[asterisk-dev] chan_iax "ghost" channel confusion

[David Vossel]

Hey!

Sometimes "iax2 show channels" displays channels with "(None)" listed as the channel name.

      *CLI> iax2 show channels
      Channel               Peer             Username    ID (Lo/Rem)  Seq (Tx/Rx)  Lag      Jitter  JitBuf  Format
      (None)               10.24.69.220     (None)      03859/00000  00001/00000  00000ms  0000ms  0040ms  unknow
      1 active IAX channel

To the user this is somewhat deceiving as it appears to be some sort of memory leak (http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=14207). In reality it is usually either a pending poke or registration request, typically to a peer that is unreachable.  If the peer is unreachable, these "channels" may appear indefinitely as Asterisk attempts to register with them.

Since they are not channels, it seems odd to me that registrations and pokes are listed at all. Chan_sip does the exact same thing, but it produces far less confusion since they are listed as dialogs and the last message is visible as a REGISTER. 

      *CLI> sip show channels
      Peer             User/ANR    Call ID          Format           Hold     Last Message    Expiry
      10.24.16.230     (None)      2b7659b59e65342  0x0 (nothing)    No       Rx: REGISTER                         
      1 active SIP dialogs

What should be done in chan_iax to clarify this.  Should there just be a note at the bottom of the output explaining why these nameless "channels" may exist?

~Vossel