asterisk users - Oct 2005 - Asterisk 1.0.8 and TDM stop acking inbound calls?

My office has been running Asterisk 1.0.8 and a TDM04B for a few months 
now without too much trouble.  After a while we discovered that after a 
certain period (about a month), asterisk stopped acknowledging inbound 
calls.  Since I was out of the office the first time it happened, 
another admin rebooted the whole box which solved the problem.  The 
second time it happened I discovered that just restarting gracefully 
solved the problem, so I put that into my cron and forgot about it.  (I 
know, it's not "right", but debugging something that happens 
unpredictably once a month could go on for way too long to be acceptable..)

  Now, less than a week since I did that, asterisk stopped ringing our 
extensions on inbound calls again.  "sip show peers" showed that 
asterisk knew about all of the extensions.  I forgot to check "zap show 
channels" when * was ignoring inbound calls, is it possible that * 
thinks all the lines are still off hook?  Is there anything else I 
should do to figure out what's causing trouble?  Unfortunately it's 
usually something of a panic situation, so I'm not allowed the chance to 
troubleshoot as thoroughly as I'd like.

  Speaking of, I've fiddled and tweaked left and right to get hangup 
detection working better to no real avail.  Asterisk eventually decides 
the far side hung up about 10 seconds after the fact.  Am I 
understanding right that call progress is still something of a black art 
for analog FXO devices?  Not getting 10 second dead air voicemails when 
people hang up would be sweet. :)

  I couldn't find a changelog for 1.0.9 to see if it's worth the 
off-hours maintenance window, and we're too dependant on the phones to 
try 1.2.  Should I try the next step up in the probably unnecessary 
preventative maintenance and unload/reload the wctdm module during the 
asterisk restart?  Is there any way to have asterisk notify that it's 
running low on/out of resources?  We don't typically ever tie up all of 
our zap channels except for really particularly exciting days, so if 
they are all in use it would be cause for concern..

Patrick Friedel wrote:
> I couldn't find a changelog for 1.0.9 to see if it's worth the 
> off-hours maintenance window, and we're too dependant on the phones to 
> try 1.2.  Should I try the next step up in the probably unnecessary 
> preventative maintenance and unload/reload the wctdm module during the 
> asterisk restart?  Is there any way to have asterisk notify that it's 
> running low on/out of resources?  We don't typically ever tie up all 
> of our zap channels except for really particularly exciting days, so 
> if they are all in use it would be cause for concern..

  In the interim, and completely on a whim, I've put a couple of 
splitters and added another FXO device onto the line, a good old 
fashioned analog phone that chirps once until asterisk picks up the 
line.  With any luck, the next time asterisk takes a dive, that phone 
will continue to ring and we'll catch on faster than the first customer 
that decides to email us wondering why nobody is picking up. :)

> My office has been running Asterisk 1.0.8 and a TDM04B for a few months 
> now without too much trouble.  After a while we discovered that after a 
> certain period (about a month), asterisk stopped acknowledging inbound 
> calls.  Since I was out of the office the first time it happened, 
> another admin rebooted the whole box which solved the problem.  The 
> second time it happened I discovered that just restarting gracefully 
> solved the problem, so I put that into my cron and forgot about it.  (I 
> know, it's not "right", but debugging something that happens 
> unpredictably once a month could go on for way too long to be acceptable..)
> 
>   Now, less than a week since I did that, asterisk stopped ringing our 
> extensions on inbound calls again.  "sip show peers" showed that 
> asterisk knew about all of the extensions.  I forgot to check "zap
show
> channels" when * was ignoring inbound calls, is it possible that * 
> thinks all the lines are still off hook?  Is there anything else I 
> should do to figure out what's causing trouble?  Unfortunately it's
> usually something of a panic situation, so I'm not allowed the chance
to
> troubleshoot as thoroughly as I'd like.
> 
>   Speaking of, I've fiddled and tweaked left and right to get hangup 
> detection working better to no real avail.  Asterisk eventually decides 
> the far side hung up about 10 seconds after the fact.  Am I 
> understanding right that call progress is still something of a black art 
> for analog FXO devices?  Not getting 10 second dead air voicemails when 
> people hang up would be sweet. :)
> 
>   I couldn't find a changelog for 1.0.9 to see if it's worth the 
> off-hours maintenance window, and we're too dependant on the phones to 
> try 1.2.  Should I try the next step up in the probably unnecessary 
> preventative maintenance and unload/reload the wctdm module during the 
> asterisk restart?  Is there any way to have asterisk notify that it's 
> running low on/out of resources?  We don't typically ever tie up all of
> our zap channels except for really particularly exciting days, so if 
> they are all in use it would be cause for concern..
Check the revision of the TDM card. If rev E/F, call digium support to
get it replaced. Known problem with early versions of the card.