ViciBox v.4.0 RC1
Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2012 1:30 am
Here is the RC1 Release:
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... .0.RC1.iso
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... .0.RC1.md5
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... reload.iso
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... reload.md5
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... .0.RC1.iso
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... .0.RC1.md5
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... reload.iso
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... reload.md5
It's got a few known issues that I've listed below:
- Wanpipe Voicetime driver is broken. Email Sangoma and ask them when they will support DAHDI v.2.6
- Wanpipe v.3.5.28 driver should be working but needs to be verified, if anyone like writing RPM/OBS let me know!
- OpenSuSE v.12.1 has a bug in it where the screen will look funky after the initial install, simply reboot and it's fine.
- No easy menu-driven way to edit the internal 'vicibox' table yet, it's on the to-do list.
- Might need to disable ACPI on some BIOS due to a kernel bug that wasn't fixed until v.3.2
- MUST install and set-up the database first. Installer will not let you continue otherwise
- If you have an archive server, install it before you install any telephony servers to get those settings pulled in
- Still need to do iteration testing on some of the expert mode options, most notably being the Slave MySQL install option
- OpenSuSE v.12.1 live-install partitioner is flaky compared to 11.3, might have to check the partition table when installing
- 64-bit version is in the works as we speak, should be out by the weekend (I hope!)
- Writing updated documentation as we speak, I really hate it, with a passion!
- Probably other things I am forgetting, but ohh well, we will find them soon enough, welcome to open-source!
Major enhancements in ViciBox v.4.0 over ViciBox v.3.1:
- PERL-based 'vicibox-install' that does smart things during the install, preventing a broken install (or trying to)
- Creates a 'vicibox' table that holds cluster configuration information used by the installer for automating configuration settings
- Automatically scans for Sangoma Voicetime or Amfeltec VoiceSync module during installation and enables them
- Installer now handle the ViciDial 'install.pl' itself, simplifying the install and making things much cleaner to look at
- Integrated the archive setup into the 'vicibox-install' program, and the corresponding 'vicibox' table for autoconfiguration
- Update to newer versions in the software stack (see below), translation is better hardware and software support
- The [home] and [end] key actually move the cursor back and forth now (WOW! Why was this never enabled from OpenSuSE?!?!?!)
- Set 'pico -w' as the default system editor, it's more friendly to those who are uninitiated in 'vim'
- consolidated the old 'vicibox-express' program into the 'vicibox-install' program, added the --express flag for enabling it (See below)
- MegaCli is included for LSI cards (If there is a similar program for Adaptec and the like, let me know!)
- Added 'audiostore.conf' to apache2 that the installer modifies to allow the audio store file listing without enabling it globally
- General overhaul of installed packages to try and slim the size down, let me know if I missed your favorite XYZ program
- Server specs are auto-detected and the large MySQL or Apache configurations are enabled on stand-alone servers with adequate resources
- Attempts to find your internal RFC1918 IP address to use for the ViciDial configuration, prompts if it can't find one
- Connect to the internet to discover what the external IP address is and populated that in the server entry and sip.conf (great for those behind routers!)
- Allows you to specify a specific SVN version to install, or to install the head version (Only available when installing as DB or in 'legacy' mode)
- There is no more branch installation option, ViciBox is designed to work 100% from SVN now (It really is best)
- 'nomodeset' is default when you hit F3 at the boot menu when booting from the CD and select "Text Mode"
This to be added as part of a version upgrade (in order of current priority):
- Finish the 'restore' option for vicibox-install
- Create a 'vicibox-edit' to allow a simple way to edit the 'vicibox' table, or creating the table on older installs from the database and populating it
- Add an option to randomize passwords as part of the standard back-end installer (The vicidial conf_secret and server passwords are already randomized)
- create a 'vicibox-update' program that will update the DB Schema and prompt for updating the cron and conf files with the defaults (if you customized them, then you get to upgrade those by hand)
- Some kind of support for fail2ban and the xtables-GeoIP plugin allowing someone in the 'expert' installer to add further security enhancements
- A little abstraction to the installer so that it can be a little more generic and potentially distributed as a tarball, although the ViciBox distro is quite heavily seeded with files that are OpenSuSE specific, maybe this will be sponsored since it has minimal benefit outside of 'ViciBox'.
