asterisk users - Feb 2007 - Summary of "Trixbox vs. custom install"

Hello everybody. First of all thanks to all the people giving their 
opinion on the subject I proposed: "Trixbox vs. custom install". 
You've all been very helpful.

I try to summarize what has emerged from the various messages. 
Forgive me if I miss or forget something or if I simplify too much 
some of your messages...

- Elman Efendiyev says that you should install from sources if you 
need customized setup. He suggests using Slackware for Asterisk installations.

- Lee Jenkins suggests using a GUI (like Asterisk@Home), while 
admitting there are some problems with dialplan customization. He has 
also written his own Asterisk GUI to learn system internals, among 
other reasons.

- Michael Collins suggests having two boxes two play with both 
Trixbox and a scratch install. Each method, he says, can teach a lot. 
He has still not decided which one to use in production.

- Edward Halman suggests a step-by-step install. But he says also 
that if you just need Asterisk, FreePBX and A2Billing, Trixbox can be 
a good choice because setting up FreePPBX and A2Billing can be a little tricky.

- Stephen Bosch writes: if you're only going to use Voip Trunks... 
use Trixbox. But if you're going to use PSTN hardware (like Digium or 
Sangoma cards), then a custom install is better. He had problems with 
Trixbox 2.0 and hardware, then replaced it with a custom install. He 
says also that the userbase of custom install is greater and has more 
advanced knowledge.

- Shadowym states that if you're not able to set up Asterisk with a 
custom install, you should not use it in a production environment.

- Mark Brooker says that both approaches are to be mastered. Anyway, 
you should be able to install from source to use Asterisk in a 
production environment. However, FreePBX is a great tool and should 
be used too.

- Tom Rymes says that troubleshooting a GUI is much easier and 
Trixbox has no more problems with hardware than a custom install has. 
For example, on Sangoma site, there's a link to a customized Trixbox 
version targeted to Sangoma cards.  Using Yum you can download new 
drivers an eventually install them. For what regarding the user base, 
Trixbox contains FreePBX and FreePBX has a huge user base, so that 
can also help. He concludes that if you want easy of use for you and 
your customers, you should use Trixbox. If you want complete control 
you should go for a custom install.

- Tzafrir Cohen (in reply to Tom Rymes) reports problems with "Yum 
update" and says that abstraction can hide relevant details. For 
example, just to figure out if a FreePBX actually dialed, requires a 
trained Asterisk user examining the logs.

- Stephen Bosch (in reply to Tom Rymes) says that he prefers not 
using binary distributions. About troubleshooting a GUI, he says 
that's not troubleshooting, it's more often debugging... Trixbox, 
furthermore, has little documentation. Furthermore, having to 
download drivers from various sites cancel the advantages of an 
"easy" Trixbox installation. And for what regarding the user base, he 
says that the messages regarding Trixbox are not answered so promptly 
within the Asterisk mailing list. He concludes: if you have at last 
to go back to pico/vim/emacs... better start with them.

- Tzafrir Cohen (in reply to Stephen Bosch) suggests using SRPMS to 
rebuild packages from sources.

- Tom Rymes (in reply to Tzafir Cohen) says he never had problems 
with Yum update. Of course you have to exclude the Kernel from the 
Yum updates. He reports installing Trixbox many times with Sangoma 
cards. He concludes that neither approaches, anyway, can be fine for 
everybody and you must choose the right approach according to your needs.

I also include a consideration from mine: I would happily use 
Trixbox, because I did FreePBX setup once and it was a real pain, but 
I'm very frightened by a few issues:

1) Trixbox "Macho" installation that installs everything without 
asking. I, for example, would like to use software RAID (maybe it's 
wrong with Asterisk, but I want to do it!). I wouldn't like doing it 
manually after Trixbox installation. I would like to have an 
installer doing it for me. Centos (ex redhat) installer does it, so 
why Trixbox choose to install everything without prompting?

2) How easy it is to find Trixbox SRPMS?  Is it possible to compile 
new software (i.e. Asterisk or FreePBX, etc..) on Trixbox without 
having to rewrite all the configuration files, changing all paths, 
all permissions, and so on...

