[Asterisk-Users] OS Choice ?

[Tzafrir Cohen]

Answering some questions...

On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 10:28:13AM +1100, David Uzzell wrote:
> Michael Graves wrote:
> >On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 10:09:26 +0200, Gilad Ben-Yossef wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Alex Brecher wrote:
> >>
> >>>Which Distro is the most commonly used distro with Asterisk please ?
> >>
> >>I don't know which is most commonly used, but I can tell you which is 
> >>the easiest to install if you're going to install the OS from scratch 
> >>anyway and plan to use it with Asterisk:
> >>
> >>"Xorcom Rapid is a Debian/Asterisk distribution program that includes an 
> >>auto-install and special auto-configuration features. It quickly and 
> >>effortlessly converts any PC to a functioning Asterisk PBX..."
> >
> >
> >Since I had to rebuild my * server over the weekend I had a go with
> >this Xorcom thingy. It pretty much did as it promised, with minimal
> >user interaction it created a working * installation with a handy text
> >mode shell. However, being a Linux newbie I found that it lacked a few
> >basic things that I needed to make it work for me...most significantly
> >the ability to use SSH to connect from my desktop transfer config files
> >and otherwise and administer *. 


You could have installed the "ssh" package. (or install netcat and pipe
over nc, if that is your favourite transfer mode). Included in the CD.

> > Had I been able to do that I would
> >probably have tried it out for a while.
> >
> >Oh, also the version of * it installed was quite old...CVS 5/11/04 if I
> >recall. That was also a major concern.
> 
> This is the only thing that worried me. And now from what I have been 
> able to find is that there are limited to none development software on 
> the install. I was hopeful that there would have been enough development 
> software installed so that I could run an Upgrade :( which there appears 
> not to be!.

Install a second rapid machine. Run 'apt-setup' to set up standard
Debian software sources in addition to your existing ones. Now you
should have a build machine.

Alternatively: install Debian Sarge and add:

  deb     http://updates.xorcom.com/rapid sarge main
  deb-src http://updates.xorcom.com/rapid sarge main

to your sources.list . This should generally give you a build machine.
Adding a decent build environment would take too much place, and it will
still won't be good enough, because for each user there will be "just
one package" missing.

> 
> 
> So as you I think I will be rebuilding the server again :( I need to 
> ability to be able to update the * versions as bugs are fixed and 
> features are added.

We currently provide packages. OTOH, we try not to drift too far away
from Debian. We don't want to waste too much time on replicating Debian
features.

> 
> It is a Great start and will allow newbies to get started with little 
> problem but i can see it being an issue with the mailling list being 
> users asking questions about out of date CVS versions which may well 
> have the bugs fixed.

And it indeed gets better:

Next version has a decent version of Asterisk, *and* a much better
default configuration, including and configuration of detection of 
(some) zaptel cards at install time. 

I would like software to work out of the box as well as possible.

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen                       +---------------------------+
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir/ |vim is a mutt's best friend|
mailto:tzafrir at technion.ac.il       +---------------------------+