Advantages of Scratch install

[gerald_lyc]

What are the advantages of doing a scratch install than installing ViciBox Redux or installing vicidialNOW and upgrading it by SVN ?

[boybawang]

- faster learning curve, it helps your understand how things in vicidial work hand in hand together at the end of the day

- makes you love the linux commandline more and more each day

- can easily understand how to split the servers later

- customized since you choose what components you want to install or not, crm or no crm, ast 1.2 or ast 1.4, 64 bit or not, custom phone extensions, etc

- easier to recompile and update asterisk and zaptel components since they are installed using source

- easier to troubleshoot, if something goes wrong you know where to look sine you were the ones putting it up in the first place

- easier to reinstall if ever you fail to do those steps

- makes you a real IT Guy instead of the Insert Point & Click Guy, which makes your boss happy


Also for the disadvantages:

- Time consuming, but learning takes time, God made the world in 7 days so dont think you can do things overnight. Not for the impatient ones.


Other further reading ( you will need asterisk knowledge with it ):

http://cdn.oreilly.com/books/9780596510480.pdf

I also wrote a scratch install under ubuntu 8.0.4 server lts which you can freely download, thanks to matt and his team for putting it on their servers

http://download.vicidial.com/ubuntu/VIC ... 100331.pdf

When asking in the forum please use the search function first because you might be asking what the other people are asking.

Scratch install is not easy its not hard its DOABLE if you have the Brains, Patience and a little luck on your side.

As you keep doing it your going to need less or no luck at all since youll be good.

[ruben23]

I strongly agree....

[williamconley]

On the other hand

If you have a problem with a Vicibox, Redux or VicidialNOW installation, you can simply reinstall, restore from backup and you are up and running

If you hire a professional to help you out for any reason, they will likely have experience with exactly the installation you have (Most of us are familiar with all three .iso versions), without the need for lengthy explanations of 'what you did different, and why'

Installation in under 30 minutes in many cases (if you have a FAST processor and drive) or at least Fairly Fast even if you are installing on a P4, by comparison to installation speed of Scratch

The learning curve can be applied to Operating Vicidial, instead of learning Linux (if learning/training time is limited this is very handy)

Often Manuals are built (tutorials, etc) specifically for one of the assumed .iso installs.

With a proper installation, the client may never even need to learn or interact with the server locally, everything can be done remotely ... an .iso install gets to this point faster and with less interaction.

I guess, from my point of view, it's like automobiles: Do you really need to know how to install new piston ring to own/operate a motor vehicle? (There can be NO denying that this information would be mighty handy, considering the cost of a rebuild on today's vehicles ... but do YOU know how to do this?)

I've done over a hundred installs. Before there were .iso images to work from and now. I created my own scratch installation on Gentoo even. But I prefer the "always the same" .iso installation of VicidialNOW, Vicibox, and Vicibox Redux.

My opinion.

I wonder who is in charge of the Ubuntu Vicibox version now?

[gerald_lyc]

Thanks for these points guys...

Is vicidial for dummies a good procedure to install vicidial which make it a powerful install to support a full production for 100 agents?

Furthermore how can i create my own ISO from a running vicidial with all its components installed like vtiger etc. How to create my own ISO? with Gentoo? how?

william you mean that you have done 100 of installation by using the ISO images of VicidialNOW, Vicibox, and Vicibox Redux?

Is there an ISO on Ubuntu Vicibox version? Vicibox is on Opensuse.

Futhermore what the main difference between Vicibox Redux and Vicibox Server.

Thanks

[boybawang]

vicibox redux is the one thats running on open suse 11.1 while vicibox server is the one on ubuntu 8.0.4 server

[williamconley]

if you want to create an .iso of ANY running system, you can use g4l (ghost for linux) available as open source.

but the "receiving" hardware must MATCH the "original" hardware for such an approach.

otherwise, the method for making an INSTALL .iso varies from one linux distro to the next.

in fact, this is one of the factors that caused The Vicidial Group to switch to OpenSUSE, they say the Ubuntu .iso installation was too time-consuming to maintain and ubuntu itself was troublesome to keep working.

To create an .iso that you can "install" onto any computer, you will need to research the OS in question to see how to create your own custom install CD, then apply a similar method to the "Scratch Installation" to create your Post-OS installation script (except you'll have to have more error handling because there will not be a person to make every decision).

Creating an IMAGE, however, is very good if you have identical hardware (like a bunch of blade servers all purchased with the same motherboard/CPU/HD/NIC). You'll have to change the MAC address in the networking device generator and the IP address in the astguiclient.conf file (and run the change ip script) when you apply the image, but it does work fairly well if the hardware is identical.

[Op3r]

Gerald,

I have done a 250 seats install on vicidialNOW well except for the database though its on centos 64bit.

[williamconley]

how many servers did you use to get to 250? (were they recording all calls?)

[gerald_lyc]

Very interesting, how many server? a single core server setup for all these agents??

William do you have a link for custom CD installation for ubuntu?

[williamconley]

The Vicidial Group has not removed their .iso for this software, it is still available on their site, although it is not as easy to get to as it used to be (as it is no longer supported because it installs 2.0.5 ...). However, if you install it and then follow the SVN instructions it is easy to upgrade to 2.2.0.

http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibox/server/

vicibox-server-1.0.0-rc2-i386.iso

vicibox-server-1.0.0-rc2-i386.md5

[gerald_lyc]

Where can i get the SVN instruction for a ubuntu installation to upgrade to a 2.2.0 version?

[williamconley]

Generic SVN from vicidial's wiki:
http://wiki.vicidial.org/index.php/SVN:howto

A great place (gardo has some cool stuff on his site):
http://www.vicidialnow.org/

On Vicibox you will not have to install SVN/subversion as it is already installed. So skip that step.

