asterisk users - Sep 2012 - Voicemail not working with vm boxes named with a star

Hi list,

in asterisk 1.4 and maybe earlier it was possible to use voicemail
system with mailboxes starting with some special characters like *. The
line in voicemail.conf was like this:
        *123 => , AB,,,tz=cet|attach=no|

Calling exten => s,n,Voicemail(*123,su) is working in asterisk 1.4.

In Asterisk 1.8 the above scenario is not working any more. The
Voicemail application reports an error message:
WARNING: app_voicemail.c: leave_voicemail: No entry in voicemail config
file for '*123'

Is this a known bug, fixed in newer versions (I currently use 1.8.11) or
should I file a bug report?

Thanks,

Karsten

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Karsten Wemheuer" <kwem at gmx.de>
> To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
> Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2012 2:28:07 AM
> Subject: [asterisk-users] Voicemail not working with vm boxes named with
a????????star
> 
> Hi list,
> 
> in asterisk 1.4 and maybe earlier it was possible to use voicemail
> system with mailboxes starting with some special characters like *.
> The
> line in voicemail.conf was like this:
> ? ? ? ? *123 => , AB,,,tz=cet|attach=no|
> 
> Calling exten => s,n,Voicemail(*123,su) is working in asterisk 1.4.
> 
> In Asterisk 1.8 the above scenario is not working any more. The
> Voicemail application reports an error message:
> WARNING: app_voicemail.c: leave_voicemail: No entry in voicemail
> config
> file for '*123'
> 
> Is this a known bug, fixed in newer versions (I currently use 1.8.11)
> or
> should I file a bug report?
Nope, this is not a bug. ?The change in behavior was deliberate (see
https://issues.asterisk.org/jira/browse/ASTERISK-17433). ?Starting a mailbox
with a '*' conflicted with the auto-attendant feature in app_voicemail,
wherein
a user can be redirected to the 'a' extension by sending the '*'
DTMF. ?There
were a number of weird side effects that occurred due to this, most of which
involved users who had created a mailbox that began with a '*' unable to
check
their voicemail.

Since it would be very easy to mis-configure your system if you had both the
auto-attendant feature enabled and allowed users to have a mailbox/password that
started with '*', we prevented the latter scenario.

--
Matthew Jordan
Digium, Inc. | Engineering Manager
445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA
Check us out at: http://digium.com & http://asterisk.org

Hi list,

Am Donnerstag, den 20.09.2012, 09:28 +0200 schrieb Karsten
Wemheuer:
> Hi list,
> 
> in asterisk 1.4 and maybe earlier it was possible to use voicemail
> system with mailboxes starting with some special characters like *. The
> line in voicemail.conf was like this:
>         *123 => , AB,,,tz=cet|attach=no|
> 
> Calling exten => s,n,Voicemail(*123,su) is working in asterisk 1.4.
> 
> In Asterisk 1.8 the above scenario is not working any more. The
> Voicemail application reports an error message:
> WARNING: app_voicemail.c: leave_voicemail: No entry in voicemail config
> file for '*123'
> 
> Is this a known bug, fixed in newer versions (I currently use 1.8.11) or
> should I file a bug report?
After looking at log files and source code, I found out, that in
function "find_or_create" in app_voicemail.c there is a statement:
        
        if (!ast_strlen_zero(box) && box[0] == '*') {
        
right at the beginning of that function. This leads to not setting up a
mailbox *123, whereas "123*" is allowed. The logging says:
        The '*' character, when it is the first character in a mailbox
        or password, is used to jump to a predefined extension 'a'. A
        mailbox or password beginning with '*' is not valid and will be
        ignored.

I do not see, why a mailbox should not be valid starting with '*'. The
feature to jump to a predefined extension by pressing * exists in
Asterisk 1.4 but you can create a mailbox starting with '*' in 1.4. If
for some reason the feature to jump to an predefined extension by
pressing some key forbids using that key as first part of a mailbox,
than the above code should prevent using '0' as first part too, I think.
Pressing '0' is analog to pressing '*' according to the
documentation.

Does anybody know, why the "if"-statement is put in the code?

Thanks,

Karsten