Topic: Asterisk dropping out every so often

[d6hq]

I have ordered one so I'll let you know if there are any issues. I just need a solution that allows the Caller ID to be displayed.

Once we have proved its the CLIP I may also try our test box with card and CLIP enabled behind an old cheap but brilliant little ISDN PBX (Agfeo) on one of it FXS analogue ports to see whether it behaves the same way in that scenario. My guess is that the implementation of CLIP in the ISDN box will be perfect.

Had ISDN in the business since the days when it was the only reliable method of getting an internet connection. Kept it for telephony - first Agfeo PBX, then a fax server, then moved from the Agfeo to Epygi and use an ISDN failover for the ADSL Router. Could save a load of money by dumping it but ........

[SARK devs]

Hope you got it from our Distributor ProVu .   

Why not use the BRI for the SAIL Box?   

S

[d6hq]

Sorry no I bought it from Broadbandbuyer - quite happy to use ProVu in future though.

We do use BRI ourselves with the Epygi (bought about three years ago before Asterisk was stable enough to be considered suitable). It is a fiddly beast but very customisable once you get your head around it. There are half a dozen extensions on the LAN of varying sorts and a couple of remote extensions in our satellite offices. It is also connected to a GSM gateway which routes calls to mobiles and shares our contract minutes. Our preference is for Snom phones due to the ease with which they can be configured for CTI support. A right click out of our central Lotus Notes Contact Manager application fires up the users Snom. We haven't at this point implemented LDAP lookup but it should be a fairly easy exercise.

The Agfeo ISDN PBX is also plugged in and usuable - it runs 3 extensions, a phone, an internal fax machine and an analogue modem attached to our fax server (i.e. zero cost internal faxing or scanning to email). The fax server has a Diva ISDN card in it and we utilise it for fax to email based on DDI routing for a number of purposes including faxing in of signed Rugby match results forms for one of our customers. Why waste paper?

The testbox has an analogue card only at this stage simply to replicate the situation at a couple of customer sites. We might consider letting Sail replace our Epygi at some point in the future but there would be a lot to configure.

Hope that clarifies.

[d6hq]

Switching off UK CID detection on the OpenVox card seems to have stopped the drop outs. We have not had to remove the card.

[David Harper]

Great! Thanks for reporting back. Hopefully Selintra will be able to figure out why the CID was causing the dropouts.

[SARK devs]

It looks to be occasionally missing the line reversal, so it just sits there with its thumb up its bum waiting for something to happen.  BT CLIP reversal is <= 100ms - see SIN 227.  It may help if you set your card up for UK capacitance.  In /etc/init.d/sark find the modprobe for the card (wctdm) - it should be at line 150(ish)...

Code: [Select]

        if [ $WCTDM = 'YES' ]; then
#a          COUNTRY=`/sbin/e-smith/db selintra  getprop global IMPEDANCE`
            /sbin/modprobe wctdm #opermode=$COUNTRY
        fi

change it to

Code: [Select]

        if [ $WCTDM = 'YES' ]; then
#a          COUNTRY=`/sbin/e-smith/db selintra  getprop global IMPEDANCE`
            /sbin/modprobe wctdm opermode=uk
        fi


With a bit of luck that might sharpen it up enough to catch the reversals.

Best

S

[markleman]

Did the modification to /etc/init.d/sark fix your crashes? I have done it and still get crashes on average once a day on my home system which is SME 7.4 with the following installed:
 
 kernel-2.6.9-78.0.13.EL
 sail-2.2.1-714
 asterisk-1.4.21.1-65.el4
 asterisk-addons-1.4.7-21.el4
 zaptel-kmdl-2.6.9-78.0.13.ELsmp-1.4.12.1-54.99.el4
 zaptel-1.4.12.1-54.99.el4

I get the same event in /var/log/asterisk/messages reported above:

Code: [Select]

[Apr 12 20:47:21] NOTICE[17151] chan_zap.c: Got event 17 (Polarity Reversal)...
[Apr 13 09:25:24] NOTICE[8488] loader.c: 1 modules will be loaded.

zapata.conf has the following in it:

Code: [Select]

usecallerid=yes
ukcallerid=yes
cidsignalling=v23
cidstart=polarity

I have an OpenVOX A400 card with 1xFXO and 2xFXS modules.

Regards, Mark Leman.

[d6hq]

Mark - Haven't had a chance to test the mod. We had already turned off CLID on the card and the drop outs ceased. I concur with Selintra's view that it is the way BT do polarity reversals that causes the problem so if you ar in the UK you may experience the same.

[markleman]

Thanks for the reply - Based on my experience it probably won't fix it . The odd thing is I don't get this on our system at work which was supplied by Selintra. However there are a couple of factors here 1) I don't ever fiddle with it (Selintra supplied it and it' has just worked for 2years+ so why fiddle? ) so the kernel,SAIL,asterisk and zaptel versions are all much older 2) the analogue line is mainly there for ADSL and is only wired to the SARK box as a backup in case ISDN goes down, therefore it rarely receives incoming calls and so is less likely to encounter this "polarity reversal" problem.

As for BT's polarity reversals causing the problem, IIRC Selintra did mention some patches a while back which IIRC they had not tried due to lack of demand. I find it a shame that Digium's analog code does not support BT's well documented and IMHO quite sensible Caller ID system very well and I am slightly surprised that more UK asterisk users have not complained / corrected the code.

Mark Leman

[d6hq]

Mark - I agree. Although I would add that all of the serious traditional PBX's I have encountered have all been ISDN based so perhaps the driver (no pun intended) was not really there. However I think that the market for an analogue PBX will probably grow due to the capability of VOIP. Why pay for an ISDN circuit when you don't really need it if you route all of your calls via the net and just need the PSTN for failover ? Is your server a Dell by any chance ?

[markleman]

My home server was thrown together by me from an old Tyan dual Athlon MP motherboard (S2469 IIRC) a couple of 2G CPUs, a 3ware raid card, 6 hard disks and an OpenVOX A400 card. It serves all sorts of stuff up to the house

At work we have the server Selintra supplied, a very small 'embedded' PC style motherboard, a PCI riser, 2 BRI cards and a Digium card with 1xFXO for the ADSL POTS line and 1xFXS for the Fax machine.

[d6hq]

Right probabaly not relevant then. It was just that all of the servers where we had experienced problems with drop out were Dell's and had OpenVox cards. We also have some issues with Dell's and USB disks used for backup. It may be SME or it may be the Dell hardware but sometimes the server doesn't see a newly plugged USB disk. Very annoying and not clear why.