Topic: Updating the SAIL ISO

[David Harper]

Hi everyone

As some of you may have noticed, updating the SAIL 3.1 ISO (from http://www.sailpbx.com/iso/) with yum causes dependency problems due to the need to have the various kernel modules match the installed kernel. Right now the latest SME kernel does not have a matching set of modules in either the asterisk-current or digium-current repositories.

However, with a bit of massaging it is possible to update almost everything. The trick is to manually install the right kernel, currently 2.6.18-308.8.2, first. This is actually a minor downgrade from the kernel included on the ISO, but doesn't appear to break anything. Please note that I have only worked out how to do this very recently and haven't had much of a chance to test the resulting build!

Anyway, if you're keen to try it out, here's how to do your update. First, let's download and install the new kernel:

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cd /tmp
wget http://ftp.riken.jp/Linux/centos/5.8/updates/i386/RPMS/kernel-2.6.18-308.8.2.el5.i686.rpm
yum localinstall kernel-2.6.18-308.8.2.el5.i686.rpm

Now we need to stop SME Server from trying to update the kernel automatically:

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db yum_repositories setprop smeupdates Exclude kernel
db yum_repositories setprop updates Exclude initscripts,libgsf,kernel
db yum_repositories setprop base Exclude initscripts,libgsf,kernel
signal-event yum-modify

Once this is done we can run an update session which includes the asterisk-current repository, which is hosted on Asterisk.org. Note that attempting to update from the Digium repository currently fails.

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yum --enablerepo=asterisk-current update
signal-event post-upgrade
signal-event reboot

Doing this update appears to reset some of the yum exclusions, so we'll need to re-apply them:

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db yum_repositories setprop updates Exclude initscripts,libgsf,kernel
db yum_repositories setprop base Exclude initscripts,libgsf,kernel
signal-event yum-modify

Now that we have a working solution, you may wish to try exposing the asterisk-current repository to the graphical server-manager updater. This step is optional and may break your updating function in the future.

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db yum_repositories setprop asterisk-current status enabled
db yum_repositories setprop asterisk-current Visible yes
signal-event yum-modify

And finally, we can update to the latest version of the 3.1 series of SAIL:

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cd /tmp
wget http://www.sailpbx.com/sail/sail-3.1/sail-3.1.1-43.noarch.rpm
yum localinstall sail-3.1.1-43.noarch.rpm

Alternatively, you can upgrade to the latest in the V4 (beta/development) series:

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cd /tmp
wget http://www.sailpbx.com/sail/sail-4.0/rpms/sail-4.0.0-103.noarch.rpm
wget http://www.sailpbx.com/sail/sail-4.0/rpms/smesailenv-4.0.0-11.noarch.rpm
yum localinstall s*.noarch.rpm

Let's reboot and start configuring our new install!

Code: [Select]

signal-event post-upgrade
signal-event reboot

Don't forget that if you upgrade to V4 then the SAIL admin password has been decoupled from the underlying SME admin password. The default V4 SAIL password is sarkadmin.

[guest22]

It appears to me that the SAIL effort is slowly moving away from SME specific. Hence the lack of updates since 2012? I for one moved away from SAIL for production servers.

[SARK devs]

HI all

Hi RequestedDeletion

You're quite correct that the mainline of sail is no longer sme specific.  It's pretty much agnostic.  However, I'm surprised about your comment on updates.  For V4, the SME RPMs and Debian packages are kept pretty much in-line. V3.1.1 (SME) gets regular updates (last one was November 2013 next one is due in a week or so). 

It's true that the SAIL iso has never been changed since it was cut (I'm not sure if the SME 8 iso from which it is derived has ever changed either). As I understand it, that's the way it's normally done for all version ISOs, of whatever distro; - you install the stable Version iso and then upgrade your software to wherever you wish it to be.  You get a new ISO at the next Version release.

Our next scheduled iso will be based upon SME 9 so it will not be cut until after that version is general release. Once stable, we will not cut another until the SME developers cut their next one.

Hope this clears up any confusion and I'm sad to learn you don't use Sail anymore, but hey!; life is about choice and Linux gives us lots of it!

Kind Regards

S
 

[David Harper]

The reason to do an upgrade is more because of hardware support and SME bugfixes/security updates than SAIL-specific issues. In particular, DAHDI updates from 2.4 to 2.8 using the method outlined above.

The current ISO still has the latest version of Asterisk 1.8 and can be easily upgraded to the latest SAIL without touching the underlying components.

Selintra: When SME 8.1 is released it would be good to see a new ISO as SME 9 is still a long way off IMHO. Also, it would be worthwhile for you to consider using the OpenSUSE Build Service which can create custom Yum and Debian repositories (for free) into which you could import the latest Asterisk, DAHDI and SAIL components as they are released and integrated. This would make much more sense than the manual updates required right now across all supported platforms, and wouldn't require much effort on your part.

