Yes it’s surprisingly easy, and yes you too can have it today!

This is still very much a work-in-progress, as we’re merging two unfinished products and I’ve not had enough of a chance to test it thoroughly either so I’m hoping for some response from the community on this one. I think this is quite possibly the first time that FreePBXv3 has been tied into a major distro, and I reckon it’d be cool to see Elastix-2.0 support FreePBXv3 officially.

I have however tested Ext’s registering happily, calling each other, so I know that FreePBXv3 is tied in correctly.

Anyway, I’ve tar’d up a slightly older version of FreePBXv3, as they’re undergoing some design changes right at the moment which mean that the current version doesn’t install. So, we’ll be using this.

Total installation should only take about 5 minutes, so this How-To will be nice and short!

Read the rest of this entry »

Sunshine Networks has posted a great step by step article on how to install Fail2Ban on Elastix systems. More and more PBX systems are being hacked these days and we should be trying everything to stop hackers from getting in and making expensive calls. Fail2Ban is one more feature you can use to keep people out.

http://www.sunshinenetworks.com.au/how-to/56-install-fail2ban-on-elastix-16.html

An update for Elastix invoicing has been completed to fix a bug in the older version which caused it to report incorrectly. ICT has given their time to do this. You can find the new version on sourceforge here

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ictinvoice/

Also Elastix have asked for this module to be put into Elastix 2.0 as default. If you would like to see this happen please leave a comment saying you would like it in there.

This Friday we are goint to have our first bug squash party. Elastix developers would be present in the Elastix Developer(#elastix-dev) channel in the freenode network. The objective of this bug squash party is to resolve bugs in both Elastix 2.0 and 1.6.x Everyone is invited: beta-testers, developers and users!

Date: Friday June 25, 2010
Time: 10:00 – 17:00 GMT -5 (15:00 – 21:00 GMT 0)
IRC Channel: #elastix-dev
Network: irc.freenode.net

It’s happened to everybody at some time or another, you wish you could go back to yesterdays system. You make a change and delete some IVR menu you shouldn’t have but can’t remember how it was setup so you can’t recreate it.

The built-in Elastix Backups is great, but only if you remember to do it. I have the memory of a sieve so unfortunately I rarely remember.

The good thing is it’s now no longer difficult for you to backup a system automatically!

Because I don’t do any faxing or the likes on my systems, it doesn’t get backed up. This also won’t backup FOP2, your amportal.conf and other such things.

Here’s what it will do:

• All core Asterisk files in /etc/asterisk
• Custom sound files used in voicemails / recordings
• Voicemail boxes
• CDR records
• FreePBX custom system files
• Differential backups from the previous day, so you’re not wasting storage space and transferring large volumes of data regularly.

It’s enough for you to basically take a stock Elastix system and be back up and running in seconds.

Scenario: Your HDD died. You didn’t have any monitoring in place and so the SMART warnings went undetected. Your system is now down. Thankfully you have the ISO of Elastix, so you quickly throw it into the machine and reinstall (Or if you’re like me, you have a “vanilla” system ready on another HDD).  It boots the brand new Elastix installation and you’re now in a position to restore from your backups.
You now restore from your backups by simply copying everything in your last daily backup to your / folder, and it overwrites everything it needs to. You quickly reimport the .sql file into MySQL and you’re back, with minimal disruption.

1. The script
2. The prep work
3. Adding it to your crontab (So it works automatically of course)
4. Testing
5. Password-less logins
6. More testing = Success!
7. Restoring

Here’s how you do it:

Read the rest of this entry »

Update 18 June 2010

Andrew the developer of the FreePBX endpoint manager has come on board to help us build the new endpoint manager. He has already added support for the Linksys/Cisco handsets for those out there using the Linksys SPA range. We will keep moving forward with the development, however with very few donations and no vendor support it will be a rocky road ahead.

Original Post 

For a long time Elastix has lacked a good endpoint manager. The current endpoint manager is very good but it lacks a lot of settings which could make the endpoint manager a valuable tool to Elastix. Many Elastix users out there waste hours and hours of time provisioning their endpoints. Going into every phone and configuring each phone is tedious and is time we could be out making more money. Setting up the endpoints is normally the most time intensive part of building an Elastix system. With a good endpoint manager we can put all this behind us.

