[asterisk-users] How to turn on the H323 logging on Asterisk

[Tony Mountifield]

In article <531036.69111.qm at web53902.mail.re2.yahoo.com>,
bilal ghayyad <bilmar_gh at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I am still looking to know if all of these h323's are
> able to work as gatekeeper, so endpoint can register?

I think they all run only as a gateway, not a gatekeeper, but I'm not
100% certain.

> About "chan_ooh323 and using It is clean the Asterisk
> RTP stack (and can therefore bridge properly), and
> doesn't creak under the bloat of OpenH323 like the
> first two do":
> 
> The other two: how they use the RTP stack if they do
> not use Asterisk RTP?

Looking at http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page=Asterisk+H323+channels
it appears I was only partially correct. I never got chan_h323 working,
so have less experience of that. According to the above wiki page,
chan_h323 does use the Asterisk RTP stack, although it still uses the
OpenH323 library for the protocol part.

I used chan_oh323 for a long time 2 or 3 years ago, and it definitely
didn't use Asterisk's RTP stack, nor its codecs. It used the ones that
are part of OpenH323, and communicated with the chan_oh323 driver using
pipes (I guess in slin format). It was very profligate in its use of
system resources (file descriptors, CPU, etc), such that even on a dual
Xeon system we got degradation above about 15 simultaneous calls.

With both those versions, you easily run into version number hell with
OpenH323 and PWlib, which is another reason, IMHO, to avoid them.

I tried chan_ooh323 much more recently, and it just felt cleaner, more
streamlined and better integrated with Asterisk. However, I have not yet
used it in production. When I need to, this is the H.323 driver that I
will use, and if necessary bug fix and/or enhance.

> And what do u mean by bridge properly? (How?)

I guess since chan_h323 does indeed use Asterisk RTP, that it can bridge
channels at the RTP packet level just like chan_ooh323 and chan_sip can.
But chan_oh323 always had to pass audio through the Asterisk core because
it didn't use Asterisk RTP.

> Your kindly help is high appreciated.
> Regards
> Bilal

Cheers
Tony

> -------------------
> In article <20080611082011.GB23243 at xorcom.com>,
> Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir.cohen at xorcom.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 10:40:41AM +0300, Sema Arca
> wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > Does anybody know how I can turn on the logging
> for H323 in
>  Asterisk? I have
> > > set the logging path and the file name in the
> ooh323.conf
>  file
>  however it
> > > did not help. The file is created but is empty. I
> want to, if
>  possible, turn
> > > on the logging in DEBUG level.
> 
> ooh323 does not have debug-to-file. You enable
> debugging with "ooh323
>  debug",
> and then the debug information is sent to the
> "verbose" channel, which
> normally goes to the console and may go to one of the
> general log
>  files,
> according to the settings in logger.conf. ooh323
> debugging is stopped
>  by
> giving "ooh323 no debug".
> 
> > The file name is ooh323c.conf (note the extra 'c').
> 
> No, ooh323.conf is correct. The 'c' is used in the
> name of the stack,
> but not in the name of the Asterisk channel or the
> conf file.
> 
> > It is used by chan_ooh323c, rather than chan_h323.
> chan_ooh323c is
> > unmaintained and not recommended for new
> installations.
> 
> This was because until recently, the most up-to-date
> chan_ooh323 driver
> and stack were the ones in the 1.2 branch of
> asterisk-addons.
> 
> However, I recently ported the 1.2 version forward to
> 1.4, trunk and
> 1.6.0, and added a couple of bug fixes. Those changes
> were accepted
>  into
> SVN, so that all those variants are now up to date. It
> should therefore
> now be easy to keep them maintained as far as Asterisk
> API changes are
> concerned.
> 
> Having tried chan_h323, chan_oh323 and chan_ooh323, I
> *would* strongly
> recommend chan_ooh323 over the first two. It is clean
> and lightweight,
> uses the Asterisk RTP stack (and can therefore bridge
> properly), and
> doesn't creak under the bloat of OpenH323 like the
> first two do.
> 
> I don't know whether Objective Systems have abandoned
> chan_ooh323 and
> the ooh323c stack, but it would be great to see them
> moved from -addons
> into the main Asterisk tree.
> 
> Cheers
> Tony
> -- 
> Tony Mountifield
> Work: tony at softins.co.uk - http://www.softins.co.uk
> Play: tony at mountifield.org -
> http://tony.mountifield.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>       
> 
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-- 
Tony Mountifield
Work: tony at softins.co.uk - http://www.softins.co.uk
Play: tony at mountifield.org - http://tony.mountifield.org