Monthly Archives: December 2008

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VMware, Trixbox 2.4, and Viatalk

As I promised, I’d update more often about some of the things I’ve been working on.  In my other posts, I’ve been playing around with VMWare ESXi in my basement on an older Dell 1750.

I had a couple of goals.

  • Update my Trixbox (Asterisk) installation
  • Run SpaceWalk
  • Run ZenOSS
  • Have a linux utility box
  • Screw around and push VMWare’s ESXi until it cried for mercy

Update my Trixbox (Asterisk) installation

I still get a lot of traffic to my site since I have some detailed instructions for setting up ViaTalk with Trixbox.  Some time recently, my current server, version 2.2 stopped working reliably.  The Tin Foil hat crowd pointed their fingers at Comcast but I couldn’t buy that in my hearts of hearts.  Sure enough, ViaTalk updated some of there settings and I could get my Trixbox installation working about 50% of the time.

So, version 2.4 has come out.  So I started fresh.  All my VM’s are 2 CPU’s with 4GB RAM.  ESX|ESXi does a great job of abstracting the amount of memory so even thought the OS sees all 4GB’s, the VM is really only taking up about 150MB’s on the hypervisor; YMMV.

After screwing around (the back up and restore method DID NOT work), I finally got a “golden image.”  I got in the habit of snapshotting my VM image so I could always roll back if need be instead of suffering another complete install.

I have my VM’s to have their filesystem on the drives in the 1750, but the swap is actually served off NFS on my Freebsd box, (you might ask yourself why I did this.  Remember, I wanted to see the breaking points of the VM’s so I did some things intentionally that would create some overhead).

I got everything set up and it worked great… except on tiny thing.  Now, I have to have:

Allow Anonymous Inbound SIP Calls?
** WARNING **

Setting this to ‘yes’ will potentially allow ANYBODY to call into your Asterisk server using the SIP protocol

It should only be used if you fully understand the impact of allowing anonymous calls into your server

set to “Yes” in order to receive calls.  Otherwise, callers get “This number is not in service” when they ring our number.    It took me awhile to find this.  It’s in the General Settings.

I have to say that it is working MUCH better.   I tried to run Trixbox under Microsoft’s Virtual PC about a year ago and it sucked.   Granted, the Dell 1750 is much different than my powerful, homebuilt WinXP desktop, but I must admit that I was a little skeptical.

Even setting up my Cisco 7960 was easy.  I did have to refer to my older posts trying to remember how to unlock my phone.

The Rest… more to come…


The rest of the items I mentioned will come in other posts, otherwise I might be here all night.

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behind a mountain

Man, have I been busy.   I’ve been doing so many things; some of which are blog-worthy… others not so much, but either way, I’ve been neglecting my blogging habits.

Surprises

I’ve actually been surprised by how many people have noticed I have not been updating my blog.  I didn’t realize how many people I know actually read what I’m up to.  I’ve had people ask about things I’ve posted on Twitter about and they want to know the outcome.  It’s flattering, for sure, and it is very encouraging.
Resolutions

So with the New Year, I need to be more mindful of what’s around me and more importantly, who’s around me.  In this economy, the best thing I can do for someone is to help.  I’ve set my self up as a “LION” and have helped introduce others to my network so I can help people and if I never need to reach out, I will have a support network that could also help me.

I also need to call a friend who works in a “white house” who will be out of a job in January just so I can say I’ve called this “white house.” wink wink

So, one of my New Year’s resolutions, (and I am sure I am not alone) will be more forthcoming with new blog posts.

Technology and Media

If you’ve known me for any amount of time, you know I am always looking for ways to bring the Internet out of the computer room and into my living space.  I’ve been working on many personal projects to do this and have enjoyed helping others experience better living through technology.  Yes, I know it sounds cliche, but I don’t know of a better way to put it.

Paging Dr. Roy… Dr. Rob Roy…

So, in turing over this new leaf, I’m off to upgrade my WordPress installation.  Following that… please expect more posts, more often.  Hopefully you’ll find something you like and which will help me think of new things to do.