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Asterisk on Steroids: The Orgasmatron Installer, Part III

Tuesday, May 5, 2009 / 1 Comment on Asterisk on Steroids: The Orgasmatron Installer, Part III

Happy Cinco de Mayo! And you can celebrate the event by installing two dozen turnkey Asterisk® applications in under 5 minutes! We recently introduced our new Orgasmatron Installer for PBX in a Flash. And today the saga continues with Part III in our series. Faxing and email work out of the box. More than a dozen extensions and a number of hosting provider trunks are preconfigured. Delivery of CallerID names with numbers is available from a half dozen providers of your choice. ODBC database connectivity is now painless. And the Flite text-to-speech engine is preconfigured with Cepstral TTS only a few keystrokes away. Also included are FreePBX 2.5, and Apache, SendMail, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, IPtables Linux firewall, Fail2Ban, and WebMin. Here's the complete list of what 5 minutes of your time brings to your Asterisk server platform:

In Part II of this series, we walked you through securing your system and configuring a few of the major applications: AsteriDex, CallerID Superfecta, CallWho, Cepstral, and Emailing with SendMail. Today, we'll tackle nine more applications in the list.

Fax Module with nvFax. The NVfax module provides basic incoming and outgoing fax functionality for your PBX in a Flash system. It's not perfect because faxing with VoIP providers is hit and miss at best! As installed, inbound faxing works after a simple configuration. Here are the three steps:

#1. Log into your server as root and edit fax-process.pl in the /var/lib/asterisk/bin folder. Change the following default parameter to make it your default MAILTO email address:

my $to = "JoeSchmoe\@gmail.com";

NOTE: Always edit system files like this: nano -w filename

#2. Using a web browser, log into FreePBX and choose Admin, Setup, General Settings. In the Fax Machine section of the form, choose system as the extension for receiving faxes, enter the destination email address for incoming faxes, and enter an email from address for outbound faxes.

#3. While still in FreePBX, you need to define how you want faxes processed when they are received from outside your PBX. Choose Admin, Setup, Inbound Routes. For each incoming route on your PBX where you want to enable receipt of faxes, click on that incoming route definition. In the Fax Handling section of the form, choose system as the fax extension, enter the fax email destination address, choose nvfax as the fax detection type, and use 5 as the fax detection delay setting. Save your settings for each inbound destination and then reload your dialplan.

You can test it by plugging a real fax machine into a VoIP phone adapter such as the Linksys SPA-2102 and assigning the ATA an extension number on your PBX. Using the fax machine, simply send a fax to extension 329 (F-A-X). It should arrive as a PDF in your email inbox within a couple minutes.

Once you get fax delivery of faxes from inside your PBX working reliably, then you're ready to graduate to the Big League and get faxing from outside your PBX working. This is 99% dependent upon the quality of inbound calls from your DID provider. If your DID provider doesn't support ULAW, give up or switch providers. We have successfully tested inbound faxing with TelaSIP, Teliax, voip.ms, and Future-Nine. With Teliax and Future-Nine, you will need to add the following settings to your Incoming Trunk Configuration in FreePBX:

t38pt_rtp=no
t38pt_tcp=no
t38pt_udptl=no

For additional tips and tricks, read our Best of Nerd Vittles article on faxing.

FONmail for Asterisk. FONmail is one of several applications that works in conjunction with AsteriDex. It lets you pick up a telephone connected to your Asterisk system, dial 6245 (M-A-I-L), and dictate a message for email delivery to someone in your AsteriDex database. You'll be prompted for the phone number of your recipient, or you can look up a person using the first three letters of their name in the AsteriDex database. Once you record your message and choose the recipient, the dictated message is emailed to the recipient using the email address you've entered for that person in AsteriDex.

For FONmail to work, you obviously have to add entries into AsteriDex (with email addresses) for the recipients you intend to select, and you need to populate the new dialcodes for AsteriDex by following the instructions in Part II of this tutorial. The final piece is specifying your return email address for the outbound emails. Set your return email address by editing the $email entry at the top of nv-mailit.php. The file is stored in /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin.