How to install (the short version):
Phase 1:
1) Boot from CD
2) Press F3 and select "Text Mode"
3) Let CD boot, might have to hit enter at the end to get the login prompt, user: root pass: vicidial
4) Type 'os-install'
5) The partitioner got flaky in 12.1, so you might need to check it to make sure you get a clean layout, adjust as necessary
6) Reboot
Phase 1.5:
1) System boots, enter the unique hostname of this server. IT SHOULD NOT BE THE SAME AS THE OTHER SERVERS!!!!!
2) Enter the non-privileged user if you want it
3) Once the system is done, you might need to hit enter to get a Login prompt, against this is an OpenSuSE first-boot bug
4) Login as root and password vicidial
5) Optionally, 'zypper up' if you want to pull in any updated packages prior to the reboot
6) type 'reboot' so that the system reboots and the fonts on the screen aren't garbage, again an OpenSuSE bug from first-boot
Phase 2:
1) Login as 'root' with password 'vicidial'
2) type 'vicibox-express' to install an express vicibox, or type vicibox-install for all the options
3) Follow the on-screen prompts, they will guide you where you want to go
You can type 'vicibox-install --help' to get a list of options available to you. They are as follows
--debug = Goes into debug mode, gives a bunch of output useful primarily for debugging things that go wrong
--express = Do the ViciBox Express install. The actual 'vicibox-express' script just passes this flag to the vicibox-install program
--legacy = Enable legacy mode, however if the installer connects to a database and does not see a 'vicibox' table, it enables it anyways
--restore = Restore the current system to the information supplied from the vicibox table, Planned but does nothing *currently*, but it will eventually!
The standard installer is pretty basic. It's designed to get things running with a minimal amount of user input and knowledge. Suitable for people who just want things to work without really getting too far away from a text-book scenario install. The default non-expert install options are as follows:
- HTML Redirect page enabled
- No MySQL Slave Server
- No phpMyAdmin install
- Settings use defaults as much as possible with minimal prompting
All the fun stuff comes into play when the "expert" mode is enabled. You can enable or disable and edit almost all portions of the install such as DB names, users, passwords, locations, HTML Redirect installed, phpMyAdmin installed, MySQL Slave server set-up, etc. Be careful you don't get lost in the details. If you don't know if you need to change any of the above, then you probably don't. The non-expert or 'standard' install options were selected to have the best mix of convenience and reasonable security. It should be noted that lack of adequate network security is not covered by the installer in any way shape or form. In other words, if you tell the installer to disable the firewall, and proceed to put your database on a public IP, there is nothing to preventing you from doing that. Read these forums and start your own threads if you have questions about the best way to implement ViciDial or ViciBox! There is more then enough talent here to arm you with enough knowledge to get the job done.
Current RC1 software stack:
OpenSuSE v.12.1 32-bit PAE / 64-bit
Kernel v.3.1.10
Asterisk v.1.4.44-vici (It went EOL, so sad, 1.8 in testing)
DAHDI v.2.6.0.1
Wanpipe v.3.5.28 (Needs to be verified working)
Wanpipe VoiceSync v.1.0.15 (Broken, call Sangoma and ask when they will make it work with DAHDI v.2.6!)
VoiceSync v.1.3.0.1 (Verified working! Thank you Amfeltec for pulling it out of thin air!)
LibPRI v.1.4.12
OpenR2 v.1.3.2
MySQL v.5.5.25 (Needs to be tested at high load, any takers?)
PHP v.5.3.8 w/Eaccelerator v.0.9.6.1
Apache v.2.2.21
PERL v.5.14.1
On a side-note, I already have ViciBox v.5.0-beta built on OpenSuSE v.12.2 but it has one glaring issue: Plymouth! Evidently they decided that we all need pretty start-up and shut-down screens. This results in the start-up splash screen coming up and just sitting there till you hit CTRL-ALT-F1. Maybe that can become a feature instead of a bug.
