[Asterisk-Users] Starting up considerations.....

[Steven Critchfield]

For the newbies on the list... THIS IS THE WAY TO ASK A QUESTION. 

This shows forethought and a proof that Brent thought about the problem
before askeing a question.

On Wed, 2004-07-14 at 12:17, Brent Franks wrote:
> I know this has been covered before, but could someone please explain the
> benefits to starting asterisk various ways.  I am partly posting this too,
> to see if my assumptions are correct.
> 
> Is call quality affected by starting it differently?
> 	My belief is no.  Regardless of how you start it, quality will be
> 	the same... Correct?

Correct. Most interfaces are digital and unless a filter was introduced
it would sound exactly the same. Also while running as root, there isn't
any niceness problems either. 

> So far, I have used:
> 
> 	asterisk -vvvgnc
> 		If you are logged into a TTY on the physical machine,
> starting this way, is no problem.  However, if you start Asterisk like
> this remotely, once the session is killed, the asterisk program dies.
> Makes sense...

This is good for temporary runs where you want to see all the startup
messages to debug a run.

> 	safe_asterisk
> 		Starting like this, will use the Asterisk startup script
> provided by the CVS, located in sbin.  This is a good way to start
> remotely. No?

I think I use a version of that script. I also use this script in an
init.d script to start asterisk as it restarts asterisk if it crashes. 

> 	screen -d -m asterisk -vvvvgnc
> 		Just another way to start remotely?

Used to use this, but I prefer the safe_asterisk method. It is possible
for you to forget to start screen and end up with asterisk crashing as
ou try and leave.

> So basically, they all do the same thing.  Complexity is introduced only
> when you want to auto-start asterisk on bootup.  You would want to use
> screen for this..?

As I mentioned, safe_asterisk is what you want here. It takes care of
many problems for you.

> Any thing I have overlooked, please post to the list.  All of the other
> posts right now all point to personal opinions as to which is best.
> Technically speaking though, from a call quality standpoint, there should
> be 0 difference?

Call quality should always be equal. The only thing outside of opinion
is that safe_asterisk handles crashes well. If it is the same as what I
have been using, it even emails you when it crashes and tells you where
the core is. Really nice.


-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>