Comments on: The 5-Minute PBX: PIAF Virtual Machine for VirtualBox (Windows, Mac, or Linux)

By: LesD

LesD — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 14:30:33 +0000

I am a regular user of VirtualBox for Windows but this is the first Linux based one. I have two questions.

1. Is there a way to copy/paste from Windows to the console screen?

2. Once it starts up, the console screen is too high (too many lines) for my screen and I have to keep scrolling. How can I adjust this?

By: Alper

Alper — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 13:56:54 +0000

I had to add and enable a network interface for VirtualBox.

Just FYI for other noobs like me 🙂

[WM: Yep. That’s covered in the article. 😉 ]

By: Nerd Uno

Nerd Uno — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 13:41:28 +0000

PIONEERS: The preview edition of the Incredible PBX 11 Virtual Machine is now available for testing. It includes the all-new Incredible Fax, SMS messaging, and dozens of turnkey Asterisk apps.

By: RobF

RobF — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 14:39:58 +0000

I extracted the vmdk from the ova file and booted it on Proxmox 2.2. It works great. Thanks Ward!

By: Nerd Uno

Nerd Uno — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 01:14:30 +0000

There’s an issue with Music on Hold in this initial release. Here’s the fix. Log into your server as root and issue the following command:
cp -p /var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3/*.wav /var/lib/asterisk/moh/.

By: Skavoovie

Skavoovie — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 19:56:55 +0000

Add console access to a headless Virtualbox on Linux instance by installing the non-GPL (free for personal use) extension pack from VirtualBox’s website, and enabling VRDE functionality on the VM. The extension will need to be installed as root. Launch the VirtualBox GUI as root or via sudo. Install the extension, then exit the VirtualBox GUI app (note that depending on what user you installed your VM as, your VM may not show up when run as root, because VirtualBox VMs are user-specific).

Console access comes in very handy if you ever lose network connectivity on the guest machine, as normally in VirtualBox, if you start a VM headless, you cannot connect to it via the GUI console access. Conversely, if you start the VM in the GUI, you cannot close the window without shutting down the VM.

After installing the VirtualBox extension via the GUI-tool in the machine settings, or via CLI, enable VRDE functionality:

$ VBoxManage modifyvm "VirtualMachine Name" --vrde on

Note this can be done via the GUI in the machine hardware settings if you prefer. Once VRDE is enabled for the VM, connect via the rdesktop tool (use your distro’s package manager to install rdesktop (e.g. ‘yum install rdesktop’).

$ rdesktop -a 192.168.0.10

Note this is NOT the IP address of the guest (PIAF) machine! This is the IP address of the HOST machine — the machine that is running the VirtualBox application itself.

By: David

David — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 17:43:06 +0000

Pretty amazing!
Any experience or thoughts for those that use analog voice cards?

[WM: Don’t know whether an analog card in your machine would be recognized. Only one way to find out. 🙂 If that doesn’t work, take a look at Sangoma’s USBfxo or the OBi110.]