asterisk users - Sep 2010 - Changing voicemail.conf file format list

Hi,

In voicemail.conf.sample, you can read this:

format=wav49|gsm|wav
; WARNING:
; If you change the list of formats that you record voicemail in
; when you have mailboxes that contain messages, you _MUST_ absolutely
; manually go through those mailboxes and convert/delete/add the
; the message files so that they appear to have been stored using
; your new format list. If you don't do this, very unpleasant
; things may happen to your users while they are retrieving and
; manipulating their voicemail.
;
; In other words: don't change the format list on a production system
; unless you are _VERY_  sure that you know what you are doing and are
; prepared for the consequences.



What does "manually go through those mailboxes and convert/delete/add the
; the message files so that they appear to have been stored using
; your new format list" exactly imply here ?
As this statement is written, it seems there is a trap too complex to detail
which surprises me a bit.
Comments ?

Regards
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Hi,

On 09/13/2010 11:34 AM, Olivier wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In voicemail.conf.sample, you can read this:
>
> format=wav49|gsm|wav
> ; WARNING:
> ; If you change the list of formats that you record voicemail in
> ; when you have mailboxes that contain messages, you _MUST_ absolutely
> ; manually go through those mailboxes and convert/delete/add the
> ; the message files so that they appear to have been stored using
> ; your new format list. If you don't do this, very unpleasant
> ; things may happen to your users while they are retrieving and
> ; manipulating their voicemail.
> ;
> ; In other words: don't change the format list on a production system
> ; unless you are _VERY_  sure that you know what you are doing and are
> ; prepared for the consequences.
>
>
>
> What does "manually go through those mailboxes and convert/delete/add
the
> ; the message files so that they appear to have been stored using
> ; your new format list" exactly imply here ?
It sounds like you have to shutdown Asterisk, find the old voicemail 
messages stored on the server in their respective directories, and 
convert all of them to the new file/audio format, then modify 
voicemail.conf and then re-start Asterisk. At least that's what it 
sounds like to me. In other words, it seems that Asterisk will get 
confused if it finds old voicemail messages in the storage with a format 
different from what voicemail.conf tells it to expect.

I suppose if you go and delete all the old voicemail messages before 
changing the format in voicemail.conf, it will work equally well. 
However, your users might not be very pleased :-)

Sebastian
> As this statement is written, it seems there is a trap too complex to
> detail which surprises me a bit.
> Comments ?
>
> Regards
>