asterisk users - Apr 2017 - Commit dialplan & other config. in memory to disk?

'lo,

So yesterday, one of our clients had the misfortune of having the disk that
their Asterisk config (*.conf) was stored on take a dirt nap.  Of course,
Asterisk was still running at the time, and everything continued to work (except
for voicemail, which was stored on the same disk) right up until I shut down
Asterisk to investigate what was going on.  Because the disk was dead, though, I
couldn't start Asterisk back up after that, and OF COURSE the backups were
not firing off correctly so now we are faced with regenerating the config again
(including dialplan) from scratch.

In the future, if I were to ever run into a similar situation, is there any way
to request or instruct Asterisk to write the current dialplan that is in memory
and other important config files (e.g., users.conf) to disk in a *different*
location than where it originally read them from when it started up?  I could
have saved myself a crap-ton of work if this were possible...

Thanks,

-- Nathan

You can execute something like asterisk -rx "dialplan show" > 
some_file.conf, but unfortunately the result cannot be directly parsed 
by Asterisk. Still it will give you a readable snapshot of your current 
dialplan.


Le 06/04/2017 ? 11:54, Nathan Anderson a ?crit :
> 'lo,
>
> So yesterday, one of our clients had the misfortune of having the disk that
their Asterisk config (*.conf) was stored on take a dirt nap.  Of course,
Asterisk was still running at the time, and everything continued to work (except
for voicemail, which was stored on the same disk) right up until I shut down
Asterisk to investigate what was going on.  Because the disk was dead, though, I
couldn't start Asterisk back up after that, and OF COURSE the backups were
not firing off correctly so now we are faced with regenerating the config again
(including dialplan) from scratch.
>
> In the future, if I were to ever run into a similar situation, is there any
way to request or instruct Asterisk to write the current dialplan that is in
memory and other important config files (e.g., users.conf) to disk in a
*different* location than where it originally read them from when it started up?
I could have saved myself a crap-ton of work if this were possible...
>
> Thanks,
>
> -- Nathan
>

Nathan Anderson wrote:
> 'lo,
>
> So yesterday, one of our clients had the misfortune of having the disk that
their Asterisk config (*.conf) was stored on take a dirt nap.  Of course,
Asterisk was still running at the time, and everything continued to work (except
for voicemail, which was stored on the same disk) right up until I shut down
Asterisk to investigate what was going on.  Because the disk was dead, though, I
couldn't start Asterisk back up after that, and OF COURSE the backups were
not firing off correctly so now we are faced with regenerating the config again
(including dialplan) from scratch.
>
> In the future, if I were to ever run into a similar situation, is there any
way to request or instruct Asterisk to write the current dialplan that is in
memory and other important config files (e.g., users.conf) to disk in a
*different* location than where it originally read them from when it started up?
I could have saved myself a crap-ton of work if this were possible...
>
> Thanks,
>
> -- Nathan
>
Isn't this a task for Linux and a cron job rather than asterisk?
Simplest thing would be to copy to another machine even off site, all the confs
and whatever else would help you resurrect a machine more quickly.
Backups not "firing off correctly"  means what?

When changes are made to the dialplan a copy off site or at least off machine is
in order

I run a cron job every early morning to do just that as well as the MySql data
files so if need be I can recreate a machine and have call records and whatever
not more than a day stale.


John Novack

-- 

Dog is my Co-pilot

On Thu, Apr 06, 2017 at 09:54:25AM +0000, Nathan Anderson
wrote:
> 'lo,
> 
> So yesterday, one of our clients had the misfortune of having the disk that
their Asterisk config (*.conf) was stored on take a dirt nap.  Of course,
Asterisk was still running at the time, and everything continued to work (except
for voicemail, which was stored on the same disk) right up until I shut down
Asterisk to investigate what was going on.  Because the disk was dead, though, I
couldn't start Asterisk back up after that, and OF COURSE the backups were
not firing off correctly so now we are faced with regenerating the config again
(including dialplan) from scratch.
> 
> In the future, if I were to ever run into a similar situation, is there any
way to request or instruct Asterisk to write the current dialplan that is in
memory and other important config files (e.g., users.conf) to disk in a
*different* location than where it originally read them from when it started up?
I could have saved myself a crap-ton of work if this were possible...
I'm not sure this works. But it's worth a shot: (bind-?)mount a writable
file system at /etc/asterisk .

Be sure to umount it quickly enough after the write.

-- 
               Tzafrir Cohen
+972-50-7952406           mailto:tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com
http://www.xorcom.com

On Thu, 6 Apr 2017, Nathan Anderson wrote:
> In the future, if I were to ever run into a similar situation, is there 
> any way to request or instruct Asterisk to write the current dialplan 
> that is in memory and other important config files (e.g., users.conf) to 
> disk in a *different* location than where it originally read them from 
> when it started up?  I could have saved myself a crap-ton of work if 
> this were possible...
On Thu, 6 Apr 2017, John Novack wrote:
> I run a cron job every early morning to do just that as well as the 
> MySql data files so if need be I can recreate a machine and have call 
> records and whatever not more than a day stale.
Ditto.

Each host emails all of it's configuration files and database dumps in a 
tarball every day. This has saved mine and my client's bacon on more than 
1 occasion.

It also comes in handy when a client says 'I liked it better the way it 
was last Monday' or when a client says 'why am I being charged for x
hours
work last Tuesday.' I can restore the tarballs and a quick diff shows 
everything I did -- down to the time-stamped commands in my .bash_history.

Back to your specific problem...

No. There is no easy way to recover configurations from a running 
Asterisk. The misleadingly named 'dialplan save' will not save you. It 
will trash any file in it's way with a useless rendition of your dialplan. 
It will show your globals and your application calls, but without any of 
the parameters.

Seriously, was this some disgruntled developer's middle finger as they 
stormed out of the office?

I've found myself in your position, not by hardware failure, but by a 
fat-fingered 'rm' and had the better part of a days work at stake.

I used the 'script' shell command and the Asterisk 'dialplan
show' command
and then ran that through a PHP script that recovered enough.

You're welcome to the script at:

 	http://www.sedwards.com/recover-show-dialplan.php

-- 
Thanks in advance,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Edwards       sedwards at sedwards.com      Voice: +1-760-468-3867 PST
             https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-edwards-4244281

On Thu, 6 Apr 2017, Steve Edwards wrote:
> You're welcome to the script at:
>
> 	http://www.sedwards.com/recover-show-dialplan.php
Sorry about that...

Try:

 	http://www.sedwards.com/recover-show-dialplan.txt

-- 
Thanks in advance,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Edwards       sedwards at sedwards.com      Voice: +1-760-468-3867 PST
             https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-edwards-4244281