FreePBX Backups. A disaster recovery plan is a critical component with any computer system, and PBX in a Flash is no different. You need to have a plan for recovering from a disaster whether that disaster is an Act of God, or man-made, or the result of a hardware failure. Our recommended strategy goes like this. Make weekly full disk backups with Mondo to at least a pair of USB flash drives. Replace the drive each week and take the other drive off site. In addition, make daily or weekly FreePBX backups and copy them to a safe place. Amazon S3 offers a convenient, inexpensive off-site storage facility for FreePBX backups. FreePBX backups let you restore FreePBX components to a machine state at the time the backup was made. Here's how to set up FreePBX automatic backups. Be sure you clean out old backups from time to time as they take up disk space. The backups are stored in folders under /var/lib/asterisk/backups based upon the name you assign to your backup schedule.

Here's how to set one up to make a backup on demand:

1. Open FreePBX with your web browser.
2. Choose Admin, Tools, Backup and Restore, Add Backup.
3. Give the backup schedule a name, e.g. RightNow.
4. Change all Radio buttons to Yes to backup everything.
5. Backup schedule: Run Backup Now.
6. Click Submit Changes button to kick off the backup.

Here's how to set one up to make a weekly backup every Sunday night:

1. Open FreePBX with your web browser.
2. Choose Admin, Tools, Backup and Restore, Add Backup.
3. Give the backup schedule a name, e.g. Daily.
4. Change all Radio buttons to Yes to backup everything.
5. Backup schedule: Run Backup Weekly (on Sunday).
6. Click Submit Changes to save new backup schedule.

Gizmo5 FreePBX Module. One of the VoIP providers that provides enormous flexibility in getting the most out of your new system is Gizmo5. For very little money and virtually no configuration hassles, Gizmo5 can't be beat. One of the slick functions that Gizmo5 provides is the ability to make 5-minute phone calls to any Skype user at no cost. For $20 a year, you can make as many 2-hour Skype calls as you like to your ten best friends. For more details, see our article. The Orgasmatron installer puts everything in place for you to set up a Gizmo account quickly from within the FreePBX interface. Just choose Admin, Setup, Gizmo5 Integration. Just follow the prompts to create your new account and make an initial deposit.

Installing the Hamachi VPN. Once you've run the Orgasmatron Installer, you have the option of installing the Hamachi virtual private network (VPN) which supports the interconnection of 16 computers at no cost. Simply run the install-hamachi.x script which you'll find in your /root/nv folder. For complete configuration instructions, read the install-hamachi.pdf file and hamachi.faq, both of which are also in the same directory.

Interconnecting Asterisk Servers with IAX. If you don't plan to interconnect your Asterisk server with one or more other Asterisk servers, then delete the Remote-Host outbound route in FreePBX and then delete the remote-peer trunk. If you plan to use the ODBC demo examples on extensions 222 and 223, you at least will need to change the Dial Pattern for the Remote-Host outbound route by deleting the 2XX entry as explained elsewhere in this article. What this provided was a simple way to interconnect extensions in the 200-299 range of numbers on a remote PBX.

If you do plan to interconnect Asterisk servers, then change this 2XX Dial Pattern to match the extension numbers on your remote PBX. For example, if the remote Asterisk server uses extensions in the 7000-7999 range of numbers, you'd want to include a 7XXX entry in your Remote-Host Dial Pattern.

To enable, interconnection of your new server to another Asterisk server, edit the remote-peer trunk and insert the actual IP address of your remote host. Also change the secret in the Peer and User sections to a very secure entry and use the same secret entry in your remote host trunk setup.

On the remote server, create a new IAX trunk with settings like the following using your correct secret and the IP address of your new server that was built with the Orgasmatron Installer:

MeetMe Conferences On the Fly. If you're accustomed to spending hundreds of dollars to schedule and run phone conferences with dozens of people, those days are officially over with PBX in a Flash. You now can purchase a phone number in 2600+ rate centers in the United States with support for 20 simultaneous calls for under $9 a month. Once you have purchased your DIDforSale DID and configured the new trunk on your server, simply point the inbound route for that trunk to Misc Destination: MeetMe CONF.