[SARK devs]

HI David

Thanks for this.  I'm happy to look at an 8.1 iso derivative when 8.1 is stable. Cutting a modified version of an existing EL5 iso isn't particularly time consuming since someone else (in this case the SME dev team) has already done all of the hard work.  We have a little iso builder which usually requires just a copy and paste operation to regen an SME EL5 iso with sail and all of its dependencies in it.  This does assume the devs build the 8.1 iso in much the same way they built 8.0.  If they don't then it may require additional work but none of it is rocket science and Redhat iso structure is much better documented than it used to be when we first started with it.

We have a deb repo for sail already (it's documented in the sailpbx.com wiki pages) but I will look at producing a yum repo and assess the work involved.   Up to now, we never bothered because sail has few dependencies that aren't already satisfied by a regular SME instance with Asterisk stuck on the side so just a couple of rpms is pretty much all we need.  A repo becomes more necessary in Debian because we don't know ahead of time what the underlying environment will contain.

On a related subject, as we move to Asterisk 11 I'm rather more worried about SME's ability to support it at all.  It would appear that Digium has mandated dnsmasq as a dependency in the Asterisk 11 rpms and I'm unsure at this point how we shall square that requirement with SME's tinydns.

S 

[David Harper]

Thanks for that!

Regarding the dnsmasq issue, it is installed on SME server so chances are there will be a way to integrate things.

On the Debian repository, what I meant in terms of the OpenSUSE build service was more that you could actually potentially take control of all the components rather than just SAIL/SARK itself: Asterisk, DAHDI and SAIL. At the moment third parties can break SAIL pretty much anytime, which is a real headache.

[SARK devs]

It is a headache, but if you'll allow me to be picky, they aren't breaking sail, they're breaking Dahdi.  This is true of any and all Asterisk deployments.  If you upgrade the kernel then the likelihood is you'll bust Asterisk if you don't know what you're doing.  I don't think there is an easy answer to this, at least for SME.  The only solid solution would be to decouple DAHDI and recompile it each time you do a yum upgrade (much like Debian does with m-a a-i), but that brings its own challenges in SME since you would need to install the necessary tools to do the compile.


Best

S

     

[David Harper]

Yes, picky but definitely true. We're reaching the limits of my knowledge here, but I *think* the answer to this is to have a KMP rather than a straight RPM. This is the solution for third-party drivers that was developed by Red Hat, see http://people.redhat.com/jcm/el6/dup/docs/dup_book.pdf.

[guest22]

Just curious here. How does Virtualbox achieve up to date drivers on par with every new kernel update?

[David Harper]

As per http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch02.html it's the same as VMware; the install package includes pre-compiled modules for some kernels (RHEL, SUSE & Ubuntu I'd guess) and then a script to automatically compile the modules for other distributions.

[Drifting]

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I am in the situation that I have had to rebuild a server, and using the 8.0 version of SME as this was the one mentioned in the original install guide.  And now following this thread from the problems with DAHDI. I now cannot seem to locate kernel-2.6.18-308.8.2.el5.i686.rpm, all I found was a PAE version?  The link above returns a not found.
So where do I go from here? I did post about the problems I was having understanding which was the latest Kernel, Kmod, that I could get working with SAIL / SARK.

Regards Paul.

[David Harper]

You should be able to download that RPM from the CentOS Vault:

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wget http://vault.centos.org/5.8/updates/i386/RPMS/kernel-2.6.18-308.8.2.el5.i686.rpm

Cheers

[Drifting]

You should be able to download that RPM from the CentOS Vault:

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wget http://vault.centos.org/5.8/updates/i386/RPMS/kernel-2.6.18-308.8.2.el5.i686.rpm

Cheers

My hero   


Thanks, was driving me nuts.

Paul.

[Drifting]

Going to bump this one yet again, as I have come back to this problem with a vengeance. Seems that the little HP microserver  I was installing on does not like the kernel above!
ARGH.

I appreciate that the guys who sell / support Sark/Sail have to put food on the table, but it seems it has all gone a bit pear shaped with SME server, ages of Centos version, and kernel and Kmods all over the place, that you need to have a PHD in hunting for files, or sacrifice numerous virgins to get it all to work.
Nearly all the documentation, on here and on the sail site are a mess, they refer to old packages and even older instructions. I really wished I had the knowledge to do an up to date write up. As it was an excellent working product from a UK team that always worked really well.

So is this the end?

P

[TerryF]

Maybe you should be asking the questions here: http://www.sailpbx.com/sail_forum/index.php