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... .0.RC1.iso
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... .0.RC1.md5
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... reload.iso
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... reload.md5
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... .0.RC1.iso
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... .0.RC1.md5
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... reload.iso
http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibo ... reload.md5
It's got a few known issues that I've listed below:
- Wanpipe Voicetime driver is broken. Email Sangoma and ask them when they will support DAHDI v.2.6
- Wanpipe v.3.5.28 driver should be working but needs to be verified, if anyone like writing RPM/OBS let me know!
- OpenSuSE v.12.1 has a bug in it where the screen will look funky after the initial install, simply reboot and it's fine.
- No easy menu-driven way to edit the internal 'vicibox' table yet, it's on the to-do list.
- Might need to disable ACPI on some BIOS due to a kernel bug that wasn't fixed until v.3.2
- MUST install and set-up the database first. Installer will not let you continue otherwise
- If you have an archive server, install it before you install any telephony servers to get those settings pulled in
- Still need to do iteration testing on some of the expert mode options, most notably being the Slave MySQL install option
- OpenSuSE v.12.1 live-install partitioner is flaky compared to 11.3, might have to check the partition table when installing
- 64-bit version is in the works as we speak, should be out by the weekend (I hope!)
- Writing updated documentation as we speak, I really hate it, with a passion!
- Probably other things I am forgetting, but ohh well, we will find them soon enough, welcome to open-source!
Major enhancements in ViciBox v.4.0 over ViciBox v.3.1:
- PERL-based 'vicibox-install' that does smart things during the install, preventing a broken install (or trying to)
- Creates a 'vicibox' table that holds cluster configuration information used by the installer for automating configuration settings
- Automatically scans for Sangoma Voicetime or Amfeltec VoiceSync module during installation and enables them
- Installer now handle the ViciDial 'install.pl' itself, simplifying the install and making things much cleaner to look at
- Integrated the archive setup into the 'vicibox-install' program, and the corresponding 'vicibox' table for autoconfiguration
- Update to newer versions in the software stack (see below), translation is better hardware and software support
- The [home] and [end] key actually move the cursor back and forth now (WOW! Why was this never enabled from OpenSuSE?!?!?!)
- Set 'pico -w' as the default system editor, it's more friendly to those who are uninitiated in 'vim'
- consolidated the old 'vicibox-express' program into the 'vicibox-install' program, added the --express flag for enabling it (See below)
- MegaCli is included for LSI cards (If there is a similar program for Adaptec and the like, let me know!)
- Added 'audiostore.conf' to apache2 that the installer modifies to allow the audio store file listing without enabling it globally
- General overhaul of installed packages to try and slim the size down, let me know if I missed your favorite XYZ program
- Server specs are auto-detected and the large MySQL or Apache configurations are enabled on stand-alone servers with adequate resources
- Attempts to find your internal RFC1918 IP address to use for the ViciDial configuration, prompts if it can't find one
- Connect to the internet to discover what the external IP address is and populated that in the server entry and sip.conf (great for those behind routers!)
- Allows you to specify a specific SVN version to install, or to install the head version (Only available when installing as DB or in 'legacy' mode)
- There is no more branch installation option, ViciBox is designed to work 100% from SVN now (It really is best)
- 'nomodeset' is default when you hit F3 at the boot menu when booting from the CD and select "Text Mode"
This to be added as part of a version upgrade (in order of current priority):
- Finish the 'restore' option for vicibox-install
- Create a 'vicibox-edit' to allow a simple way to edit the 'vicibox' table, or creating the table on older installs from the database and populating it
- Add an option to randomize passwords as part of the standard back-end installer (The vicidial conf_secret and server passwords are already randomized)
- create a 'vicibox-update' program that will update the DB Schema and prompt for updating the cron and conf files with the defaults (if you customized them, then you get to upgrade those by hand)
- Some kind of support for fail2ban and the xtables-GeoIP plugin allowing someone in the 'expert' installer to add further security enhancements
- A little abstraction to the installer so that it can be a little more generic and potentially distributed as a tarball, although the ViciBox distro is quite heavily seeded with files that are OpenSuSE specific, maybe this will be sponsored since it has minimal benefit outside of 'ViciBox'.
