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Which version of Asterisk

Posted by hfourie on Tue, 12/22/2009
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Thirdlane platform General Questions

Hi all,

2 generla questions. For production use, is it best to go for Asterisk 1.4 or 1.6?

Also, is it better to use the ISO, or build CentOS yourself and then install the components manually. The ISO is still giving that yum error so cant do any upgrades.

Submitted by eeman on Tue, 12/22/2009 Permalink

i always roll my own.

1.6 has some new features but theres some others that still dont work. there is no call parking in the iso version of 1.6 and sip presence (BLFs) are broken on every version of 1.6 whenever you do a 'reload'.

Submitted by hfourie on Wed, 12/23/2009 Permalink

thanks for the reply. Do you recommend using 1.4? Which version do you use? you seem like a pro. Are there any decent features that 1.6 will give?

Would the ISO version of 1.4 be good enough?

I assume if I use own build, CentOS 5.4 will be fine?

Can I sun a backup Thirdlane (using Ast 1.6) rebuild 1.4 and restore settings?

Many Thanks for the assistance.

Submitted by eeman on Wed, 12/23/2009 Permalink

the iso version of 1.4 does not come with valetparking.

I am currently running 1.4.27.2

cent 5.4 is fine

basically to go from 1.6 to 1.4 in pbx manager just re-install the webmin module from the webmin -> webmin configuration -> webmin modules page. Re-installing the webmin module will run a script that goes through the scripts and converts them to 1.4 (because it see's 1.4 reply from asterisk -V)

Submitted by hfourie on Thu, 12/24/2009 Permalink

thanks again for the info. Am I correct to say that I can either use ISO 1.4 and then upgrade Asterisk, or RMO "roll my own" and manually install latest 1.4 Asterisk and get valetparking and other feautures that might not be availible in the earlier releases of 1.4?

Submitted by eeman on Thu, 12/24/2009 Permalink

valetparking is not part of the source tree. its a 3rd party module that you stick in the source tree before compiling.

Submitted by hfourie on Wed, 12/30/2009 Permalink

I think Im gonna use the ISO version of 1.4. Im familiar with CentOS, but no expert. Also this way I get just the bits I need.

I assume Im fine to update 1.4 to the latest 1.4.x afterwards?

Submitted by eeman on Wed, 12/30/2009 Permalink

if you do that , theres a LOT of missing libraries in the iso needed at compile time. The net result is that when you compile asterisk you wont be compiling new versions of some modules that were included in the iso build (they really set you up for failure here) so what happens is some modules from the previous version linger in /usr/lib/asterisk/modules/ instead of newer versions replacing them. This is one very common cause of runtime crashes.

I would recommend doing rm -f /usr/lib/asterisk/modules/* just prior to your 'make install' to avoid that. I would also run through the 'yum install pkgname' gauntlet of development packages to ensure you arent leaving out any needed module from compile time.

finally I would ditch the /etc/init.d/pbxportal script and use the asterisk source tree init script that gets installed during 'make config'. do NOT do 'make samples' at any point after thirdlane has been installed or you will blow everything away which would be bad.