To set up a conference at any time, pick up any phone on your PBX and dial 2663 (C-O-N-F). When prompted for the conference number, make one up, e.g. 30303. When prompted for a conference PIN, make one up, e.g. 1234. Now notify all conference participants to dial the Conference DID (or 2663 for internal users) and to use 30303# for the conference number and 1234# for the PIN. When everyone hangs up, the conference ends. Simple as that!

ODBC Database Connectivity. All of the necessary components to support ODBC database integration with Asterisk have been installed for versions of the Orgasmatron Installer after May 1. Also included are two sample dialplan components that demonstrate how to build ODBC applications. These two samples are explained in the Nerd Vittles ODBC article. The extensions used by these two samples are 222 and 223. If you used an older version of the Orgasmatron Installer, you'll have to manually add ODBC support and the sample extensions conflict with the default routing rules for interconnecting your server to another Asterisk server. So you have two options. Either change the Dial Pattern for interconnecting to the remote server by deleting the 2XX entry or modify the extension numbers for the ODBC demos in /etc/asterisk/odbc.conf. Once you have addressed this inconsistency, you can activate the ODBC demo applications by inserting the following line in the [from-internal-custom] context of extensions_custom.conf in /etc/asterisk: #include odbc.conf

Then reload your Asterisk dialplan: asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"

Reminders by Phone and by Web. The latest version of the Best of Nerd Vittles Telephone Reminders 4.0 application is included in the Orgasmatron Installer. You can schedule reminders by telephone by dialing 1-2-3 from a phone connected to your Asterisk PBX. The default password is 12345678. To keep strangers from using your reminder system, you need to change this password. Edit extensions_custom.conf in /etc/asterisk and search for the 123 extension. Change the password entry in the Authenticate entry and reload your dialplan as shown above.

You also can schedule reminders using a web browser. There's an option in FreePBX: Admin, Tools, Reminders. You also can access the reminders application separate and apart from FreePBX using the IP address of your Asterisk server: http://ipaddress/reminders.

The CallerID number for the application, the TTS engine, and your email address all can be adjusted to meet your needs. See the Best of Nerd Vittles article for details on making these changes.

Continue reading Part IV (Monday, May 25).

Twitter Magic. If you haven't noticed the right margin of Nerd Vittles lately, we've added a new link to our Twitter feed. If you explore a little, you'll discover that the user interface now brings you instant access to every Twitter feed from the convenience of the Nerd Vittles desktop. Enjoy!

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.

 

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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.

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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...

Asterisk on Steroids: The Orgasmatron Installer, Part II

Monday, April 20, 2009 / 5 Comments on Asterisk on Steroids: The Orgasmatron Installer, Part II

In our last column, we introduced you to the new Orgasmatron Installer for PBX in a Flash. After a one-week break to prepare for our visit to the Atlanta Asterisk® Users Group 3d Annual InstallFest, we're back in the saddle today to flesh out the new baby.

For those that are new to all of this, let's briefly review what the Orgasmatron Installer has added to your Lean, Mean Asterisk Machine. Faxing and email now work out of the box. More than a dozen extensions and a number of hosting provider trunks are preconfigured as well. Delivery of CallerID names with numbers is now available from a half dozen providers of your choice. And, of course, the Flite text-to-speech engine is preconfigured with Cepstral TTS only a few keystrokes away. Also included are FreePBX 2.5, and Apache, SendMail, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, IPtables Linux firewall, Fail2Ban, and WebMin. And here's the complete list with all of your new Nerd Vittles applications:

Security First! Because your phone bill matters, today we begin with security. The design of virtually all of the open source Asterisk PBX aggregations is to leave SIP and IAX ports on your new server exposed to the Internet. This is done to facilitate communications with your hosting providers as well as telephone extensions which may be connected to your server from the other side of the globe. The wrinkle with this design is that, if a bad guy can guess an extension number on your system and its password, they get a free ticket to do whatever could be done from that extension on your PBX. In the case of one unlucky company, this resulted in a phone bill of over $100,000. For details, read our Primer on Asterisk Security. So... Security Matters!

