[Asterisk-Users] The Smallest Asterisk Server Ever?

Greg Boehnlein damin at nacs.net
Tue Feb 3 12:38:48 MST 2004


On Tue, 3 Feb 2004, Chris Albertson wrote:
 
> "Smallest" Asterisk server?  No.  That old Gateway box must
> be about 2 cubic feet.  1.5 ft^3 at a minimum.  I've got one
> that is about 0.2 ft^3 a factor of maybe 10 smaller.

Hehehe.. As far as "Form Factor" goes, I'm sure there are smaller boxes 
out there. How about "Most resource challenged Asterisk server ever? :)
 
> I've installed a working Asterisk server on an older Toshiba
> notebok PC.  The Notebook has a 144Mhz Pentium, 80MB RAM
> and a 2GB disk.  For very low volume VOIP-only in does OK
> 
> Advantages of a Notebook:
>   1) Very small, no fan, no noise.
>   2) Comes with built-in battry backup
>   3) WHat else can you do with a 144Mhz PC?
>   4) Can run softphone or Asterisk console phone using
>      built-in sound
> 
> Disadvangates
>   1) How to connect it to the PSTN?
> 
> If someone would write a zap driver for the a common PC card
> modem (do they still sell these?) then we'd have a realy nice
> FXO/VIOP gateway.  Most notebook have two PC card slots
> 
> I have an _even older_ Notebook can (and this is the good part)
> has a docking staion that has a PCI bus)  So I'm thinking of
> putting the digium card(s) in there.  The PC is a 486DX2 at
> 100Mhz with 16MB RAM.  I couldn't get it to work due to the
> 16MB RAM but after reading the below maybe I'll try again.
> 
> 
> --- Greg Boehnlein <damin at nacs.net> wrote:
> > Hello all,
> > 	Saturday night, after a couple of shots of bourbon, I realized 
> > that I had an old PC sitting in the garage that I could use as an
> > Asterisk 
> > gateway if I just blew the dust off it and reloaded it with a modern
> > Linux 
> > distribution. In my characteristically impulsive manner, I grabbed it
> > and 
> > started cleaning it up so that I could put it in my office without my
> > wife 
> > having a fit.
> > 	The sytem is an old Gateway system, that I used to use as an 
> > X-terminal. Nothing special really, P-133, 16 megs of ram, 3 PCI
> > slots, 
> > 3.2 gig hard drive. The box booted and I was greated with a RH9 login
> > 
> > screen from my X-server.
> > 	After imaging the hard drive over to my server for backup 
> > purposes, I proceeded to try installing Fedora, RH9, RH8 and finally
> > RH73 
> > without any luck. The 16 megs of ram was just too small to do the 
> > installation. So I grabbed a Debian 3.0 netinstall image and got the
> > box 
> > online and running.
> > 	8 hours later, "apt-get dist-upgrade" completed and the box was 
> > running Debian 3.0 unstable. Now it was time install Asterisk. An 
> > "apt-cache search asterisk" revealed that Debian unstable has pkg
> > files 
> > available. Yay! That'll save me the time of bulding everything on
> > this 
> > box so all I will need to do is rebuild the Zaptel modules.
> > 	20 minutes later, I had my Zaptel modules built and was ready to 
> > give it a whirl, so I loaded the wcfxo module and started Asterisk.
> > My 
> > GrandStream registered against the server and I was able to able to
> > place 
> > calls out the PSTN using the box.
> > 	Initially, I was prepared for this to be an excercise in futility, 
> > but I have been extremely surprised by the results. I can support up
> > to 3 
> > concurrent SIP sessions before I start to get degraded quality, and
> > the 
> > box appears to be rock solid. I have it registered against our
> > production 
> > Asterisk server at work over my Cable modem, and my staff can simply
> > dial 
> > 3xxx to ring my extension at home. Voicemail works just fine and with
> > the 
> > addition of the "Asterisk-sounds" pkg inbond callers now know that we
> > are 
> > out "Gambling and getting drunk" when they call.
> > 
> > 	Is this the smallest Asterisk server ever? :)
> > 
> > asterisk:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo 
> > processor       : 0
> > vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
> > cpu family      : 5
> > model           : 2
> > model name      : Pentium 75 - 200
> > stepping        : 12
> > cpu MHz         : 132.957
> > fdiv_bug        : no
> > hlt_bug         : no
> > f00f_bug        : yes
> > coma_bug        : no
> > fpu             : yes
> > fpu_exception   : yes
> > cpuid level     : 1
> > wp              : yes
> > flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8
> > bogomips        : 265.42
> > 
> > asterisk:~# free
> >              total       used       free     shared    buffers    
> > cached
> > Mem:         13984      13696        288          0       1372       
> > 868
> > -/+ buffers/cache:      11456       2528
> > Swap:        92728      17316      75412
> > 
> > asterisk:~# ps aux
> > USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME
> > COMMAND
> > root         1  0.0  0.6  1492   84 ?        S    Feb02   0:00 init
> > [2]       
> > root         2  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   Feb02   0:00
> > [keventd]
> > root         3  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SWN  Feb02   0:00
> > [ksoftirqd_CPU0]
> > root         4  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   Feb02   0:14
> > [kswapd]
> > root         5  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   Feb02   0:00
> > [bdflush]
> > root         6  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        SW   Feb02   0:00
> > [kupdated]
> > root        85  0.0  0.0     0    0 ?        DW   Feb02   0:01
> > [kjournald]
> > root       292  0.0  1.1  1540  164 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > /sbin/syslogd
> > root       295  0.0  0.0  2156    4 ?        S    Feb02   0:01
> > /sbin/klogd
> > root       309  0.0  0.0  1520    0 ?        SW   Feb02   0:00
> > /usr/sbin/inetd
> > root       316  0.0  0.4  3064   56 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > /usr/sbin/sshd
> > root       325  0.0  0.9  1752  128 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > /usr/sbin/cron
> > root       329  0.0  0.4  1488   56 tty1     S    Feb02   0:00
> > /sbin/getty 38400 tty1
> > root       330  0.0  0.4  1488   56 tty2     S    Feb02   0:00
> > /sbin/getty 38400 tty2
> > root      2609  0.0  0.2  2276   40 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > /bin/sh /usr/sbin/safe_asterisk
> > root      2611  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:03
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2612  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2613  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2614  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2615  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2616  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2617  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:21
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2618  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:13
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2619  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2620  0.4  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   7:52
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2621  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2622  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2625  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2626  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2627  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2628  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > root      2629  0.0  7.3 42144 1032 ?        S    Feb02   0:00
> > asterisk -vvvg -c
> > 
> > -- 
> >     Vice President of N2Net, a New Age Consulting Service, Inc.
> > Company
> >          http://www.n2net.net Where everything clicks into place!
> >                              KP-216-121-ST
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
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> 
> 
> =====
> Chris Albertson
>   Home:   310-376-1029  chrisalbertson90278 at yahoo.com
>   Cell:   310-990-7550
>   Office: 310-336-5189  Christopher.J.Albertson at aero.org
>   KG6OMK
> 
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-- 
    Vice President of N2Net, a New Age Consulting Service, Inc. Company
         http://www.n2net.net Where everything clicks into place!
                             KP-216-121-ST






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