Setting up a PBX for Israel<->US communication

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 01:54:53PM +1100, Amos Shapira wrote:
> 2009/2/13 Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir at cohens.org.il>:
> > As I think I have mentioned before, I'm not sure how well it works under
> > Xen.
> >
> > E.g. http://wiki.vpslink.com/Compiling_ztdummy_on_Xen has a considerable
> > ammount of unneeded voodoo. The basic thing they do there is to use the
> > internal timing intead of RTC. But do they actually have HZ set to 1000
> > on that system? Odd settings for such a machine.
> 
> I saw somewhere that the Xen hosts provided by VPSLink already have
> 1000HTz clocks on them, saving a kernel recompilation.

But is it actually 1000Hz?

Try:

Build DAHDI[*] on that system without installing it:

  svn co http://svn.digium.com/svn/dahdi/linux dahdi-linux
  svn co http://svn.digium.com/svn/dahdi/tools dahdi-tools
  cd dahdi-linux
  make # maybe you also need KVERS, KSRC and such
  cd ../dahdi-tools
  configure --with-dahdi=../dahdi-linux
  make dahdi_test
  modprobe crc_ccitt
  insmod ../dahdi-linux/drivers/dahdi/dahdi.ko
  insmod ../dahdi-linux/drivers/dahdi/dahdi_dummy.ko
  
  # and now finally test:
  ./dahdi_test -v -c 5

  # When you're done:
  rmmod dahdi_dummy dahdi

[*] I use DAHDI in this case because for Zaptel you'd still have to
install udev rules, whereas DAHDI uses '!' in device names to make the
device files be generated with proper names. This is handy if you don't
have either installed and didn't set up udev rules yet.

In addition to that, if you need to mess with kernel module building,
you'll find that with Debian things actually work, whereas with Centos
you have to fight the system harder to make them so.

> 
> >
> > See also http://docs.tzafrir.org.il/#_kernel_configuration
> >
> > I would also recommend:
> >
> > 1. Debian :-) (As I package Asterisk for it)
> 
> I used Debian for over 10 years but now I got used to CentOS (simply
> because it's so much easier to find hosts which support it for my work
> needs).

I recently looked for unmanaged hosts and there Debian was generally as
common as Centos. Most managed hosts used cPanel and alike that I simply
can't stand.

> 
> > 2. Do consider Asterisk SVN trunk. At least if this is a home PBX.
> > Specifically The extra timing source stuff might be of direct interest
> > to you.
> 
> I don't know Asterisk at all so not sure I should try the latest and
> greatest where I'll never know whether something is broken because I
> did it wrong or because it's really broken.

In that case, latest stable is now branch 1.6.0 (e.g. 1.6.0.5). 

1.4 is still being maintained, but not sure for how long.

-- 
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