Anyone obviously can download PBX in a Flash and the Orgasmatron Installer. Thus, you need to assume that everyone on the planet knows your default passwords. We walked you through changing some of the important ones with the passwd-master script last week. Use it regularly. Now let's turn our attention to your extensions and trunk passwords.

Extension Security. There now are a couple of ways to secure your extensions from the bad guys. First, you need to establish very secure passwords for your extensions and voicemail boxes. Second, you need to specify the IP addresses that are authorized to access every extension on your PBX. And third, remember do repeat this drill every time you add a new extension to your system.

To change an extension password, open FreePBX using a web browser pointed to the IP address of your server: http://ipaddress/admin/. On PBX in a Flash systems, you'll be prompted for a username (maint) and whatever password you set when you ran passwd-master. Now click the Setup tab and then the Extensions option. You'll see the list of configured extensions on your PBX in the right column. Click on each of those extensions, and you'll see a form like this:



The password for this extension is stored in a field called secret. Make up a very secure password for every extension on your PBX. You will embed this password in the telephone connected to this extension. There's no other place you'll need it so a long and complex numeric password is essential.

The authorized IP addresses for this extension are stored in a field called permit. The way this works is that you first specify which IP addresses should be denied access (the deny field), and then you poke a little hole in the dike, if you're smart, to permit only one or a few IP addresses to connect to the extension. Leave the deny entry as it is. The default permit entry 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0 opens the floodgates. It means any IP address can log into this extension. To restrict extension access to IP addresses on a private LAN of 192.168.1, the entry would look like this: 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0. To further restrict extension access to a specific IP address (recommended!), the entry would look like this: 192.168.1.44/255.255.255.255. Use a permit entry that makes you sleep well at night. After all, it's your phone bill.

The third entry you'll want to change is further down the same data entry form, and that's the Voicemail Password field. This entry determines who can actually retrieve voicemails left for this extension. Set it accordingly.

Once you've made the three changes above, save your entries by clicking the Submit button at the bottom of the form. Repeat the drill for every extension, and then click the orange Apply Configuration Changes tab at the top of the screen and then Continue with Reload to reload your Asterisk dialplan.

Trunk Security. Securing the trunks on your PBX is equally important to securing extensions. Keep in mind that, with your trunk credentials, anyone can set up your trunk on their PBX to make calls on your nickel! Unlike the extensions, there are no working usernames and passwords in the default trunks with one exception. If you plan to use the providers we've preconfigured, simply insert your own username, fromuser, and secret settings in the fields provided, and you'll be making calls in a matter of seconds. The process is similar to the one we used for extensions. Choose Setup, Trunks and then click on each trunk and make your entries. Submit your entries and then reload the dialplan when you're finished.

In the case of the remote-peer trunk, this trunk is designed to make it extremely easy to interconnect Asterisk servers for interoffice communications. But it also means that a bad guy can easily interconnect with your server and start dialing. If you don't plan to connect to another Asterisk server, delete this trunk! If you do plan to connect to another Asterisk server, change the trunk secret and IP address of the host to which you are connecting. Do NOT leave the default secret in either the outgoing or incoming settings! Also change the password for the outbound route: Remote-Host. You may want to ultimately remove this password if you actually start interconnecting servers. Otherwise, users will have to enter this password whenever they may a call to an extension on the interconnected Asterisk server.

To interconnect your server to another server, you would simply add a new trunk called main-peer on the other server that looks like this (using your new password and correct IP address):


Configuring AsteriDex. AsteriDex is plug-and-play for most users. However, as configured, your AsteriDex web site is reachable from the Internet if you have mapped port 80 on your hardware-based firewall to your PBX in a Flash server or if you don't have a hardware-based firewall and your server is directly exposed to the Internet. If you don't mind people seeing your contact list or making prank calls that ring your extensions, this may be okay. If it's of concern to you, the easiest security precaution is to rename the asteridex4 directory to an obscure name that only you know, e.g. bahbah143. Here are the commands to issue after logging into your server as root. By using all of these commands, AsteriDex still will be accessible through FreePBX and the PBX in a Flash GUI:

cd /var/www/html
mv asteridex4 bahbah143
sed -i 's|asteridex4|bahbah143|' admin/modules/asteridex/page.asteridex.php
sed -i 's|asteridex4|bahbah143|' welcome/.htindex.cfg

