[Asterisk-Users] Administrative suggestions

[Florian Overkamp]

Hi, 

> -----Original Message-----
> mostly based upon list postings I compiled a couple of administrative 
> suggestions on the Wiki page below. I'd be glad to have this 
> reviewed and 
> commented:
> 
> http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk+administration

Cheerio, good work. Some comments (also added in the wiki):

* Look into your __startup script__ and take provisions to detect and
restart and hung asterisk. Check out daemontools for this purpose. You could
also regularly telnet into Asterisk (manager.conf) to at least make sure it
hasn't completely crashed.
''Running Asterisk can also be done from /etc/inittab, resulting in an
automatic restart after a stop. Do make sure your machine at least starts
properly, or it will reload at maximum speed. To monitor the livelyness of
Asterisk, some tools are available which assist with integration in
monitoring systems such as mon, big brother and netsaint.''

* __Regularly restart__ (better: stop and start) your PBX during off-hours.
A repetitive reload will not be sufficient, and can actually cause more harm
than it does good.
''If you run Asterisk provisioned for automatic reloading this could be as
simple as placing a cronjob to execut easterisk -rx 'stop gracefully'.''

Added issue:

* __Ensure a stable Asterisk code base__ by using some form of staging
environment. Latest stable release (tar.gz file) is often not the best
choice, but bleeding edge CVS isn't either. Your own preferred patches might
also not be in CVS yet.

I tried doing this with my own CVS tree, but keeping it maintained proved a
pain in the *ss. Who has good suggestions about this ? :-))

Florian