[asterisk-users] Asterisk on Debian Etch

[Paul]

Stephen Bosch wrote:

>Diego Iastrubni wrote:
>  
>
>>On Tuesday 24 April 2007 16:24, Stephen Bosch wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Well, I can't speak for anybody else, but I haven't had a problem with
>>>reproducing a source install.
>>>      
>>>
>>How about time?
>>
>>2 minutes download+install, vs 10-20 minutes compilation.
>>Then, how do you 
>>uninstall? How do you know which version do you have? 
>>    
>>
>
>If you don't have 10-20 minutes for compilation you have no business
>installing a PBX of any stripe, let alone Asterisk.
>
>And if you don't know how to get the version number of your Asterisk
>install... are you actually administering Asterisk installations for users?
>
>If you're new to this, fine, it's okay to prefer packages and not know
>how to determine the version number of your install -- but don't be
>handing out dangerous advice that makes people unnecessarily afraid of
>performing tasks vital to the successful administration of a piece of
>software. This isn't difficult, and there's plenty of help available.
>
>  
>
>>>Can you tell I'm a Gentoo user? :P
>>>      
>>>
><snip>
>  
>
>>And even gentoo uses packages. Sorry, but "make install" is something for 
>>developers - not users.
>>    
>>
>
>Yes, and I've already acknowledged I use mostly packages. The
>distinction with Gentoo is that the packages are source packages and are
>built at install time.
>
>Even so, for Asterisk, I *still* install from tarballs.
>
>If by user you mean somebody using a phone, then touché -- I don't
>expect my phone users to be doing 'make install' either.
>
>But we're talking about administering Asterisk, here. Seriously -- if
>you can't do a 'make install', then you should stay away from both
>Asterisk *and* Linux. This is not rocket science. It's like flying a
>plane on auto-pilot, or flying a plane without knowing how to taxi.
>Being able to steer in flight is not good enough -- if you can't land
>and take off, you have no business in the cockpit.
>
>To say that 'make install' is something 'for developers - not users' is
>beyond absurd.
>
>My Linux servers started working the day I stopped wasting my time with
>packages, idiotic package dependency chains and hardware
>incompatibilities with binaries and learned how to install from sources.
>And no, I'm not a developer (nor am I a rocket scientist, though I do
>think rockets are cool).
>
>  
>
>>The good thing about package managers, is that they tell you which package has 
>>been modified (a user changes a file, someone breaks into your machine and 
>>modifies a binary). In rpm it's done via "rpm -qVa" and in debian it's done 
>>by the command "debsums". I am not sure about gentoo.
>>    
>>
>
>Utilities from gentoolkit will do this in Gentoo.
>
>  
>
>>On a developers users - I would say install from source. On a *users* list : 
>>install always from your distribution packages. When was the last time you 
>>installed X from sources? KDE? Mozilla? OpenOffice? Why is asterisk 
>>different?
>>    
>>
>
>Because X versions don't differ materially from minor version to minor
>version; because X isn't updated nearly as often Asterisk; because
>Asterisk, unlike X, doesn't take days to compile; because X, in general,
>isn't used to provide many users with a vital service -- if your X
>breaks, it's your tears, not the whole department's.
>
>Look, this is not the local Quake III server we're talking about -- this
>is phone service. The biggest mental hurdle that IT people have to get
>over is that it is absolutely *not* okay when the phones break, for any
>reason, for any period of time. This is a whole new world of user
>expectation. The PSTN people already get what I'm talking about. (They
>get too much undeserved shit from IT people who have no concept what a
>feat it is to run a network with 99.999% uptime. Say what you will about
>my local telco; I haven't lost a dialtone on my local phone in more than
>5 years, and before that it had been 21. Respect the experienced PSTN
>technician -- he is worthy of it.)
>
>I'm sorry -- for Asterisk, I have to disagree with you categorically.
>The depth of support available for someone who has installed from
>original sources is deeper and the installation is guaranteed to be
>current. Updating a source install is also trivial; and if somebody
>needs help doing that, I'm happy to provide some advice in that
>department (I've updated Asterisk on a production machine twice in the
>last month, and it took less than 10 minutes both times -- the same
>can't be said for my X, KDE or Mozilla installations).
>  
>
It's not all that difficult to produce debian packages. There are
situations where I create binary packages and install them on a test
server. If I don't like the results, I can remove/purge the package or
just upgrade it to the next version I create. Once I am satisfied with
the results the same packages are easily installed on other servers.

Building from tarballs will work for other situations involving multiple
servers. Last year I ran into a situation where asterisk and a few other
things were built from tarballs on a development server and a production
server. Things were different in areas that matter. Things that tested
well on the development server didn't work at all on the production
server. Apparently, whoever originally typed "make install" was rather
careless.