How to install (the short version):
Phase 1:
1) Boot from CD
2) Press F3 and select "Text Mode"
3) Let CD boot, might have to hit enter at the end to get the login prompt, user: root pass: vicidial
4) Type 'os-install'
5) The partitioner got flaky in 12.1, so you might need to check it to make sure you get a clean layout, adjust as necessary
6) Reboot
Phase 1.5:
1) System boots, enter the unique hostname of this server. IT SHOULD NOT BE THE SAME AS THE OTHER SERVERS!!!!!
2) Enter the non-privileged user if you want it
3) Once the system is done, you might need to hit enter to get a Login prompt, against this is an OpenSuSE first-boot bug
4) Login as root and password vicidial
5) Optionally, 'zypper up' if you want to pull in any updated packages prior to the reboot
6) type 'reboot' so that the system reboots and the fonts on the screen aren't garbage, again an OpenSuSE bug from first-boot
Phase 2:
1) Login as 'root' with password 'vicidial'
2) type 'vicibox-express' to install an express vicibox, or type vicibox-install for all the options
3) Follow the on-screen prompts, they will guide you where you want to go
You can type 'vicibox-install --help' to get a list of options available to you. They are as follows
--debug = Goes into debug mode, gives a bunch of output useful primarily for debugging things that go wrong
--express = Do the ViciBox Express install. The actual 'vicibox-express' script just passes this flag to the vicibox-install program
--legacy = Enable legacy mode, however if the installer connects to a database and does not see a 'vicibox' table, it enables it anyways
--restore = Restore the current system to the information supplied from the vicibox table, Planned but does nothing *currently*, but it will eventually!
The standard installer is pretty basic. It's designed to get things running with a minimal amount of user input and knowledge. Suitable for people who just want things to work without really getting too far away from a text-book scenario install. The default non-expert install options are as follows:
- HTML Redirect page enabled
- No MySQL Slave Server
- No phpMyAdmin install
- Settings use defaults as much as possible with minimal prompting
All the fun stuff comes into play when the "expert" mode is enabled. You can enable or disable and edit almost all portions of the install such as DB names, users, passwords, locations, HTML Redirect installed, phpMyAdmin installed, MySQL Slave server set-up, etc. Be careful you don't get lost in the details. If you don't know if you need to change any of the above, then you probably don't. The non-expert or 'standard' install options were selected to have the best mix of convenience and reasonable security. It should be noted that lack of adequate network security is not covered by the installer in any way shape or form. In other words, if you tell the installer to disable the firewall, and proceed to put your database on a public IP, there is nothing to preventing you from doing that. Read these forums and start your own threads if you have questions about the best way to implement ViciDial or ViciBox! There is more then enough talent here to arm you with enough knowledge to get the job done.
Current RC1 software stack:
OpenSuSE v.12.1 32-bit PAE / 64-bit
Kernel v.3.1.10
Asterisk v.1.4.44-vici (It went EOL, so sad, 1.8 in testing)
DAHDI v.2.6.0.1
Wanpipe v.3.5.28 (Needs to be verified working)
Wanpipe VoiceSync v.1.0.15 (Broken, call Sangoma and ask when they will make it work with DAHDI v.2.6!)
VoiceSync v.1.3.0.1 (Verified working! Thank you Amfeltec for pulling it out of thin air!)
LibPRI v.1.4.12
OpenR2 v.1.3.2
MySQL v.5.5.25 (Needs to be tested at high load, any takers?)
PHP v.5.3.8 w/Eaccelerator v.0.9.6.1
Apache v.2.2.21
PERL v.5.14.1
On a side-note, I already have ViciBox v.5.0-beta built on OpenSuSE v.12.2 but it has one glaring issue: Plymouth! Evidently they decided that we all need pretty start-up and shut-down screens. This results in the start-up splash screen coming up and just sitting there till you hit CTRL-ALT-F1. Maybe that can become a feature instead of a bug.