asterisk users - Jun 2010 - [CRON] Right way to restart Asterisk and Zaptel?

Hello

About every three months, my dad's little Asterisk server that handles
his business phone line with an OpenVox PCI card stops taking calls.

To check if it's the cause, I'd like to run a CRON job every night to
restart Zaptel and Asterisk.

Before I go ahead, I'd like to know if I can just send the following
commands, or if there are issues I should know about:

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/asterisk stop
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/zaptel stop
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/zaptel start
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/asterisk start

Or, as I suspect, if there's already a good watchguard applet
available, I could use that instead.

FWIW, it's a FreeBSD 6.3 host, running Zaptel 1.4.0-BSD and Asterisk
1.4.21.2.

Thank you.

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 8:59 AM, Gilles <codecomplete at free.fr>
wrote:
> Hello
>
> About every three months, my dad's little Asterisk server that handles
> his business phone line with an OpenVox PCI card stops taking calls.
>
> To check if it's the cause, I'd like to run a CRON job every night
to
> restart Zaptel and Asterisk.
IMO, if it's a business phone, you'd do well to just reboot it at 3AM
once a week or once a month or some interval that you're comfortable
with. We used to do this for a similar reason.

/r

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 08:59:32AM +0200, Gilles wrote:
> Hello
> 
> About every three months, my dad's little Asterisk server that handles
> his business phone line with an OpenVox PCI card stops taking calls.
> 
> To check if it's the cause, I'd like to run a CRON job every night
to
> restart Zaptel and Asterisk.
That does not really check if that is the problem. Mind giving more
information as for the nature of the problem?
> 
> Before I go ahead, I'd like to know if I can just send the following
> commands, or if there are issues I should know about:
> 
> /usr/local/etc/rc.d/asterisk stop
> /usr/local/etc/rc.d/zaptel stop
> /usr/local/etc/rc.d/zaptel start
> /usr/local/etc/rc.d/asterisk start
> 
> Or, as I suspect, if there's already a good watchguard applet
> available, I could use that instead.
> 
> FWIW, it's a FreeBSD 6.3 host, running Zaptel 1.4.0-BSD and Asterisk
> 1.4.21.2.
'dahdi restart' has become more relaible as of 1.4.22 ...

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen
icq#16849755              jabber:tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com
+972-50-7952406           mailto:tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com
http://www.xorcom.com  iax:guest at local.xorcom.com/tzafrir

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 06:45:29AM -0700, Steve Edwards
wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Jun 2010, Gareth Blades wrote:
> 
> > If you are going to reboot the server regularly then make sure and 
> > system updates are set to not automatically install new kernel
versions.
> > Otherwise if you get a kernel update and reboot zaptel/dahdi wont load
> > until you recompile it.
> 
> I "enhanced" my /etc/init.d/zaptel to rebuild zaptel if the
module was not
> available for the current kernel:
You should look into dkms.

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen
icq#16849755              jabber:tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com
+972-50-7952406           mailto:tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com
http://www.xorcom.com  iax:guest at local.xorcom.com/tzafrir

On Fri, 25 Jun 2010 08:59:32 +0200, Gilles <codecomplete at free.fr>
wrote:
>Before I go ahead, I'd like to know if I can just send the following
>commands, or if there are issues I should know about:
To avoid issues about the host hanging after a reboot due to
upgrades... I think I'll just run a CRON job to stop/start Zaptel and
see if it solves the issue I'm having about Asterisk no longer
answering calls after X weeks of running fine.

Can someone confirm that Zaptel can't be unloaded with Asterisk is
still running (this is on a FreeBSD 6.3 host)?

========================# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/asterisk stop
Stopping asterisk.
kill: 735: No such process

# ps aux | grep asterisk | grep -v grep

# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/zaptel stop  
 zaptel

# kldstat
Id Refs Address    Size     Name
 1    7 0xc0400000 7a05b0   kernel
 2    1 0xc0ba1000 5c304    acpi.ko
12    1 0xc2d69000 19000    linux.ko

# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/zaptel start
 zaptel
Keyword: [fxsks], Value: [1]
Keyword: [loadzone], Value: [fr]
Keyword: [defaultzone], Value: [fr]

# kldstat
Id Refs Address    Size     Name
 1   17 0xc0400000 7a05b0   kernel
 2    1 0xc0ba1000 5c304    acpi.ko
12    1 0xc2d69000 19000    linux.ko
13    9 0xc2ca7000 32000    zaptel.ko
14    1 0xc2cdd000 7000     qozap.ko
15    1 0xc2ce7000 20000    tau32pci.ko
16    1 0xc2d09000 5000     wcfxo.ko
17    1 0xc2d0f000 a000     wcfxs.ko
18    1 0xc2d1f000 6000     wct1xxp.ko
19    1 0xc2d25000 c000     wct4xxp.ko
20    1 0xc2d31000 a000     wcte11xp.ko
21    1 0xc2d3b000 d000     wcte12xp.ko

# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/asterisk start
Starting asterisk.

# ps aux | grep asterisk | grep -v grep
root   4555  0,0  4,3 21896 16444  ??  Ss   13:22     0:00,67
/usr/local/sbin/asterisk

# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/zaptel stop 
 zaptelkldunload: can't unload file: Device busy
 
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/asterisk stop
Stopping asterisk.
kill: 4555: No such process

# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/zaptel stop
 zaptelkldunload: can't find file wcte12xp.ko: No such file or
directory
kldunload: can't find file wcte11xp.ko: No such file or directory
kldunload: can't find file wct4xxp.ko: No such file or directory
kldunload: can't find file wct1xxp.ko: No such file or directory
kldunload: can't find file wcfxo.ko: No such file or directory
kldunload: can't find file tau32pci.ko: No such file or directory
kldunload: can't find file qozap.ko: No such file or directory
kldunload: can't find file zaptel.ko: No such file or directory

# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/zaptel start
 zaptel
Keyword: [fxsks], Value: [1]
Keyword: [loadzone], Value: [fr]
Keyword: [defaultzone], Value: [fr]

# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/asterisk start
Starting asterisk.

# ps aux | grep asterisk | grep -v grep
root   4629  0,0  4,3 21896 16444  ??  Ss   13:27     0:00,65
/usr/local/sbin/asterisk
========================
=> I guess it's OK to ignore Zaptel's "kldunload: can't find
file
X.ko: No such file or directory", and just go ahead and stop/start
Asterisk and start Zaptel.