[Asterisk-bsd] Diskless Asterisk Server

[Gerald A]

Hi Frank,

On 4/6/08, Frank Griffith <glassdude45 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Okay, I know I'm probably pushing the envelope but I
> did loads of experimenting with diskless setup this
> past week. Getting past all the outdates docs, typos
> and bad information was difficult, but this weekend I
> got the diskless client to boot and got some of the
> advanced configuration done with it. And I even got it
> to work with 8.0-CURRENT.

I'm actually very interested in this work, as I did have a working setup at
one time, but have been thinking about going back and setting this up again.

> Of course, now I would like to setup a diskless
> machine to run Asterisk. I don't have any dough left
> after paying my income tax to buy a Soekris box so I'm
> making do with an older machine that has lost use of
> it's hard drive.
>
> Can anyone offer me some pointers on how I could
> advance this process. I like asterisk as my phone
> system but the thought of having to buy hard drives
> every few years is starting to make me think, who
> needs them when the diskless process could take their place.

There are two things that you need to consider.
First is configuration. Diskless, in one way or another, means that
you will only
have scarce local storage. I used to use floppies for this, as they were cheap
easy to deploy. Nowadays I'd think about USB sticks. You woldn't need much
for configs, considering that 512MB seems to be the smallest they are selling
now.

The other thing is things generated from processes, like logfiles and voicemail
and CDR's. If these aren't important,  then you can even forgo them.  You might
want them, and someone else mentioned a database, but you could even
do it with a network mount of some sort. I used NFS in my deployments,
but SAMBA is also an option nowadays (if locking can be done
properly).

I'd love to help/contribute and test. Let me know if you'd like to
co-ordinate efforts.

Thanks,
Gerald.