Obviously your password for a vicibox installation will not be "vicidialnow" for mysql ... so you will use the password you created during installation.

Of course, I could post the specific steps for Ubuntu if I had time (2.0.5 LATEST or 2.2.X LATEST or 2.4 TRUNK LATEST). I'm just hammered. LOL

[Op3r]

how many servers did you use to get to 250? (were they recording all calls?)

Here's how many server I have used.

Ann Asterisk server 192.168.8.91 Y 1.4.21.2 96 -5 MODIFY
Anne Anne Asterisk server 192.168.8.103 Y 1.4.21.2 96 -5 MODIFY
ellenjane EllenJane Asterisk 192.168.8.132 Y 1.4.21.2 96 -5 MODIFY
Gina Gina Asterisk server 192.168.8.99 Y 1.4.21.2 96 -5 MODIFY
Jean Jean Asterisk server 192.168.8.109 N 1.2.30.2 96 -5 MODIFY
Joanna Joanna Asterisk server 192.168.8.107 Y 1.4.21.2 96 -5 MODIFY
Karen Karen Asterisk server 192.168.8.98 Y 1.4.21.2 96 -5 MODIFY
Kris Kris Asterisk server 192.168.8.106 Y 1.4.21.2 96 -5 MODIFY
lovemarie lovemarie Single Server 192.168.8.94 Y 1.4.21.2 96 -5 MODIFY
Romina Romina Asterisk server 192.168.8.96 Y 1.4.21.2 96 -5 MODIFY
Ronalyn Ronalyn 2 server 192.168.8.95 Y 1.4.21.2 96 -5 MODIFY
Shemie Shemie Asterisk server 192.168.8.108 N 1.2.30.2 96 -5 MODIFY
Sherry Sherry Asterisk server 192.168.8.93 Y 1.4.21.2 96 -5 MODIFY

Using g729 and recording all calls using ram drive. All of them are using vicidialNOW.

[williamconley]

how many servers did you use to get to 250? (were they recording all calls?)

Here's how many server I have used.

...

Using g729 and recording all calls using ram drive. All of them are using vicidialNOW.

Any telephony hardware on any of the boxes?

What CPU count/speed? all the same?

[Op3r]

@bill

No telephony cards yet but Im in the process of putting in the sangoma USB UT50 Voicesync on almost all of them. Provided that support from sangoma will email me in time.

The servers are pretty much uniformed (core2quad, 4gb, 320gb hard drive) and the load never goes up more than to 1.50

[ruben23]

@Op3r

IS the Databased and Webserver, archive server part of that list of servers you have for your setup..?

[gerald_lyc]

I had install the vicibox server with ubuntu 8.0.4.2, asterisk 1.2.30...
How to upgrade asterisk 1.4.21.., vicidial 2.2.1 ?

will the step help:
mkdir /usr/src/astguiclient
cd /usr/src/astguiclient
svn checkout svn://svn.eflo.net:43690/agc_2-X/trunk

or from the http://www.vicidialnow.org/ ?

"Of course, I could post the specific steps for Ubuntu if I had time (2.0.5 LATEST or 2.2.X LATEST or 2.4 TRUNK LATEST). I'm just hammered. LOL"

Any links available for the specific steps ?

[williamconley]

you could always borrow the installation steps for asterisk 1.4 from the scratch installation instructions.

[gardo]

Go with Vicibox redux since the Ubuntu based is not going to be supported soon. You don't want to be left in the dark are you?

Or you can also use VicidialNOW if CentOS/RedHat based distros suites you better.

As for your initial question on what's the advantage of doing a scratch install, it has some as pointed out by Boybawang. However, the disadvantages far outweighs the advantages. Too many pitfalls for someone new to LInux, Asterisk and Vicidial. Very time consuming - both in getting it up and running to maintaining it for production. As Williamconley said, who needs to know the internal workings of the car (unless you're the mechanic or an enthusiast)? Unless you really want to get your hands dirty.

[gerald_lyc]

Does anyone have try to do a scratch install using Scratch install with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS ?

Also have anyone try the asterisk-1.4.30-vici.tar.gz ?

Anyone has the updated doc for full default install vicidial on Ubuntu Server Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with all the updates component such as asterisk, trunck etc

[gerald_lyc]

After following the step for upgrade to vicidial 2.2 SVN, am getting this error:

Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Access denied for user 'cron'@'localhost' (using password: YES) in /var/www/vicidial/dbconnect.php on line 44
MySQL connect ERROR: Access denied for user 'cron'@'localhost' (using password: YES)

can anyone tell what is wrong? how to get around it please?

[williamconley]

is your cron password correct in /etc/astguiclient.conf (test by trying to log in to mysql as "cron" with the password in the astguiclient.conf file).

this user/pwd pair is located in many places throughout the system and must be correct everywhere for a fully functional system. it's in phone definitions, etc.

there is a script published and available that will allow updating the cron password everywhere at one shot on a single server installation, if you need it.

[gerald_lyc]

Thanks,

and where can i get this published script please?

[williamconley]

http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALmantis/view.php?id=247

[gerald_lyc]

after the update i got this error msg on top of my vicdial page

Warning: mysql_num_rows(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /var/www/vicidial/admin.php on line 1304

Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /var/www/vicidial/admin.php on line 2349

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /var/www/vicidial/admin.php:1304) in /var/www/vicidial/admin.php on line 2413

Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /var/www/vicidial/admin_header.php on line 923

anyone can tell me why? and how to get around it please?

[williamconley]

did you reboot and check that line to find out what information is causing an invalid response?