[asterisk-dev] possible bug in chan_vpb

[john at spectross.com]

Hi Russell,

I am trying to port Asterisk over our system based on ARM 9. We have a TSI 
to handle voice traffic switching & DSP as a off-load engine to handle 
conferencing & CPT generation.

The Char Device Driver I wrote for our DSP interface, shall simply read & 
write data-structures to/from the DSP-queue without any knowledge of the 
data being written i.e. there exists no channel (FXO/FXS/ISDN etc...) level 
abstraction.

Well, I understand "chan_zap" communicates with its device driver through a 
separate node for each of the channel i.e. there exists a well defined 
channel level abstraction in the driver itself.

So, What do you recommend - Where should I implement this channel-level 
abstraction to my driver:

1) In my device driver itself by maintaining a separate queue for each 
channel(Kernel level), separate node & a poll implementation. --> chan_zap 
approach.

2) In another user-level layer which interfaces with my current naive driver 
on one side & on the other side interfaces with Asterisk through pipes i.e. 
each channel would have 2 pipes for cmd as well as event. Hence all driver 
specific fds (file-descriptors) in Asterisk would be actually replaced with 
pipe fds. --> simpler to implement & can still keep my channel driver very 
similar to chan_zap.

3) In the same way as chan_iax2 & chan_vpb were implemented, as discussed 
earlier. --> Will have to do a lot for making it as powerful as chan_zap.

Any better suggestions are welcome.

Regds.
John

John Nicholas
Team Lead
Spectross Digital Systems Pvt. Ltd.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <john at spectross.com>
To: "Russell Bryant" <russell at digium.com>; "Asterisk Developers Mailing 
List" <asterisk-dev at lists.digium.com>
Cc: "Ish Sir" <ish at spectross.com>
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 9:55 AM
Subject: Re: [asterisk-dev] possible bug in chan_vpb


> Hi Russell,
>
> Thanks, you are right, "chan_vpb.cc" also uses the same technique.
>
> The monitor thread here checks for events over both owned & orphan 
> channels & as an event is detected over an owned channel it creates a 
> frame and queues it up by calling "ast_queue_frame()".
>
> Could you please recommend some document which would aid in understanding 
> the Asterisk Architecture(Developer's point of view). I found many E-books 
> for Asterisk users but not one for fresh Asterisk developers.
>
> Thanks & Regds.
> John
>
> John Nicholas
> Team Lead
> Spectross Digital Systems Pvt. Ltd.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Russell Bryant" <russell at digium.com>
> To: <john at spectross.com>; "Asterisk Developers Mailing List" 
> <asterisk-dev at lists.digium.com>
> Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2008 4:45 AM
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-dev] possible bug in chan_vpb
>
>
>>
>> On Nov 22, 2008, at 12:02 AM, <john at spectross.com>  <john at spectross.com> 
>> wrote:
>>> I was browsing through "chan_vpb.cc" today. I see that no  "fds" (file 
>>> descriptors) are assigned while creation of an  "ast_channel" structure 
>>> in "vpb_new".
>>>
>>> What I am not able to understand is: How would the "ast_waitfor*" 
>>> functions work as the events are captured using the "poll" api.
>>>
>>
>> I have never touched that code, but I can say that there is one other 
>> method for a channel driver to indicate that data is available.   Channel 
>> drivers can queue up media frames onto the channel using 
>> ast_queue_frame().  This puts the frame into a queue on the  ast_channel, 
>> and also writes data to an alert pipe on the channel that  is used to 
>> wake up poll().  chan_iax2 uses this method quite heavily  since there is 
>> no dedicated socket per channel like there is for a  call using RTP.
>>
>> --
>> Russell Bryant
>> Senior Software Engineer
>> Open Source Team Lead
>> Digium, Inc.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>