The other adjustment you may need to make to AsteriDex is to configure who can access the Admin tab to add, modify, and delete entries in your database. As configured, the Admin tab is available to any computer with an IP address that begins with 192.168. This may not match your private subnet, and not all 192.168 IP address are non-routable. So you may wish to tighten this restriction to match your internal subnet. In the /var/www/html/asteridex4 folder (or whatever name you've chosen above), you'll find a configuration file: config.inc.php. Simply edit this file and change the $local_net entry. You also can set the long distance prefix ($LDprefix), your CallerID number ($CallerID), and the default extension to ring for click-to-dial from the web interface ($INtrunk and $defaultExt). The extension to dial can now be set from the web interface as well. Unless you really know what you're doing, leave everything else the way it is.

CallerID Superfecta. Most hosting providers deliver CallerID numbers as part of your payment for using their DIDs. Almost none deliver CallerID names without an additional charge. CallerID Superfecta is designed to fill that gap... for free. A number of us have worked on this project for years. And it now has been integrated directly into FreePBX. There are two steps to getting everything working properly on your new PBX. First, you need to identify which CallerID lookup sources you wish to use on your system. Then, you need to specify CallerID Superfecta as the lookup source on each Inbound Route where you want CallerID names looked up for incoming calls.

Open FreePBX with your web browser and navigate to Setup, CID Superfecta. You'll get a form that looks like this:


With the exception of AsteriDex and SugarCRM lookups which are almost instantaneous, keep in mind that each lookup takes a little time and slows down receipt of your inbound call. So long as you have a good Internet connection, you shouldn't have a problem using all of the sources. The way the CallerID Superfecta works is that, once it gets a name match in any of the sources beginning with AsteriDex and SugarCRM, it ends the lookups and provides the CallerID name it found to Asterisk for display on the extensions which are ringing in the designated inbound route. Filling out the form is self-explanatory for the most part. Tick off the lookup sources you wish to use. If you plan to use whocalled.us, you'll need to sign up for an account and provide your credentials before the lookup will work. With SugarCRM, fill in the blanks to match your implementation of SugarCRM. Click the SAVE button when you have CallerID Superfecta configured to meet your needs.

The final step in implementing CallerID Superfecta is to designate it as the CallerID Lookup Source for your Inbound Routes. Click on Setup, Inbound Routes and a list of your existing routes will be displayed in the right column. As installed, there will only be one: Any DID / Any CID. Click on this entry to display the form. Scroll down to the CallerID Lookup Source dropdown box and choose CallerID Superfecta. You'd do the same with any other inbound route you create down the road. Click the Submit button and reload your dialplan to enable CallerID Superfecta. Now sit back and wait on your first call.

CallWho for Asterisk. CallWho for Asterisk is a little script we put together to make it easy to look up and dial the numbers of people in your AsteriDex database. When you dial 4-1-2, you'll be prompted to enter the first three letters of the name of the person you wish to call. Once you key in the three letters, CallWho for Asterisk will look up every matching entry in your AsteriDex database and read you the list of matches. For example, if you had Joe Schmo and Joe The Plumber in your database, CallWho would say something like this:

Press 1 for Joe Schmo.
Press 2 for Joe The Plumber.

When you press 2, CallWho will place a call to Joe The Plumber. Not sure why you'd ever want to do that, but now you understand the way it works.