3) Trixbox site and documentation are really SCARY. Someone should 
tell those guys.

4) How about updates? Are they published with a constant pace from 
the Trixbox team?

Again (as for point 3) from the site and documentation I see, I don't 
expect me a very responsive development team.

Thanks to everybody

Stefano












--
Stefano Corsi
www.floo.it
via della Fiera, 1
57029, Venturina - Campiglia Marittima (LI)
Tel. 0565-836130 - Fax. 0565-836143
Cell. 320-3484294

Stefano Corsi wrote:
> Hello everybody. First of all thanks to all the people giving their
> opinion on the subject I proposed: "Trixbox vs. custom install".
You've
> all been very helpful.
Very nice summary, Stefano. If you devote that kind of analysis to the
question, you'll do fine, whatever you decide.

-Stephen-

As Stephen said, good summary.

 From my experience, installing from sources (with yum for updates and 
additional packages) I learned much about what is in the system. Frankly 
I did not find the GUIs to be "ready for primetime" when it comes to 
setting up a system. Using the GUI does not teach you about dialplans, 
SIP, or Zap configurations that are critical to understand if you are 
going to build/run a production system.

Between google, this list,  and some trial and error you should be able 
to get your first system up and running in a reasonable timeframe. The 
people here are experienced and very willing to help.

Best Regards,

Allen.

On Feb 15, 2007, at 7:01 PM, Stefano Corsi wrote:
> Hello everybody. First of all thanks to all the people giving their  
> opinion on the subject I proposed: "Trixbox vs. custom install".
> You've all been very helpful.
[snip]
> I also include a consideration from mine: I would happily use  
> Trixbox, because I did FreePBX setup once and it was a real pain,  
> but I'm very frightened by a few issues:
>
> 1) Trixbox "Macho" installation that installs everything without
> asking. I, for example, would like to use software RAID (maybe it's  
> wrong with Asterisk, but I want to do it!). I wouldn't like doing  
> it manually after Trixbox installation. I would like to have an  
> installer doing it for me. Centos (ex redhat) installer does it, so  
> why Trixbox choose to install everything without prompting?
Stefano,

Great summary. As an aside here, it is possible to install Trixbox on  
top of an existing CentOS installation by using the tarball, not the  
ISO. This works very well, with one issue I ran into. A fresh install  
of CentOS updated via yum will not have the correct version of the  
kernel to match the zaptel-modules RPM shipped with Trixbox (because  
it is no longer in the repositories). You can fix this problem two ways:

1.) Manually install the kernel from the Trixbox CD, which will fix  
the problem, if you prefer to work just the way Trixbox normally  
does. You should configure yum to not upgrade the kernel in this  
case, because that would break zaptel.
2.) You can download and manually recompile zaptel on your own.  
Either you will have to recompile zaptel every time that the kernel  
is upgraded by yum, or you should configure yum to not upgrade the  
kernel. (This is true of any zaptel install, not just Trixbox.)

See the bug i posted: http://www.trixbox.org/modules/xproject/ 
index.php?op=viewTicketMain&id=27

Another resolution would be to provide an SRPM for the zaptel-modules  
package, which you (or the tarball install script) could rpmbuild -- 
rebuild against your current kernel.

Either way, this isn't a big problem so long as you know it's there.  
Worst case scenario, you just download and compile zaptel, which you  
would have had to do anyway for a non-trixbox install.

Tom

To piggy-back off of what Allen said, much of what I have learned about
configuring Asterisk and working with Linux has come from constructing my
system the manual way.  I use FC5, but I avoid using yum and don't install
from rpms when I can avoid it.  I typically install everything I need from
sources because I can load the modules I need and I know (or can specify)
which directories the binaries, scripts and config files go to.  And in
troubleshooting, I know where to look.  I seem to only have problems when I
take the rpm "shortcut."

Thanks to this list, I can get around dialplans and the SIP config files
with confidence.  I make extensive use of AGI (php and MySQL) in my business
application, all thanks to people on this list.  FreePBX was a great
beginning, but for me, that's all it was good for, a beginning.

I went through a similar metamorphosis with learning to configure postfix
and dovecot.  There is a similar freepbx-like web gui for configuring a mail
server that I used in the beginning as well.

