[Asterisk-Users] OT: Polycom BootRom 3.1.3 and vsftpd 2.0.3 WARNING!!!

[William M Conlon]

I spent a weekend battling similar issues with 501s, using FC4/ 
proftpd.  I finally switched from FTP to HTTP.


On Mar 7, 2006, at 9:53 AM, Kristian Kielhofner wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> 	Please forgive the exclamation points but I have been battling  
> this one off and on for about four days now.  Sorry for the cross  
> post.
>
> 	It all started with a box of IP 501s.  I contacted my reseller and  
> obtained the latest BootRom and SIP firmware.  Unzipped,  
> configured, copied over to my FTP server (running AstLinux, of  
> course).  The phone booted, so far so good.  Updated bootrom,  
> nice.  Rebooted again. Updated sip firmware.  Also nice.
>
> 	Upon the next reboot, the wheels started falling off.  The phones  
> would not get changes I made to any of the .cfg files.  Several  
> phones would take 20 minutes or more to boot, only to display a  
> "0x4000 config file error".  What happened?
>
> 	I have been using various Polycom's with AstLinux (and vsftpd  
> 2.0.3 that I include with it) for quite some time, with no problems  
> whatsoever.  Until now.
>
> 	I had been running bootrom 3.0.1 and various versions of the SIP  
> image at several other sites with no problem.  At this point I was  
> still unable to accept the fact that I might not be able to run  
> this latest bootrom.  After many trial and tribulations, I finally  
> rsync'ed (with -avr) the FTP directory from the AstLinux machine to  
> my laptop running CentOS 4.  I configured the vsftpd daemon  
> (version 2.0.1) IDENTICALLY (with the exception of PAM and TCP  
> wrappers) and crossed my fingers...
>
> 	After re-configuring the IP 501 to use my laptop, imagine my  
> surprise when the most problematic of them booted right away  
> without problems. Again and again, everything was fine.
>
> 	So now I just had to break out ethereal and see what was going on.  
> While I have not completely finished my analysis, it appears that  
> Polycom firmware 3.1.3 bombs out when transferring files with  
> vsftpd 2.0.3.  The symptom appears to be repeated TCP SYNs from the  
> Polycom to the ftp daemon on port 20.  The Polycom will keep  
> retrying and increment its source port number by one every few  
> minutes.  Like I said, I need to dig into this more, but I figured  
> I'd report what I know and see if anyone out there can fill in the  
> holes.
>
> 	Here's what I did.  It appears that BootRom 3.1.3 works with  
> vsftpd 2.0.1, so I placed bootrom 3.0.1 (which I know works with  
> vsftpd 2.0.3) on my CentOS server and downgraded the phone to  
> 3.0.1.  I then placed 3.0.1 and SIP app 1.6.5 (which I was using  
> the whole time, btw) on my AstLinux server running vsftpd 2.0.3.
>
> 	All was good.  So now I am successfully running with the following:
>
> Polycom IP 501
> Bootrom 3.0.1
> SIP 1.6.5
> AstLinux 0.3.7
> vsftpd 2.0.3
>
> 	I will also try to fix (or workaround) this by trying the following:
>
> upgrading AstLinux to include vsftpd 2.0.4
> trying an intermediate BootRom release between 3.0.1 and 3.1.3  
> (find out exactly where/when it broke)
> trying an even newer Polycom BootRom when it becomes available
> upgrading the kernel in AstLinux (I doubt that's it)
> fiddling with iptables rules in AstLinux (iptables was loaded, but  
> obviously 3.0.1 doesn't have a problem with it)
>
> 	This also might be related to the problems described here:
>
> http://forums.digium.com/viewtopic.php? 
> p=14847&sid=6e70577c37bd345cfc164a01e64e113a
>
>
> 	Any thoughts?  Comments?  Suggestions?
>
> P.S. - I will be updating the Polycom config files at http:// 
> www.krisk.org/asterisk/pcom/ to reflect some new changes in this  
> firmware release.  I just need to get my phones working first :)!
>
> --
> Kristian Kielhofner
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Bill

William M. Conlon, P.E., Ph.D.
To the Point
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