Before CallWho for Asterisk will work at all, you need to run the script which associates three letter codes with every entry in your AsteriDex database. And, whenever you add new entries to your database, you need to run it again. Using a web browser, here's the program to run. Be sure to use the correct IP address for your Asterisk server and your newly designated AsteriDex location instead of asteridex4:

http://192.168.0.44/asteridex4/dialcode.php

Cepstral TTS for Asterisk. PBX in a Flash is delivered with the Flite text-to-speech engine already enabled. But, unless you like the voices of Lurch and Fred Munster, you may wish to cough up a little cash and install Cepstral on your server. Cepstral now has a synthesized voice of Allison which exactly matches all of the other voice prompts in Asterisk. I'm embarrassed to report that we can't seem to get the correct installation script deposited in our Orgasmatron builds... ever! So, if you want to use Cepstral, here are the steps to download the real, working installation script and to install Cepstral:

cd /root/nv
rm install-cepstral
wget http://pbxinaflash.net/source/cepstral/install-cepstral
chmod +x install-cepstral
./install-cepstral

Once the 65MB download completes, you'll be prompted to agree to the license. You do this by pressing the Enter key to scroll down the license agreement. When you reach 100%, type yes to continue with the install. Press Enter to accept /opt/swift as the install directory. Very important: Type y to create the directory. The default is No which will mess up the installation. Now type yes to complete the install. Once the install completes, you can purchase a license for the Allison voice at this link. Under Voices, choose Language: US English, Voice: Allison-8kHz, and Platform: Linux. For non-commercial use, the $30 voice registration is all you need. For commercial use, you also need to acquire Concurrency Licenses which authorize a certain number of simultaneous voice ports on your system for Cepstral voices. These run $50 per port in 2-port multiples and are in addition to the $30 Allison voice license. For Nerd Vittles readers, you can save 15% on your purchase by sending an email to sales at cepstral.com explaining how you plan to use Cepstral and requesting the discount code.

We'll have an in-depth article on Cepstral in coming weeks. For those that want a head start, each of the Nerd Vittles text-to-speech applications typically includes dialplan code and one or more PHP/AGI scripts. The dialplan code can be found in /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf. When you scroll through the dialplan code you will see entries like the following for each of the TTS applications:

exten => 611,5,Flite("Enter a 3 character airport code.")
;exten => 611,5,Swift("Enter a 3 character airport code.")
exten => 611,6,Read(APCODE,beep,3)
exten => 611,7,Flite("Please hold a moment.")
;exten => 611,7,Swift("Please hold a moment.")

The semicolon at the beginning of a line tells Asterisk this is a comment and to ignore it. To change the voice from the Munsters to Allison, just comment out the Flite lines and uncomment the Swift lines by deleting the leading semicolons. When you're finished making the changes, save the file and then reload your dialplan: asterisk -rx "dialplan reload". So, in the example above, the code would now look like this:

;exten => 611,5,Flite("Enter a 3 character airport code.")
exten => 611,5,Swift("Enter a 3 character airport code.")
exten => 611,6,Read(APCODE,beep,3)
;exten => 611,7,Flite("Please hold a moment.")
exten => 611,7,Swift("Please hold a moment.")

You also need to modify the PHP/AGI scripts that go with each application. All of these files are stored in /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin. Typically the filenames begin with nv- and end in .php:
-rwxrwxr-x 1 asterisk asterisk 6835 Sep 16 2008 nv-callwho.php
-rwxrwxr-x 1 asterisk asterisk 201 Jul 12 2006 nv-config-555.php
-rwxrwxr-x 1 asterisk asterisk 201 Apr 2 13:08 nv-config.php
-rwxrwxr-x 1 asterisk asterisk 14329 Feb 10 2008 nv-mailcall.php
-rwxrwxr-x 1 asterisk asterisk 6072 Sep 24 2008 nv-mailit.php
-rwxrwxr-x 1 asterisk asterisk 10490 Apr 20 10:34 nv-news.php
-rwxrwxr-x 1 asterisk asterisk 6545 Apr 12 15:10 nv-today.php
-rwxrwxr-x 1 asterisk asterisk 21537 Apr 2 13:07 nv-weather.php
-rwxrwxr-x 1 asterisk asterisk 12043 Apr 2 13:07 nv-weather-world.php
-rwxrwxr-x 1 asterisk asterisk 22243 Apr 2 13:07 nv-weather-zip.php

In each of these scripts, you'll find a variable near the top that controls the TTS engine: $ttspick = 0 ;

To use Cepstral as the TTS engine instead of Flite, just change the $ttspick value from 0 to 1 and save the file.

