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[ANNOUNCE] SAIL-389 - Rev3.0 and embedded SME Server

Offline SARK devs

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[ANNOUNCE] SAIL-389 - Rev3.0 and embedded SME Server
« on: January 12, 2007, 07:45:22 PM »
Hi,

We don't normally announce SAIL releases anymore 'cos we do so many.  However, this one is a bit different and we also have a few other things to tell you..

-389 is a fairly big release with a lot of new stuff in it.  Briefly these are...

    *  New Dynamic Proxy to remotely log on to phones via https directly from server-manager.
    * Dynamic network scanning and recognition of SIP devices which can then be automatically "adopted" into the asterisk configuration.
    * The CDR (STAT) and Flash Operator Panel (FOP) are now proxied into the manager panel.
    * A new "General Edit" panel for editing any asterisk data set.
    * New, tighter, levels of call forward granularity
    * Inbound call DND Prefixing

The biggest thing in this is the Proxy engine which uses mod_rewrite to do its stuff.  We've checked that it doesn't disrupt Horde (webmail) and various other proxied services but we can't test every contrib.  There may be some proxy services out there that we disrupt with this release.  Please let us know if it causes you a problem.

This release requires nmap for its phone scanning and adoption routines so for this reason we advise that you install -389 with yum.  You can find full instructions here

http://81.149.154.14/docs/cgi-bin/view/Main/DocChapter03

The docs site has been updated with screen shots from the new release and in-particular, for a write up on the new phone discovery and management routines, you should look here...

http://81.149.154.14/docs/cgi-bin/view/Main/DocChapter10

OK that's -389.

Aside from the odd maintenance fix, 2.1.14 is now done.  The new super-duper SARK R3.0 is running in test here and we'd like some "guineapigs" to help test it...

Cosmetically, Rev 3.0 looks exactly the same as -389 but it has a brand new engine under the covers and it uses MySQL for its data storage instead of the SME Server Database.  Why?  Well, it's part of our OpenSer/Asterisk integration goal.  We already have a test mule running with OpenSer handling all of the phones and asterisk "worker" instances handling things like PSTN gateway, Voicemail and conferencing duties.  The two databases can be integrated with MySQL but it would be much harder to do this with SME Server DB because we would have to write a distribution layer for it.  So it's gone.  Also, we've written a new back-end asterisk environment generator which no longer uses the SME/Perl template mechanism.  At the moment this is still written in Perl but we may move it to php at a later date.

If you want to get involved in Rev3.0 then drop us an e-mail at admin@selintra.com and we'll add you to the list.

Finally, while Rev3.0 is being built to handle potentially many hundreds of users, at the other end of the scale we have a fully working "baby" SARK/SAIL running on an embedded platform.  Looking through the contribs we can't find any evidence of anyone successfully running a full-blown SME Server instance from compact Flash.  Well, we've done it.  It isn't perfect and it seems to have a mind of its own at times but it runs quite well on our mini-ITX setup and asterisk goes like a train on it.

With a bit more development we fully intend to offer it to our low-end customers (suitably packaged).  Anyhow, if anyone would like to help with the testing then drop us a line admin@selintra.com.  Once we figure out how to package the damn thing, we'll gladly ship you a copy.  :-)

Kind Regards

Selintra

Offline hervep

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[ANNOUNCE] SAIL-389 - Rev3.0 and embedded SME Server
« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2007, 07:17:38 AM »
Hi Selintra,

I can't find the -389 onto ftp://81.149.154.14/Pre-Releases/ . last version shown is
Quote
01/09/2007 10:47      1,387,853 selintra-sail-2.1.14-378.noarch.rpm


Did I missed something ?

Kind regards,

Hervé

Offline SARK devs

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[ANNOUNCE] SAIL-389 - Rev3.0 and embedded SME Server
« Reply #2 on: January 13, 2007, 07:26:39 AM »
Hi hervep,

No you didn't miss anyhing :-).  The rpm hasn't gone up yet.  We found a small glitch in final packaging.  Should go up in the next day or so.

Best

Selintra

Offline Franco

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[ANNOUNCE] SAIL-389 - Rev3.0 and embedded SME Server
« Reply #3 on: January 16, 2007, 10:16:27 PM »
Awesome,
Let us know when can we test  :wink:

Thanks,

Offline SARK devs

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[ANNOUNCE] SAIL-389 - Rev3.0 and embedded SME Server
« Reply #4 on: January 16, 2007, 11:24:01 PM »
Quote
Let us know when can we test



Very soon.  We had a last-minute glitch in the proxy stuff - it's very complex because it has to cater for different phone browser apps.  Snom, Aastra Polycom and, to a lesser extent, Grandstream are solid but linksys/sipura and Mitel are proving to be complete bitches.

For those of you who volunteered,  Rev3.0 alpha rpms and installation instructions  will be shipped to you by the end of the week - thank you all very much for your kind assistance.  We also hope to have news of the companion OpenSer SipStack component by month-end so you might want to dig out a spare SME image to run it on :-).  - Just joking, you can run it co-located with SARK/SAIL for testing (with some limitations).

Then you can build that 10000 user system you've always wanted!!

:-)

Kind Regards

Selintra