goodies!

You can download the 32-bit PIAF from SourceForge or one of our download mirrors. Burn the ISO to a CD. Then boot from the installation CD and press the Enter key to begin.

WARNING: This install will completely erase, repartition, and reformat EVERY DISK (including USB flash drives) connected to your system so disable any disk you wish to preserve! Press Ctrl-C to cancel the install.

On some systems you may get a notice that CentOS can't find the kickstart file. Just tab to OK and press Enter. Don't change the name or location of the kickstart file! This will get you going. Think of it as a CentOS 'feature'. 🙂 If your system still won't boot, then you have an incompatible drive controller.

At the keyboard prompt, tab to OK and press Enter. At the time zone prompt, tab once, highlight your time zone, tab to OK and press Enter. At the password prompt, make up a VERY secure root password. Type it twice. Tab to OK, press Enter. Get a cup of coffee. Come back in about 5 minutes. When the system has installed CentOS, it will reboot. Remove the CD promptly. After the reboot, choose PIAF-Purple option. Have a 15-minute cup of coffee. After installation is complete, the machine will reboot a second time. You now have a PBX in a Flash base install. On a stand-alone machine, it takes about 30 minutes. On a virtual machine, it takes about half that time. Write down the IP address of your new PIAF server. You'll need it to configure your hardware-based firewall in a minute.

NOTE: For previous users of PBX in a Flash, be aware that this new version automatically runs update-programs and update-fixes for you. You still should set your FreePBX passwords by running passwd-master after The Incredible PBX installer finishes!

Configuring Google Voice. You'll need a dedicated Google Voice account to support The 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 why take the chance. Keep this account a secret!

We've tested this extensively using an existing Gmail account, and inbound calling is just not reliable. The reason seems to be that Google always chooses Gmail chat as the inbound call destination if there are multiple registrations from the same IP address. So, be reasonable. Do it our way! Set up a dedicated Gmail and Google Voice account, and use it exclusively with The Incredible PBX. Google Voice no longer is by invitation only so, if you're in the U.S. or have a friend that is, head over to the Google Voice site and register. If you're living on another continent, see MisterQ's posting for some tips on getting set up.

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

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

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

Call Screening - OFF
Call Presentation - OFF
Caller ID (In) - Display Caller's Number
Caller ID (Out) - Don't Change Anything
Do Not Disturb - OFF

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.

Running The Incredible PBX Installer. Log into your server as root and issue the following commands to download and run The Incredible PBX installer:

cd /root
wget http://incrediblepbx.com/incrediblepbx18.x
chmod +x incrediblepbx18.x
./incrediblepbx18.x
passwd-master

If you've installed the previous version of The Incredible PBX, you'll recall that there was a two-step install process after configuring another trunk with either SIPgate or IPkall. That's now a thing of the past. All you need to do after The Incredible PBX script completes is run passwd-master to set up your master password for FreePBX.

When The Incredible PBX install begins, you'll be prompted for the following:

Google Voice Account Name
Google Voice Password
Gmail Notification Address
FreePBX maint Password

The Google Voice Account Name is the Gmail address for your new dedicated account, e.g. joeschmo@gmail.com. Don't forget @gmail.com! The Google Voice Password is the password for this dedicated account. The Gmail Notification Address is the email address where you wish to receive alerts when incoming and outgoing Google Voice calls are placed using The Incredible PBX. And your FreePBX maint Password is the password you'll use to access FreePBX. You'll actually set it by running passwd-master after The Incredible PBX completes. We need this password to properly configure the CallerID Superfecta for you. By the way, none of this confidential information ever leaves your machine... just in case you were wondering. 🙄

Now have another 15-minute cup of coffee, and consider a modest donation to Nerd Vittles... for all of our hard work. 😉 You'll find a link at the top of the page. While you're waiting (and so you don't forget), go ahead and configure your hardware-based firewall to support Google Voice. See the next section for what's required. Without completing this firewall configuration step, no calls will work! When the installer finishes, READ THE SCREEN just for grins.