Email That Works With SendMail. It's always been a knuckle drill to get your new server to reliably send outbound emails. Assuming your Internet service provider doesn't block downstream mail servers, the Orgasmatron Installer will get this working reliably. You can test it out by logging into your server as root and issuing the following command using your real email address. If you get the email, you can move on.
echo "test" | mail -s testmessage yourname@gmail.com

If you didn't get the email, you probably have a provider such as Comcast that blocks port 25 in many areas of the country. The easiest way to solve this is to set up a free Gmail account and use Gmail to deliver outbound messages from your server. This message thread on the PBX in a Flash Forum will walk you through the setup process. There's also a Comcast solution if you'd prefer not to use Gmail.

Stay Tuned. Your eyes are probably glazing over about now. I know mine are. So we'll quit here for today. In our next episode, we'll tackle the rest of the goodies that make up the Orgasmatron Installer. Enjoy!

Continue reading Part III.

Continue reading Part IV (Monday, May 25).

Tip of the Week. Ever wanted a 20-seat conference bridge for under $9 a month with a local phone number in any of 2600+ rate centers all over United States? You can add load balancing and automatic failover for an extra $1 per month. After you use the Orgasmatron Installer, just set up a conference extension in FreePBX and then head over to the PBX in a Flash Forum to read all about the latest rage in DID providers.

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...

Asterisk on Steroids: Introducing the Orgasmatron Installer

Thursday, April 9, 2009 / 15 Comments on Asterisk on Steroids: Introducing the Orgasmatron Installer

If an Asterisk® distribution with every bell and whistle on the planet is at the top of your Wish List, then the new Orgasmatron Installer may just be your cup of tea. Let’s face it. The Asterisk learning curve is horrendous. As some of you know, we have built some custom PBX in a Flash systems for the Dell, Everex, and Atom platforms. These builds differ from the PBX in a Flash base install in that they were turnkey PBXs with dozens and dozens of custom applications, extensions, and trunks already preconfigured. While you still needed to change some passwords and plug in some phones, the Orgasmatron builds reduce the Asterisk learning curve to almost zero. Out of the box, email works. Faxing works. ENUM works. Interconnecting Asterisk servers for free calling works. And extensions for 15 phones already are in place. Plug in your Vitelity credentials, and you can place calls to any phone in the world using your new VoIP PBX in a couple of minutes. That’s the good news.

The problem with these builds lies in their basic architecture. To date, all of them were really Mondo backups. And once you strayed from the platform on which the original system was built, your odds of getting a successful restore went down the toilet quickly. Well, that was then. And this is now!

Today we introduce an installation script for PBX in a Flash that lets you build a PBX in a Flash base system, run the Orgasmatron Installer script, and boom! Within a few minutes, you’ve got an Asterisk-based Orgasmatron server on the computer platform of your choice regardless of processor, disk controller, disk drive, network card, and video adapter. And it works equally well in a virtual environment using an open source platform such as the fantastic and free Proxmox Virtual Environment.

Update: Be sure to check out the latest Orgasmatron V Installer at this link.

For those that are wondering what’s included in this new Orgasmatron build, here’s a feature list of the components you get in addition to the base PBX in a Flash build with Asterisk 1.4 or 1.6, FreePBX 2.5, and Apache, SendMail, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, IPtables Linux firewall, Fail2Ban, and WebMin:

Getting Started. Even though the installation process is now a No-Brainer, you are well-advised to do some reading before you begin. 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 precautions to protect your phone bill. Start by reading our Primer on Asterisk Security. Then 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.

Installation. Here’s a quick tutorial to get you started. First, install the 32-bit version of PBX in a Flash with Asterisk 1.4. Boot your system from the installation CD and type ksalt to begin. When your machine reboots, remove the CD and choose option A to load the most stable payload. When the install completes, reboot your system once again and login as root with the password you chose when you built your system. Now issue the following commands to bring your system current and protect your system passwords: update-scripts, update-fixes, passwd-master. 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.

