Topic: Sail/Sangoma A200 FXO - anyone got it working?

[ghendershot]

Just a quick question.  Am interested if anyone has been able to get the Sangoma A200 card working with Sail.  

I tried it a long time ago but hit a brick wall.  Then moved my Asterisk installs to Trixbox which of course has support for this card.  So it became a non-issue for me.

However, I have a new requirement that screams for a lot of the functionality in SME.  But to put it all together I need to implement Asterisk on the SME server.  I have seen mention that some have had success using Trixbox under SME but I would prefer to use Sail if I can get it to work with the Sangoma card.

For those unfamiliar with this card, its a 4-port (actually with daughter cards can support up to 24 ports) card that can support a mix of FXO/FXS ports.  It has very good echo cancellation and is not as picky about the PCI slot as the TDM400.  

In general, the Sangoma card has performed very well for me in a number of installations.  It patches the Zaptel drivers with its own code and to Asterisk, looks like a Zap device.  

When I first tried it with Sail (about a year ago) things got strange when I tried to get Sail to see it in the "PCI card" setup dialog.  I was under deadline pressure and did not have time to fight through the problem so took the easy way out and setup the install with Trixbox.

At this point, I have some time to work through the problems and would like to see if I can get the Sangoma card working with Sail.  But wanted to see if maybe someone else had already gotten it working.  If so I would like to benefit from their efforts.

Any feedback on this from anyone ???

Regards

G.Hendershot

[SARK devs]

Hi Gary,

Hope you are well.  Funnily enough a UK distributor spoke to us today regarding Sangoma (there are currently no UK distributors for these cards).

Provided the card will accept standard Zap dial statements then it's easy enough to fool our PCI detection gear into thinking that it's just dealing with another variety of TDM400.  You simply need to plug its fingerprint into our card database.  You can find full instructions here...

http://www.selintra.com/docs/cgi-bin/view/Main/DocChapter258

You'll need to install a devpack (GCC) and patch and compile Zaptel  yourself, but that's no big deal.  You can run our smeserver-asterisk rpm with a compiled zaptel/libpri.  Just don't install our zappri rpm.

More than happy to help with this project in any way we can.  


Best

Jeff

[ghendershot]

Thanks Jeff ...   I guess if noone else has already beaten the issue, I will take up the quest ...  another dragon's head on the wall will be a nice addition to the decor ...

as I will be starting with a "fresh install" and the end result will be purely for experimentation, I have the option of using known stable or bleeding edge ... could benefit from your advice on this ...

would I pull out a lot more hair trying your new Ast 1.4 toys ???  I dont mind getting stuck in the mud as long as there is a way out eventually but do not purposely want to drive off into a swamp ...

G.Hendershot

[co-optel.net]

i regret i do not have the talent to resolve this issue, but would make available online a sangoma 200 card with 2 fxo and 2 fxs ports

email me for access, the factory driver disk is in the drive

itsa brand new box

b
   

[ghendershot]

I managed to get this to work ... however, the way I did it was UGLY ...

first, I had to put a complete development environment on my SME server as the Sangoma drivers need this to compile ... if I was a LOT smarter, I probably could have created an RPM on a secondary CENTOS machine, but I am just not that smart ...

second, (after confirming that the Sangoma drivers are installed and configured properly, ie:  wancfg) I had to edit the Sail PCI card data so that the PCI card identifiers were available to Sail ... do not have the docs on this in front of me right now, but I found the method within the SAIL documentation on their site ...

I was very cocky when I went into this, thinking I would be able to come up with a patern to offer others as a straight forward "how to" ... as I got into it, I realized this is an UGLY mess to deal with primarily because of the way Sangoma has chosen to implement its drivers ...

if you are thinking of trying this, be warned that it is not a tasking for the timid ...

when implementing Sail, it is much simpler to use an FXO gateway like Mediatrix or Audiocodes ... I understand there is a single port FXO gateway from Linksys that a lot of folks use that is quite easy to deal with though I have not played with it ...  for FXS ports, I have used the Linksys 2-port model with good results ... I also hear that Grandstream has gotten into the FXO/FXS gateway business and have 4 and 8 port models available at very nice prices ...

the issues realted to dealing with PCI FXO/FXS cards are tricky ... it looks like the Sail development guys took the easy (smart) way out and just avoided it ...

regards

G.Hendershot

[SARK devs]

Hi Gary

Glad to see you got it to run.  Looking at the Sangoma docs it looks anything but trivial.  It must be pretty tough being a card vendor with asterisk because I don't think Digium make it too easy to "break in".

If you feel like sharing any of it we'd be happy to put it up onto the docs pages for other wayfarers.

Kind Regards

Selintra