asterisk users - May 2006 - Questions from a working doctors' office installation

Hi--

Is memory leak still as much an issue with 1.2.7 versus 1.2.5?  In other words,
is it worth it to upgrade a working, memory-leaking 1.2.5 to 1.2.7 or 1.2.8
just to potentially encounter other bugs in the new versions?  Have other
people been satisfied with the new versions so far?  I have Polycom 501s and
301s.  Call transfers are prone to crashing the system, getting sent to the
wrong phone, etc.

Is there some sort of rollback function?  I'm considering having a second
PBX
box for the upgraded version, then keeping the working production system as a
backup.

My PSTN providers are voipjet (out) and Axvoice (in).  Sometimes we have
dropped calls incoming, or busy lines outgoing.  Anyone else using good service
providers they can recommend?

Thanks in advance,
Michael Benjamin, M.D.
The VOIP Doctor

Michael,
> Is memory leak still as much an issue with 1.2.7 versus 1.2.5?  In other
words,
> is it worth it to upgrade a working, memory-leaking 1.2.5 to 1.2.7 or 1.2.8
> just to potentially encounter other bugs in the new versions?  Have other
> people been satisfied with the new versions so far?  I have Polycom 501s
and
> 301s.  Call transfers are prone to crashing the system, getting sent to the
> wrong phone, etc.
Huh... interesting... I had (and actually still do) have 1.2.5 version
perfectly; it's been >60 days since the last restart so I figure I
would have noticed memory leaks until now. This system is in a small
real estate office with 15 extensions but with hundreds of calls a
day, plenty of transfers. However, it's SIP only, no hardware, no IAX.
Perhaps the memory leaks are specific to certain hardware or protocol
or activity. Anyway, I'm not going to argue there are no memory leaks
-- if you have them, try an upgrade :).
> Is there some sort of rollback function?  I'm considering having a
second PBX
> box for the upgraded version, then keeping the working production system as
a
> backup.
Yes. Here's what I do. I symlink the executable asterisk ->
asterisk-1.2.5 and directory modules -> modules-1.2.5. When I want to
switch versions, I change the symlinks for those two keeping
everything else the same. No problems going back and forth, at least
not between 1.2.x versions. When you build asterisk, don't do a "make
install" but simply copy the executable to asterisk-VERSION and all
.so files from the build directory to modules-VERSION -- i.e. cp -a
`find -name '*.so'` /usr/lib/asterisk/modules-VERSION/. I run this in
a chrooted environment, but you don't have to.
> My PSTN providers are voipjet (out) and Axvoice (in).  Sometimes we have
> dropped calls incoming, or busy lines outgoing.  Anyone else using good
service
> providers they can recommend?
That's something to the -biz list, probably but you may contact me off
list if you need suggestions.

--Luki