Now you’re ready to run the Orgasmatron Installer. While still logged into your new server as root, issue the following commands:

cd /root
wget http://pbxinaflash.net/orgasmatron/orgasmatron.x
chmod +x orgasmatron.x
./orgasmatron.x
reboot

Stick around while the install script is running. Parts of it are interactive. For now, choose the Flite option when you’re prompted for text-to-speech preferences. That way you’ll have a working system when you’re finished. Once the installer script is finished, type status and write down the IP address of your server. You’ll need it in the next step to log into FreePBX.

Using a web browser, open FreePBX on your new server with a command like this (substituting the IP address you wrote down above). When prompted for your account name, type maint and use the password you assigned when running passwd-master above:

http://192.168.0.123/admin/

You’re NOT done yet!

These next four steps are important. They get all of the FreePBX modules installed and then restore the FreePBX backup set that’s at the heart of the Orgasmatron build. Just follow along here, and don’t skip any steps. It’s easy.

1. Choose Module Admin, Check for Updates online, Upgrade All, Process, Confirm, Return, Apply Config Changes, Continue.

2. Choose Module Admin, Check for Updates online, Download All, Process, Confirm, Return, Apply Config Changes, Continue.

3. Repeat the above #2 commands a second time.

4. Click on the Tools tab and choose Backup & Restore, Restore, RightNow, and select the .tar.gz file that is displayed. Then choose Restore Entire Backup Set, OK, Apply Config Changes, and Continue.

Securing Your System. You’re almost done. We always like to reboot the server just to make sure nothing got lost in the shuffle. When the reboot is finished, log into FreePBX with a browser again. Before you do anything else, choose each of the 16 preconfigured extensions on your new server and change the extension AND voicemail passwords. Here’s the drill: Setup, Extensions, 501, Submit after changing secret and Voicemail Password. Repeat with the next extension number instead of 501. Then Apply Config Changes, Continue when you’ve finished with all of them.

Now let’s change the default DISA password: Setup, DISA, DISAmain, PIN, Submit Changes, Apply Config Changes, Continue. Whew! Your system now is relatively secure. Follow the steps in the tutorials we recommended, and you’re ready to experiment. Plug in a SIP phone or softphone and configure it using one of the available extensions together with the secret for that extension.

Finally, be sure to change the credentials on all of your trunks to match those assigned by your providers. And, in the case of the remote-peer trunk, change the secret and IP address to match the identity on your host Asterisk server. If you don’t have another Asterisk server, change the password anyway so no one can break into your system. Better yet, just delete the trunk unless you plan to use it down the road. We’ll have more to say about this next week. For now, just make up your own, secure password to protect this trunk from outside access by unwanted visitors.

Choosing a VoIP Provider. For this week, we’ll point you to some things to play with on your new server. Then next week, we’ll cover in detail how to customize every application that’s been loaded. For openers, we recommend you set up an account with Vitelity using our special link below. This gives your PBX a way to communicate with every telephone in the world, and it also gets you a 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 VoIP world is new territory for some of you. Unlike the Ma Bell days, there’s really no reason not to have multiple VoIP providers especially for outbound calls. Depending upon where you are calling, calls may be cheaper using different providers for calls to different locations. So we recommend having at least two providers. Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum to get some ideas on choosing alternative providers.

Kicking the Tires. OK. That’s enough tutorial for today. Let’s play. After you’ve connected a phone to your new system, begin your adventure by dialing these 10 numbers:

  • D-E-M-O – Check out the Nerd Vittles Orgasmatron Demo
  • 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 a regular or recurring phone reminder
  • Dial *68 – Schedule a hotel-style wakeup call on any extension

Homework. Your homework for this week is to do some exploring. FreePBX is a treasure trove of functionality, and the Orgasmatron build adds a bunch of additional options. See if you can find all of them. Then 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. Enjoy!

Continue reading Part II.

Continue reading Part III.

Continue reading Part IV (Monday, May 25).

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…

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