I am looking to develop a new endpoint manager. It will look to include the following features

• Provision many different vendors such as Linksys/Cisco, Snom, Aastra, Yealink, Polycom
• Provision all functions on each phone. This includes extension, all BLF buttons and regional settings
• All settings held on the Elastix machine in a mysql database
• Phones will grab all their settings TFTP
• Endpoint manager will be able to scan for extensions and provision
• Endpoint manager will be able to create a TFTP file so that the phone can be sent to site and it will be completely provisioned remotely
• Multilanguage support

What does this mean for you?

Vendors

With a good endpoint manager this will mean less support issues for vendors. It will make it easier for users to setup and use their IP phones. Vendors will have to do less support and the users of their phones will not have to have high end technical skills to use the best features of the phone.

Elastix Users

This will save you time, whether you are installing 10 phones or 100 phones. It will also make setting up phones very easy.

What is needed from Vendors and Users?

We need you to contribute. To build a decent module that will support many different types of phones we are looking at a budget of about $10000.00. If everyone can get together we will be able to build this and it will make installing Elastix better for everyone. All code developed for this project will be given back open source to the Elastix project.

Contributors

I have put together a scale of contributing. Not everyone can contribute a lot of money but if everyone can put in then it will help us get to the goal of $10000.00. The following sponsorships are available

Gold Sponsorship – $1000.00

Silver Sponsorship – $500.00

Bronze Sponsorship – $100.00

I am behind this project 100% and have put up $1000.00 to get the ball rolling. To donate to the project you can contribute to the paypal account – elastixprojects@mbit.com.au. Once you have contributed please let me know via email on mark@mbit.com.au

Total remaining – $8900.00

Contributors

MBIT Technologues – $1000.00

Sunshine Networks – $100.00

Hitec Solutions – $100.00

 Thank you for all who contribute. We are looking to make a great new feature for Elastix that will benefit everyone.

Many Elastix installed out there will be using Elastix in a large enterprise organisation. Elastix can be a great solution for a large corporate however underneith asterisk can struggle when many extensions are loading it down. As soon as you have more than 200-300 extensions asterisk can struggle on many boxes to keep up with all the registration requests coming in. Asterisk does a fantastic job of being a great PBX however when scaling to large enterprise you need a more robust SIP Server. This is where Kamailio steps in. Kamailio is a large scale SIP server that can handle thousands of SIP extensions on one box. The problem is you need a good PBX gateway for it to connect everything together.

For this I wanted to be able to have Kamailio as my SIP server but have asterisk provide all the features it has such as voicemail. For this a FreePBX module was created that brings together Kamailio and asterisk. How it works is everything registers to Kamailio. All internal calls stay within Kamailio and if any calls created are not internal then it sends it to asterisk to manipulate. All the extensions are created in FreePBX which is handy because this means you dont have to keep a record of the extension in asterisk and Kamailio.

This allows you to take your Elastix machine from handling around 200 extensions to up around 1000 with no sweat.

If you are looking to setup an environment that needs this many extensions then please email me on mail@mbit.com.au and I can send through the FreePBX module for you to test.

Formerly SnapANumber, ADA is now offered by Digium. However, the first thing that you’ll notice is that it was written for their Asterisk Business Edition.

That’s great if you have ABE, but not so good if you’re one of the millions of installs out there that uses vanilla Asterisk.

This guide presumes you already have ADA downloaded and installed. If not, you can get the latest (At the time of writing) version 1.1 from here:

http://dl1.digium.com/ADA1.1/ADAInstall.exe

Now you’re going to ignore any instructions you’re previously read, and we’ll start from scratch. Don’t worry, you’ll be up and running in a matter of moments!

Read the rest of this entry »

For any business migrating to SIP, the Patton SN4554 is a brilliant way to bring two ISDN lines (4-channels) in to their new PBX system, especially considering you don’t have to break open your PBX Server to install a PCI card.

This basic How-To shows you how to set it up to work with your Elastix system:
Read the rest of this entry »

I have completed an active directory module for FreePBX. I am looking for some users to help test the module in many different windows environments. This module was built so a windows admin only has to keep one directory with all their users. The module searches the active directory then lists them on a page in Elastix. From there you can select the users in the active directory and add them as an extension in Elastix. Other features

• Mobile numbers within the active directory can be used to create followme within Elastix 
• Telephone numbers within the active directory can be used to create inbound routes
• Module will detect changes within the directory and allow the user to change the settings within Elastix 

If you are a windows admin and have an interest in testing the module please email mail@mbit.com.au. In your email please include your windows setup. The module will become a commercial module however the beta testers will have free access to using the module.