I am a total Linux/Asterisk newbie and the process has been full of growing
pains, but I am glad I went through it.  I owe this list a lot, and of
course a very patient employer who went through many system crashes with me
without pulling his hair out or complaining because the phones were down.

Ed Halman
(718) 705-7451
ehalman@myhealthcharts.com

------------------------------

Message: 26
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2007 11:05:12 -0500
From: Allen Casteran <allen@nisinc.com>
Subject: [asterisk-users] Re: Summary of "Trixbox vs. custom install"
To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com
Message-ID: <er4kno$djl$1@sea.gmane.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

As Stephen said, good summary.

 From my experience, installing from sources (with yum for updates and 
additional packages) I learned much about what is in the system. Frankly 
I did not find the GUIs to be "ready for primetime" when it comes to 
setting up a system. Using the GUI does not teach you about dialplans, 
SIP, or Zap configurations that are critical to understand if you are 
going to build/run a production system.

Between google, this list,  and some trial and error you should be able 
to get your first system up and running in a reasonable timeframe. The 
people here are experienced and very willing to help.

Best Regards,

Allen.



------------------------------

> I also include a consideration from mine: I would happily use
> Trixbox, because I did FreePBX setup once and it was a real pain, but
> I'm very frightened by a few issues:
>
> 1) Trixbox "Macho" installation that installs everything without
> asking. I, for example, would like to use software RAID (maybe it's
> wrong with Asterisk, but I want to do it!). I wouldn't like doing it
> manually after Trixbox installation. I would like to have an
> installer doing it for me. Centos (ex redhat) installer does it, so
> why Trixbox choose to install everything without prompting?
You can just install CentOS with RAID and whatever you want, then use
the Trixbox tar package instead of the ISO. Still, why on earth did
the Trixbox team didn't leave the option of doing a custom install
with the ISO ?
> 2) How easy it is to find Trixbox SRPMS?  Is it possible to compile
> new software (i.e. Asterisk or FreePBX, etc..) on Trixbox without
> having to rewrite all the configuration files, changing all paths,
> all permissions, and so on...
You can update Asterisk/zaptel/whatever by just downloading the source
and compiling it. My home system was installed with A@home on version
0.8 (if memory serves me right) and I upgraded Asterisk and Zaptel to
version 1.0.10 by downloading and compiling. I know, this is a really
old version and I should upgrade, but hey, it is doing everything I
need and it is stable (uptime of 315 days).

IMHO, Trixbox can me customized alot, but you need to know where and
what to modify. I believe that if you know enough about how Asterisk
work, you can get around Trixbox limitations. One thing to remember is
that the files you can modify are the _custom.conf files. Never touch
the _additional.conf files, they will get overwritten next time you
click "Apply changes" in the GUI. The normal base files (sip.conf.
iax.conf, etc) can be modified since the GUI doesn't touch them.

But I also think that there is nothing that can beat a plain install
as far as customization go. YMMV

-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Time
Bandit
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 11:14 AM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Summary of "Trixbox vs. custom install"
<snip>
> I also include a consideration from mine: I would happily use
> Trixbox, because I did FreePBX setup once and it was a real pain, but
> I'm very frightened by a few issues:
>
> 1) Trixbox "Macho" installation that installs everything without
> asking. I, for example, would like to use software RAID (maybe it's
> wrong with Asterisk, but I want to do it!). I wouldn't like doing it
> manually after Trixbox installation. I would like to have an
> installer doing it for me. Centos (ex redhat) installer does it, so
> why Trixbox choose to install everything without prompting?
You can just install CentOS with RAID and whatever you want, then use
the Trixbox tar package instead of the ISO. Still, why on earth did
the Trixbox team didn't leave the option of doing a custom install
with the ISO ?
</snip>

Please note that the recent (2.x) releases of trixbox allow you to
select which modules to install, including raid.

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> You mean compiling raw tar.gz or SRPMS? And where do you download
> them from? Trixbox site or the original vendors' sites?
I just download the tarball from asterisk.org and compile it. Trixbox
is not a "special" version of Asterisk, it is just an easy way to
install Asterisk, FreePBX, FOP and a bunch of other packages.

hth